Following an invitation to become the newest member of the Grand Ole Opry, Ashley McBryde invites you to the revered Ryman Auditorium to experience Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville, featuring the cast of collaborators and special guests performing songs from her critically acclaimed album, February 15 and 16. Tickets will go on sale this Friday, Oct. 14 at AshleyMcBryde.com.
“In a perfect world, it needs to be a live show,” McBryde shared with AP upon album’s release. “In my heart, it would be at the Ryman, done in the style of a community theater, kind of Prairie Home Companion it. To deliver those performances in that way I think would be really beautiful and a lot of fun.”
Paying homage to the radio programs of yesteryear, McBryde confirms Stereogum’s observation of the ringleader: “Here’s someone who loves and respects the age-old storytelling traditions of country music and who wants to find strange new ways to honor those traditions.”
Developing Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville for the stage won’t require too much stretching, as Variety notes, “It sounds like the beginnings of a solid country music musical,” while Saving Country Music asserts, “You could consider Lindeville just as much like a stage production as you could a studio album, with the cast of characters unfolding before you as the songs transpire.”
Cited by NPR as a “glorious detour into downhome character studies,” the Arkansas-native and her collaborators leaned all the way in on Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville, garnering applause from critics upon its debut.
Produced by John Osborne, Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville includes performances from McBryde, Brothers Osborne, Brandy Clark, Aaron Raitiere, Pillbox Patti, Caylee Hammack and Benjy Davis, with NPR calling it “a mischievous, and mightily pleasing, departure from the prescribed progression of a mainstream country career,” while AP praises, “McBryde and crew created detail-rich storylines with a John Prine level of empathy and compassion.”
“The very existence of an album like Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville is enough to restore your faith in Nashville, however far afield it might have wandered,” Variety boasts, making it “Country music’s most ambitious and oddball album in recent memory,” emphasizes Esquire.
Celebrated by Rolling Stone as “one of Nashville’s most exciting new exports, an ace songwriter who is also an ace singer and performer,” McBryde “has made abundantly clear over the course of her short but fruitful career, she is principally interested in peeling back the layers and speaking the truth,” boasts Vulture.
Summed up by Stereogum, “There’s a whole lot of beautiful writerly vision at work on Lindeville, but it wouldn’t matter if the songs weren’t great. Guess what? The songs are great… A lot of people put a lot of work into this record, and they made something that resonates on a deep, emotional level. Give it up for them.”
“When it comes out,” McBryde shared with Esquire, “I hope everybody laughs a little bit and I hope everybody says ‘What the f*ck?’ a little bit. Sometimes you look and realize, this town is such a mess, everybody here is a disaster. And in the same breath, in that same three minutes, everybody’s okay. And I love those times. Sometimes I wish I could make that stand still a little bit longer—we’re all a disaster, and it’s beautiful. And that’s true whether it’s a small town or a big city.”
