Garth Brooks and Miranda Lambert are huge fans of the 'A Little Dive Bar in Daholonega' singer, who opens up to ET about lessons learned from her famous mentors.
Ashley McBryde is on her way.
Specifically, the "Girl Going Nowhere" singer is headed to Indio, California, this weekend for the Stagecoach Music Festival, where she'll perform on Sunday afternoon.
"It's kinda a rite of passage," she says of the gig, which places her on a lineup headlined by Garth Brooks. Earlier this year, she earned the Garth stamp of approval when the country icon put his own spin on her album's title track, performing it on his own tour.
"He actually called me a few months ago to introduce himself," McBryde recalls, saying that he had questions about her songs "Girl Going Nowhere" and "Bible and a .44."
"He wanted to know the information behind both songs, who I wrote them with. 'Bible and a .44' mentions my dad, [so] he wanted to know if he was still with us. I said, 'Yes, he's still kickin'! He's a tough old guy,'" McBryde says. "He just wanted to know all about it -- where my parents live, where they grew up. He's just one of the nicest people ever."
One key piece of information he left out, however, was that he planned to cover her songs during an upcoming show.
"I actually didn't know until he'd done it in Tacoma," she explains. "[It's] 2:30 in the morning, I'm in Nashville and my phone goes off. I'm like, 'Why is my phone going off right now?' I looked at it and it was a video of Garth doing 'Girl Going Nowhere.' ... He killed it, too!"
McBryde's critically acclaimed debut album is out now and has earned her plenty more high-profile fans in Nashville. Among them: Miranda Lambert, whom McBryde recently wrote and toured with. The pair first met after McBryde performed at Lake Shake in Chicago last June.
"I looked over to the side of the stage during our set and there was Gwen Sebastian, Karen Fairchild and Miranda Lambert, and they all three had their phones up," McBryde gushes. "I was like, 'This isn't nerve-wracking at all.' But it was great, she was super sweet. I met her that night and we wrote a few months later."
McBryde says Lambert also offered her a priceless piece of advice on her rise to stardom.
"When I first started hearing about meet and greets, at the time we weren't offering any because I didn't know we needed to," she admits. "I was talking to Miranda Lambert and I said, 'They think I'm famous and I'm just not. Not enough for a meet and greet.' She said, 'They think you're famous?' I said, 'Yeah.' 'And you think you're not?' I said, 'Right.' She said, 'Which one of you is right?'
"I was like, whoa! That was poetry and it blew my mind!"
See more from McBryde in this week's episode of Certified Country and catch her Stagecoach set on Sunday afternoon.
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