Ashley McBryde and Dillon Carmichael have both been compared to Chris Stapleton for their old-school approach to country music. Last week, the rising singer-songwriters teamed up during a radio-station listener event in San Jose, California, to show off those throwback sensibilities by performing Tennessee Whiskey, the song that helped introduce Stapleton to a wide audience when he sang it with Justin Timberlake on the 2015 CMA Awards.
The Kentucky-born Carmichael kicks off the song, channeling his inner Stapleton a fellow Bluegrass State native by lending some smooth and honeyed inflection to the lyrics about being rescued from reaching for the bottle. (David Allan Coe originally cut the oft-covered song, written by Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove, in 1981.) McBryde, the ACM New Female Vocalist of the Year, steps in immediately after to deliver some sky-high notes, before the audience takes control of the chorus, transforming the smoky ballad into a unifying sing-along.
McBryde is set to perform at CMA Music Festival in Nashville in June and will join Miranda Lamberts Roadside Bars and Pink Guitars Tour in October. Shes set to play Nashville club Exit/In tonight in support of her major-label debut Girl Going Nowhere. Carmichael, meanwhile, is slated to appear at the Faster Horses and Watershed festivals this summer, and at the inaugural Hometown Rising Festival in Louisville, Kentucky. He released his debut album, Hell on an Angel, last year.