The Spark Was Lit: Ashley McBryde’s Magical Opry Moment With Young Singer Sawyer June
- All Country News
- 10 minutes ago
- 3 min read
On any given night inside the wooden circle of the Grand Ole Opry, history feels close enough to touch. The walls hum with ghosts. The stage lights glow a little warmer. And if you’re lucky, you might witness the exact moment the future of country music quietly introduces itself.
On this particular night, it happened after the curtain fell.
Ashley McBryde had just stepped offstage, fresh from a set that included her tender, soul-baring anthem “Light On In The Kitchen.” It had already been a “magical dressing room situation,” she would later say, songwriters swapping stories, artists trading laughs, the kind of easy camaraderie that makes the Opry feel less like a venue and more like a family reunion.
But during “Light On In The Kitchen,” something caught her eye.
A young girl and her mom had made their way to the front. They sang every word. Not casually. Not shyly. Every word. McBryde clocked it immediately.
“I couldn’t look down there because I’ll cry,” she admitted in a video she shared to her social media, knowing exactly how much it meant to see her lyrics living in someone else’s heart.
Still, she had no idea the real magic was waiting in the hallway.
As McBryde exited the stage area, saying her goodbyes and weaving through a tour group passing through the building, she spotted the same young girl again, this time standing with both her parents. They introduced themselves. The girl’s name was Sawyer June. Her family handed McBryde a bag of pecans from their farm, a small, sincere Southern gesture that somehow felt perfectly in step with the Opry’s spirit.
Then came the reveal: Sawyer is a singer, too.
And not just any singer. According to her mom, she could sing “Bible and a .44” one of McBryde’s fiercest, most vocally demanding songs really well.
As fate would have it, McBryde had her guitar in hand.
Right there, on the floor of the Opry hallway, the Arkansas native sat down. Sawyer June sat down across from her. No stage. No spotlight. No production. Just wood floors, fluorescent lights, and a dream sitting cross-legged between them.
Sawyer sang.
She didn’t miss a note. She didn’t miss a breath. Her agility, her tone, the clarity of her voice all startling. But what struck McBryde most wasn’t the technical precision. It was the way Sawyer looked her straight in the eyes the entire time, steady and fearless.
For the final chorus, McBryde joined in harmony. Then she invited the small crowd that had gathered to sing along. You can’t manufacture moments like that. You can’t schedule them into a run-of-show.
You can only recognize them when they arrive.
McBryde told Sawyer something that felt less like encouragement and more like prophecy: that she was a star, and that one day she’d stand on that Opry stage herself. “I believe that,” she said, and you could hear that she meant it.
The girl responded with the kind of devotion that makes even seasoned artists blink back tears: “You’re my favorite singer and you always will be.”
McBryde’s answer? “Same.”
Later, reflecting on the encounter, the Grammy winner didn’t talk about ticket sales or chart positions. She talked about spark. About the point of it all.
“The whole point,” she said, is to make records that make somebody else want to make records. To write songs that make somebody else want to write songs. To sing in a way that makes somebody else believe they can sing, too.
In that hallway, on that floor, the spark might’ve been lit.
That’s the magic of the Grand Ole Opry. It’s not just where legends stand. It’s where the next generation quietly steps forward, sometimes barefoot, sometimes cross-legged, sometimes holding a bag of pecans from home.
And for McBryde, a proud Opry member, that might be the achievement she treasures most.
Only at the Opry.
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