Ashland Craft Reclaims Her Crown with Unapologetic Sophomore Album "Dive Bar Beauty Queen"

Ashland Craft has always felt like country music’s wild-hearted underdog, the kind of voice that cracks open a bottle of truth and pours out the kind of stories that hit a little harder after midnight. With the release of her long-anticipated sophomore album Dive Bar Beauty Queen, Craft proves she’s not just along for the ride. She’s behind the wheel, steering her sound with grit, grace, and one hell of a country soul.

Credit: Easton Jay

Out now via Leo33, the 11-track project is the fullest realization yet of who Ashland Craft is: a defiant dreamer, a barstool poet, and a honky-tonk heroine with steel in her voice and soul in her pen. For the first time, Craft takes the reins as both co-writer and co-producer, delivering a body of work that’s fearless, finely crafted, and refreshingly free of pretense.

“This record is a look back at the sounds I grew up on,” she shares. “The stuff that got me hooked on music in the first place and kinda made me who I am, for better or worse.” That sentiment echoes through every steel-soaked, heartbreak-laced, truth-telling track on Dive Bar Beauty Queen. from the confessional ballad “Momma Don’t Pray Like She Used To” to the rowdy kiss-off “Kick Rocks Cowboy” and the bluesy burn of “Lie A Little.”

There’s a lived-in wisdom to Craft’s storytelling, sharpened by bar gigs and broken hearts. She’s not afraid to get vulnerable, but she’s not here to wallow either. Songs like “Happy Drunk” and “Yard Sale” showcase her ability to blend humor with honesty, pairing backroad grit with front-porch vulnerability. And in a genre that too often polishes its edges, Craft keeps the rough ones, letting her raspy vocals and real-life stories shine through.

Craft’s longtime collaborators Lee Starr and Jess Grommet help bring her sonic vision to life, recording primarily at Gilded Palace and Sony Tree Studio in Nashville. The production leans into classic textures, fiddle, steel, harmonica, organ, but it’s never stuck in the past. Instead, Dive Bar Beauty Queen feels like a mixtape from a dive jukebox that somehow understands exactly what you need to hear.

One of the album’s crown jewels is its title track, written by Craft when she was just 18 after a late-night shift in a honky-tonk house band. “Somehow it still hits harder now than ever,” she says. That throughline, from youthful dreams to seasoned storytelling, runs deep, threading every lyric with the kind of raw, reflective wisdom only time (and maybe a few hangovers) can deliver.

Pre-release singles “Right Damn Now,” “Morning Person,” and “Lie A Little” already earned nods from Apple Music, Spotify, and Pandora. But it’s the full project that cements her place as one of country’s most compelling voices, unfiltered, unforgettable, and unafraid to sing it like it is.

Now, she’s bringing Dive Bar Beauty Queen to the people, joining Luke Bryan on select dates of his Country Song Came On Tour while also headlining her own tour of the same name. From amphitheaters to dive bars, Craft’s ready to show fans exactly what this album sounds like live, and what it means to sing from the gut.

Whether she’s opening for a superstar or headlining her own night, Ashland Craft is no longer the newcomer with something to prove. Dive Bar Beauty Queen is more than an album, it’s a mission statement, a memoir, and a middle finger to anyone who ever told her to water it down.

So raise a glass to the queen of the dive bar. She’s been through the fire, and she’s come out singing.