06/19/2026
Ashley McBryde, by her own admission, spent a lot of her career hiding the fact that she was drunk while on stage. It all came to a screeching halt in 2022, when McBryde went to rehab.
“When I left treatment, or that I lovingly call trauma camp, I left Tuesday at lunch, back to Nashville by that evening,” Thursday, I’m back on stage. This is the first time I have been longer than 30 days without alcohol, and I had to go do a show. I was out opening for Dierks Bentley at the time.”
Although she couldn’t have known it at the beginning of her first sober show, the entire evening was eye-opening for the singer.
“‘What do I do? How do I walk? I don’t even know how to sit in a chair without being drunk,'” McBryde remembers thinking. “It was the most terrifying, coolest experience. I wish I could go back and experience it again, because I was so shocked with the ease of everything I was doing. My breath, I’m supported. My legs, moving across this stage just fine. My hands, not shaky. Who knew that would be handy?
“It was scary and amazing to go, ‘Look what you did,'” she adds. “‘You went from embarrassing yourself to stealing the night, and you’ve only been without it for 30 days. Who knows what this is going to be like in 60 days?'”
Check out Ashley’s “Bottle Tells Me So” her new song on my ‘Facebook Post of the Night’
Ashley McBryde had no idea what it would be like to perform sober.
