Ashley McBryde just took her current single to late-night television. The Grand Ole Opry member sang “What If We Don’t” on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The song is from McBryde’s latest album, Wild, out now.

McBryde wrote “What If We Don’t” with Terri Jo Box and Randall Clay.

“For me, this song brings about being at peace with answers you’ll never get,” McBryde says. “And whether you chose to do this or that, the other decision, the one that you didn’t make, you still live with those consequences. Things that hurt don’t just stay. Things that hurt turn into a lyric. The lyric turns into a melody. The melody turns into a song. The song goes on a record. And now, we have created a bridge from hurt to heal. And it did it for us to write it, and it did it for us as a band to record it. And now it gets to do that for other people when they listen to it.”

Ashley McBryde’s Latest Album, ‘Wild’

Wild is McBryde’s fifth album, and her most personal. The 11-track record McBryde admits may have never happened if not for her  accident in 2021.

“I was really, really badly hurt, and it was a bad enough injury that there was a chance that I wouldn’t have been able to perform ever again,” McBryde later recalls. “With that in mind, I thought, ‘Okay, then what if the songs that are in our live show, that aren’t on records, what if I keep letting them not be on records?

“What if something had happened, and now somebody never hears ‘Water in the River?’” she continues. “Somebody never hears ‘Rattlesnake Preacher.’ Somebody never hears ‘Creosote,’ because I let myself be discouraged in this way or that way from putting those on the record? So that’s what I wanted to start with.”

It was the accident that also convinced McBryde to finally put “What If We Don’t” on an album, along with some other songs that she had been playing live but never recorded in the studio.

“I said, ‘What If We Don’t’ is going on this record,” McBryde says. “‘Rattlesnake’ is going on this record. And we can build the rest around them. There’s nothing I’ve been through that most of us haven’t been through, or are going to go through. It’s not unique. And the whole point of creating music and creating records and playing a live show is for each of us, so we feel a little bit less alone. Songs did that for me when I was in my formative years. Songs still do that for me.”

Ashley McBryde’s ‘Wild’ Track List:

1. Rattlesnake Preacher (Randall Clay)
2. Arkansas Mud (Ashley McBryde, Jessie Jo Dillon, Chris Tompkins)
3. Water in the River (Randall Clay, Blue Foley, Roger Hodges)
4. Creosote (Ashley McBryde, Lisa Carver)
5. Bottle Tells Me So (Ashley McBryde, Shelly Fairchild, Terri Jo Box)
6. What If We Don’t (Ashley McBryde, Terri Jo Box, Randall Clay)
7. Lines In The Carpet (Lauren Hungate, Caroline Watkins, Lori McKenna)
8. Behind Bars (Jeff Hyde, Jessie Alexander, Jon Randall)
9. Hand Me Downs (Ashley McBryde, Jessie Jo Dillon, Laura Veltz)
10. Wild (Jeremy Spillman, Makayla Lynn, Matraca Berg)
11. Ten to Midnight (Ashley McBryde, Travis Meadows)

Photo Credit: ABC / Randy Holmes