Andrew McBride grew up in a family of farmers.

Both of his parents have been involved in farming in one or the other for the majority of their lives. His two brothers were both State FFA officers, and the family now operates McBride Angus Farm in Beechgrove.

Despite that, his path has veered in a different direction: music.

He explains that he found his love for country music while spending time with his cousin Tiffany as a child. She unfortunately passed from cancer at a young age, but he remembers hearing her talk about getting to meet different country stars as part of the Make-A-Wish program which ignited a spark within him.

McBride attended Middle Tennessee State University and studied under their commercial songwriting program. From there, he then went out of state to pursue a music career.

“I ended up going out to California after college for a week-long tour with a band, and I loved it,” he recalled. “The response that I got was unbelievable. When you’re here in Tennessee doing country music, so is pretty much everyone else in Nashville, but out there, I didn’t know people liked country music.”

The genre continued to see a rise in popularity and McBride set a goal to stay out in California for around six months or so and record an album.

Fast forward three years and he found himself finally recording that album and also married to his wife Katie who, after growing up in and growing tired of the concrete jungle, hoped to move somewhere outside of a big city.

“She finally wore me down and said that if we started having kids, she didn’t want to raise them in an apartment, so we looked at different places when we’d get off work and stuff,” explained McBride. “One week she would say let’s go to Asheville, North Carolina and the next week it would be Austin, Texas. There were all these different places and eventually she said Nashville and I thought ‘Well, if we did start raising kids, we’d have my folks close by there in Manchester.’”

The couple lived in Nashville for a few years where McBride moved into a regional property management role that required him to travel frequently. Eventually moving to Manchester to be closer to family, McBride connected with his old college friend Delaney Baker.

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, McBride invited Baker, who worked alongside Luke Combs as his bass player, to come work at the farm while everything was shut down.

“Talking with him and saying, ‘Man, I don’t know how you’ve done it with having kids’ and he said ‘It ain’t easy,’” remembered McBride. “Once everything opened back up, he had a conversation with Luke and said, ‘Thank you so much for this opportunity but I’ve got to step back, and now he’s with Brantley Gilbert and they do more of the ‘weekend warrior’ type thing where they’re not constantly on a tour bus.”

“He and some others were the ones who encouraged me, because I did step back from music to have a relationship with my three boys, but they’re getting a little older now so over the last year or so I decided to see if I still know how to ride this bike, so that’s what I’ve been doing lately,” McBride added.

He’s set to play at the Wartrace Music Festival in September and recently played during the Common John Brewing Co.- Pulaski grand opening weekend and has a monthly recurring spot at the Manchester location.

McBride also recently cultivated a compilation album of the songs that he has recorded over the years called “Post Cards from the Long Way Home.” The album features songs McBride has written as well as a cover of “Rocky Top” and America’s “Don’t Cross the River.”

“I was thinking I kind of want something that is a compilation of my songs over the years that tells a story rather than just saying here’s my two or three albums if you want to buy one of these,” he explained. “I wanted to have something that was a little more cohesive of a story and put some of my favorites or ones that people seem to enjoy all in one place.”

The album was put together to have as something to take home from his shows, but there are plans to do a full release sometime in the future. All the songs on the album were carefully curated by McBride and Katie, who he refers to as a “straight shooter.”

“I said ‘She’s probably a good one to help me figure out the order of these songs because she’s not biased even though maybe as my wife it may seem that way. We kind of talked through it, and it was nice to have her to bounce ideas off of,” he said.

While there’s isn’t one song that means more than the others, McBride did recall a meaningful moment between him and his dad after he heard the song “The Farm” for the first time.

“He heard that song and called me and said, ‘I don’t know when and I don’t know how, but I bet you’ll make more money with that song than I ever will farming,’” he recalled with a smile. “So far I don’t know if that’s the case because I think both are ventures that are passion projects.”

Though McBride says he did at one point try to distance himself from the farm life while trying to forge his own path, he also acknowledges that working on the farm in his younger years left him with life lessons he still uses.

“So much of the work ethic, planning, looking forward into the future and adjusting for seasons, I learned in my music career from growing up on a farm,” he noted. “So, a lot of the stuff that was taught to me that I didn’t even know was being taught, just stuff that I absorbed growing up, even down to presentation, I realize how important those things are.”

During his time in Nashville, McBride also became friends with songwriter Stewart Harris who wrote a lot of the songs he remembers listening to with his cousin Tiffany many years before. McBride says he was always enamored by songwriters.

“It was like a magic trick, he said. “When I first got a guitar around 13 or so I got about three chords, and I realized that when I was trying to play other people’s songs, i couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the attention span, and I realized there wasn’t enough life in it for me. I realized I could take their chords and adjust them or move them around and I just easily could write words that matched whatever setting the music sounded like to me.”

With music on the backburner, so to speak, McBride worked on his family’s angus farm before life threw a familiar curveball for the family requiring his attention elsewhere. Katie was diagnosed with leukemia.

He would become her caregiver through doctor’s appointments and treatments where he remembers getting to talk with other patients, some of whom they wouldn’t see again.

Katie thankfully is now in remission, and McBride says that, though he always planned to jump back into music after their children were grown, Katie’s journey and sitting in the chemo ward with her inspired him to not wait because “nobody really knows what their plans are.”

“If I’m gonna do it, then I’ve got start doing it, so I had a pristine 1984 F-150 that I bought from the original owner when we moved back to Nashville,” he recalled. “I thought I’d keep that truck forever, but I sold it and booked studio time in Nashville with a producer that I worked in L.A. with.”

Doors have since opened for McBride. He’s gotten to attend events in Nashville including several writers’ rounds and played a show with Manchester’s Becky Buller at the Noah Community Center.

He also participated in a songwriter showcase competition and performed at the South Jackson Performing Arts Center and the Franklin Theatre in Franklin, Tennessee as part of it.

“The goal now ultimately comes down to my three sons,” he said. “I want to leave a legacy for them to where they know that they had a dad that tucked them in at night and fed them and took care of them when their momma was sick. One that’s present in their lives who can wrangle up cattle and haul them off and drop in another field and drive the big tractors out here, but I want them to see that there’s this other thing that dad’s passionate about.”

McBride says that he doesn’t necessarily want to become a star but has aspirations to sign an elusive publishing deal with a record company.

“When I look at my heroes that are songwriters, I realize that’s the dream that I always had,” he said. “I can get up on stage and perform and sing. I know that I can do that, and the Lord gave me a gift to do that, but what I’m really passionate about is… having the freedom to be creative and expressive.”

Regardless, McBride says he’ll keep on doing the work and just see where it takes him.

“I come from a faith background and grew up going to church and have my own relationship there, and I feel like I could have all the goals and dreams and aspirations in the world, but if it’s not part of God’s plan, then it’s not, but if it is part of his plan, then he’ll open the doors,” he explained. “That’s kind of how I feel.”