The Devil I Know

About

An Ashley McBryde album is more than just a collection of song. The acclaimed singer-songwriter creates entire worlds on her record, filling them with quirky character, familiar place, and tall, tall tale, as especially evident on 2022’s <i>Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville</i>. With <i>The Devil I Know</i>, McBryde pairs some of that world-building with a bevy of musical influence, including bluegrass and rock ’n’ roll, that breathe an easy, expansive life into the project. Backed by her live band Deadhorse, McBryde sounds vibrant and electric, imbuing songs like the gut-wrenching “Learned to Lie” and the playfully clear-eyed “Coldest Beer in Town” with strength and raw emotion. As she shares with Apple Music, <i>The Devil I Know</i> is McBryde’s fullest expression of her artistry, and herself, yet. “I kept trying to—and others helped—pigeonhole myself into just being <i>this</i>, or just being <i>this</i> part of my identity,” she explain. “It feels so much better to just go, ‘Oh, it turns out I'm just a complete person, and this is what it looks like and this is what it smells like and this is how fast it can run. And it can't jump very high, but it's very entertaining.’” Below, McBryde shares insight into several key track. <b>“Coldest Beer in Town”</b> “Every bar has a sign that it's the ‘coldest beer in town,’ or it's the ‘best cheeseburger in town.’ And not every single one of them has that. And then you realize as you get older, so that was just like, ‘Hey, dude, if it's buy one, get one, the first one wasn't free.’ ‘I will love you forever’? It's not true. ‘I will move a mountain for you’ and ‘I'll never hurt your feelings'? Also a complete lie. But to be able to wrap all that up and just go, ‘Hey, it's cool. Every bar doesn't have the coldest beer.' You found something out today. Adorable.” <b>“Learned to Lie”</b> “I called Mom after we cut it and talked both her and my stepdad through the lyric, and I said, ‘I just want you to know it's on the record. It's going to hurt, but it's not untrue. I didn't lie about anything.’ And she was very understanding about that. It's not that this song is only about me. Once a listener hears it, it's whatever you're drawing from. That is what the song is about, and if you had family members that behave that way. But it was difficult to look at that: ‘I wish I had learned how to love the same way I learned how to lie.’” <b>“Single at the Same Time”</b> “Nobody in the song is going to cheat. They're just saying, ‘I wonder what would've happened.’ My favorite thing so far about this song is playing it in an intimate setting, whether we're playing it off the record for someone to listen to or I'm playing it live. When you play it for a group of 20, 30 people, watch their faces and find out who has one of those [relationships]. And when that person crosses their mind, the look that's on their face and the way their shoulders change, and even if they're just thinking, ‘Oh, I wish I could've said that to him at some point. We could've had that conversation.’” <b>“Cool Little Bars”</b> “I don't know which work tape Jay [Joyce] got, but he thought this was a sad song and he hated it. I'd hate it too if it was a sad song and I'm like, ‘Why are we setting it up this way?’ Then we go in to really make the record, and I said, ‘I don't know why you don't like this song.’ He was like, ‘It's so sad.’ I said, ‘It's not a sad song at all. This is like a hell yeah kind of a feeling.’ He said, ‘Well, I'll tell you what, why don't you sit down, just grab a guitar and sit down. Let's all sit in a circle. Teach me the song like we're on your porch and see if I get it.’ He looks at Chris [Harris] and he said, ‘Grab a bouzouki. Quinn [Hill], grab whatever you want.’ Quinn grabbed the tiniest little djembe that he had under his armpit. He threw Matt Helmkamp a resonator guitar. He was like, ‘Just play that on a re. Let's jam porch-style on thi.’ And we did.” <b>“6th of October”</b> .

via Apple Music

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