It is always very exciting to find out who will be the visiting US artists at the C2C festival. There have been some real gems over the years. So as a preview we will be featuring some of the best ones on this year's line-up. First up our next LCM featured artist Nashville based singer-songwriter Ashley McBryde. Ashley has recently been included on Rolling Stones 'Ones To watch for 2017'. Our #TrackOfTheDay is her latest single 'A Little Dive Bar In Dahlonega' released on the 6th October.

"I hear the crowd, I look around, and I can't find one empty chair. Not bad for a girl going nowhere" sings Ashley McBryde on "Girl Goin' Nowhere," the seminal title track from her forthcoming album. They're words built from experience: over the course of her life, Ashley's been finding her own way to fill those seats and sway those hearts since the very first time her teacher told her that her dreams of writing songs in Nashville would never see the light of day. Every time she was brought down, she persevered; trusting her timeless tone and keen, unwavering eye for the truth. It paid off. In April, Eric Church brought her on stage and called her a "whiskey-drinking badass," confessing that he's a massive fan. The rest of the world is quickly catching on, too. 

Dubbed as one of Rolling Stone’s “Artists You Need To Know," citing she's "an Arkansas red-clay badass, with the swagger of Hank Jr. and the songwriting of Miranda Lambert," Ashley fearlessly lays it all on the line, and it's that honest all-in approach that has led to NPR critic Ann Powers to ask if Ashley could be "among the first post-Stapleton country stars?" Ashley's album will showcase an artistic vision that will prove her to be one of the genre's keenest working storytellers, bringing unwavering honesty back into a pop-preoccupied genre. Pulling tales from every corner of her human experience, Ashley sings with fire and fury, laughing and swigging that brown stuff along the way. 

Ashley was raised in Mammoth Spring, Arkansas. At three, she'd secretly pluck her father's guitar like an upright bass, and after about the 17th time being caught, her father bought her a guitar of her own. When she was twelve, she played her parents and grandparents her very first composition. It was at Arkansas State when, while a member of the marching band, Ashley finally started sharing her voice with others, and finally moved to Nashville in 2007 where steadily worked a circuit of dive bars, biker hangouts, and colorful joints fighting to have her songs heard.

Her first EP, the self-released 2016 'Jalopies and Expensive Guitars' was just a taste of what Ashley can do, and, on her full-length debut, she will meld her songwriting chops with the vision of producer Jay Joyce, peppering her tales with a touch of guitar-driven rock fury. Ashley isn’t afraid to tell the truth, get raw and real and use the spirits of country, folk and rock when it serves her greater purpose. And that's to tell the stories that shake us, make us and tell us a little more about what it's like to be human.