Ashley McBryde joins KFRG's Kelli and Anthony backstage at Stagecoach.
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00:00Here at Stagecoach with Ashley McBride. Welcome. Thank you. Okay, now wait, should I address you as Dr. McBride?
00:06No, Doc is okay. You can just talk. Doc is okay. The honorary doctorate. Congratulations. I mean, how did that feel to receive that?
00:15Incredible. I wanted to complete my music education degree, and I got to a point where I had to choose between having this life
00:22or completing the degree that I figured I should complete, and so I chose this life.
00:28And I've never stopped being an advocate for music education. I found ways to work with CMA Foundation
00:32and ways to educate about the different roles we have. There should be more education about what we do
00:38with lighting directors and riggers and gaffers and things like that. I went and sang in Arkansas
00:43with the Arkansas Delta Symphony at Arkansas State University's campus, and then shortly after that,
00:48they said, we'd like to honor you with a doctorate in music. That is amazing. I did see that you
00:54majored in French horn. Yes. I have to ask you because my 10-year-old came home and he said,
01:00Mom, I'm going to learn how to play the trombone. Yes, you are. Okay, baby. Yep. I will support you
01:05in whatever you do. Can you give some parents that have bad kids some advice? What do we do to get
01:10through it? Because he didn't or hasn't started off well, we'll say. It's a rough road. And what I can
01:16say for you is at least it's not a clarinet. Is that the word? Because it is so much harder to
01:21listen to someone learn the clarinet, then it is trombone, and you're going to get a lot of
01:24and that's okay. But what's really going to be remarkable is the brain development that happens
01:31in a child that learns to play a wind or a woodwind instrument. Critical thinking and problem solving
01:37and hand-eye coordination. It's incredible. And it's like giving, it's like putting miracle grow
01:44on his brain. I like that. Yeah. Plus it'll teach him kindness and tolerance too, because I'm assuming
01:54it's still this way, that the band kids and the choir kids, they get made fun of. And so it'll
01:57teach him compassion. And when it's good to stick up for yourself or stick up for somebody else or pop
02:03somebody in the lip that made a remark. That's right. The last one. I like that one. Talk about
02:08giving advice. You're over a thousand days sober. Yes. Which is huge. 1049. Oh, that's amazing.
02:15For somebody watching or listening, someone that's going through it right now, what advice do you have
02:20for them? How did they get started? What's, what's this, what's the first step? If you go into it
02:25thinking, I need to be 1049 days sober, you're shooting yourself in the foot. But if you have a
02:32habit of drinking and over drinking and abusing that particular substance, and you think you don't want to
02:37do that today, then just don't do it today. And I know that we're like one day at a time and it's
02:41just gets said and it gets kind of, I don't know, a hallmarked and kind of sillied and cheesied,
02:46but it's really true because I'm 1049 days in and I still have to get up every day and decide.
02:51And there is at no point, is there like a finish line that you get to run through and break the
02:56paper? You just do the work and it's a lot of heavy lifting and it's absolutely worth it. And when
03:02people look at me and say, um, your light, I love the light in your face and what are you doing?
03:08And I was like, I'm not drinking, but it's not just not drinking. It's doing the work around why I was
03:14abusing that substance to begin with. But even seeing you, I mean, in all aspects of your life,
03:19putting the work in and seeing the result that we get, seeing you at the Opry, seeing you here at
03:25Stagecoach, when you perform, say the Opry versus Stagecoach, is it a different mindset?
03:30Because it's a different atmosphere or do you go in going, nah, I'm just going to go crush it?
03:35It's a different feeling because the stage is so different and then the, where we will be today
03:40so vast and you have to figure out how to perform all the way out there. And oh my gosh, there's
03:45cameras. You can't stare in one direction too long. And at the Opry, it's a radio show and it's
03:49people traveling from all over the world to be there live to see the radio show. So it's a little bit
03:53different. But what I have found is the way I feel when I walk onto the Opry stage, if I'm nervous or
03:59anxious about playing in front of hundreds of thousands of people, like here at Stagecoach,
04:03if you can just picture that thing, the Opry stage, when they say Opry, Grand Ole Opry member,
04:10Ashley McBride, the way you feel when you walk onto the stage, if you'll walk to every stage,
04:14the way you feel like that, then that energy is going to bleed into everybody else. But if you walk
04:19onto the stage being like nervous Nellie, instantly everybody else is going to be like,
04:23and then you're going to wonder why the bass player's chipping notes and the drummer,
04:26if it sounds like you just dropped pots and pans. And because you didn't like, again, do the work,
04:31figure out what feels good to you, and then try to carry that and be intentional about it.
04:36Is there work that you put in as far as your set list of like, okay, this is Stagecoach,
04:40this is a party atmosphere, like, this is the song I'm going to break out for Stagecoach. I don't do
04:45this anywhere else. Did you kind of do that with your set list? Yeah, we looked at it. And we're
04:50looking at our brothers and sisters that are playing all day today. And what kind of music,
04:54if I'm a fan here today, what music have I experienced today? It's a vibe. Right. And
04:59then what is it that we do in our show that we feel like that's such a good addition? Like
05:04if this whole thing was a meal, what did we bring to the potluck? Yeah. All right,
05:10let's play a little game here. I want you to create the ideal country artist. Okay,
05:14you can look at artists past or present. I want you to pick an artist's voice, an artist's appearance,
05:19and an artist's dance moves. Who would you put together? Wow. It's really easy to go with
05:23Dwight Yoakam's dance moves. Classic. And I would want, if I'm picking a male artist,
05:28I would want him to sound like Don Williams. Oh. And I would want him to look, all I can
05:36picture right now is ripped from Yellowstone. But that's... Nobody's mad at that. But if you
05:41looked like that and sounded like that and you moved like Dwight Yoakam, I don't know,
05:44that guy might be a complete doofus. I don't know. The guy, I may have just invented an artist
05:50and his name is Luke Warm. Like, we don't know. Luke Warm. I don't know, but I would love to listen
05:59to him. We're going to make Luke Warm on AI tonight. We're actually going to create him.
06:02Fantastic. He's played Stagecoach 2026. That's got to be a real thing. Luke Warm.
06:06Thank you. Oh, thanks, y'all.