Ashley McBryde hasn’t always been a straight-ahead country traditionalist. She’s flirted with rock guitars and metal-leaning vocal solos, and even tried her hand at a concept album with the release of her theatrical collaborations project, Lindeville.

But no one’s questioning McBryde’s bona fides when it comes to songwriting. Now, she’s kicking off her next musical chapter with a ballad that doubles down on her roots.

McBryde wrote her latest release, “Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs,” out of a sense of longing to get back to simpler times. That nostalgia is something she shared with her co-writers on the track, Chris Harris and Patrick Savage.

“In the last several years, we’ve all been feeling like something was missing. I noticed it in myself and then noticed it in most people I came into contact with,” McBryde says in a statement.

When she wrote the song, she was “starving to reconnect” with her fundamental principles. “Sometimes that comes as our sense of justice and duty, maybe for some of us it’s work ethic, for some of us it’s a sense of community,” she adds.

But when she got in the room to write, that vague notion of long-lost comforting values solidified in the idea of a cowboy. McBryde says kindness, toughness, compassion and authenticity are a few of the traits she associates with cowboys — and all powerful reminders of the core values that keep her true to herself.

McBryde’s most recent full-length album, The Devil I Know, came out in 2023. Now, she’s gearing up for what’s ahead, which includes a 2025 tour run with Cody Johnson.

Ashley McBryde, “Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs” Lyrics: 

The horse I rode in on got put out to pasture / And someday they’ll put me there too / They traded our heroes for overpaid actors / Who can’t even fill up their boots

I’d love to ride into the sunset, but there’s no wild out west / No prairie to roam or a high enough lonesome / To get far enough gone / There ain’t enough cowboy songs

There’s a few of us left tryin’ to circle the wagons / But we’re barely holdin’ our ground / Cause we ain’t got pistols or shiny tin badges / And we ain’t the law in this town

And I’d love to ride into the sunset, but there’s no wild out west / No prairie to roam or a high enough lonesome / To get far enough gone / There ain’t enough cowboy songs

Oh I’d love to ride into the sunset, but there’s no wild out west / No prairie to roam or a high enough lonesome / To get far enough gone There ain’t enough cowboy songs / There ain’t enough cowboy songs

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