Ashley Mcbryde appeared on the Wayne D & Tay Podcast to discuss her new album and, before the episode was over, confirmed she will take the record on the road. McBryde released the 11-track album Wild on May 8 and announced a headlining Into The Wild Tour that opens Sept. 10 in Ashland, Kentucky and closes Dec. 1 in Anaheim, California.
The album, McBryde said on the podcast, is the product of a long, costly and exhilarating period in her life. "The ride it took us on, the process of discovering and creating it. The amount of life that happened since I sang the last note into the mic. None of it came without cost, none of it came without gut-wrenching work. All of it was beautiful and Wild. I hereby release this album into the wild. Go baby go," she said, laying out how the record is both culmination and release. She also told listeners she hoped the songs would stir a familiar restlessness: "when people hear this record, I hope it wakes up the part of them that I’m singing about in ‘Wild’—the part that still believes in those unrealized dreams and untaken risks. I believe that wild little kid is still alive inside of all of us, and that’s the version of everyone that I want to sing to."
McBryde said the record was born in motion. "This record, in so many ways, began on the road," she told the hosts, and described Wild as music she "refused to let go quiet, that have been around for a decade." That backstory matters to fans: the songs were not rushed into being and now arrive after years of life events and songwriting that McBryde says changed her as much as her material.
The Into The Wild Tour will be McBryde’s vehicle for that work. It begins Sept. 10 in Ashland, Kentucky and runs through December 1 in Anaheim, California. Fall dates listed by the artist include 9/10, 9/11, 9/12, 9/17, 9/26, 10/2, 10/3, 10/7 and later dates such as 10/16, 10/17, 10/23 and 10/24. The itinerary includes stops in Walhalla, South Carolina; Goldsboro, North Carolina; Louisville, Kentucky; Athens, Ohio; Fort Myers and Melbourne, Florida; Patchogue, New York; Fort Worth, Texas; Fayetteville, Arkansas; Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; and Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.
On the podcast McBryde also touched on life beyond the album: she discussed her non-alcoholic-focused bar in Nashville and recalled how she met Eric Church, details she used to explain the life around the songs. The contrast between songs that have simmered for a decade and a present in which McBryde runs a bar and keeps a touring schedule highlights a musical life split between creation and presentation. "I am so grateful that I live a life of music and miles, of stories and songs," she said, framing the tour as a natural next step rather than an afterthought.
There is a practical test built into that next step. McBryde announced the tour after releasing Wild, and she framed the trek as the moment the album leaves the studio and meets an audience: "This tour breathes life and light to all of them; it brings them to you," she said. The implication is plain — the songs that have waited for a decade must stand in rooms full of people.
For listeners, the result will be immediate. The record, McBryde has said, was meant to wake something up; the tour is how she intends to do that. If the performances match the promise of the record — the years of living behind it and the care she says went into every note — the Into The Wild Tour will turn the album's private work into public momentum and give fans a chance to hear the "wild little kid" in McBryde's songs for themselves.
