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Nashville's Miranda Lambert returns to her Texas roots with her new album

Texas native and Academy of Country Music Award-winning country favorite Miranda Lambert discusses her latest album, Postcards From Texas, and the comfortable familiarity of her creative roots

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In addition to being a private investigator, Miranda Lambert's father is also a songwriter from East Texas, and her mother once babysat for one of David Allan Coe's daughters when the country legend lived in Dallas.

Like her roots, her ninth solo studio album, Postcards From Texas, released in September, shows that the twin essences of country music and the Lone Star State beat loudest in her heart.

The Tennessean asked the 40-year-old Lindale, Texas, native where her heart was elsewhere in the project.

“We don’t have enough time to answer that question,” jokes the 39-time Academy of Country Music honoree.

Along with artists like HARDY, Lukas Nelson and Jake Worthington, Lambert will celebrate the release of her album and host a fundraiser for her 15-year-old non-profit animal shelter MuttNation at Nashville's Ascend Amphitheater on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

Lambert's favorite people and places in the album

Reflecting on her album's wealth of material and performances similar to her best-selling traditional country anthem “The House That Built Me,” she says the record reflects four decades of a life in which country music was one of her most formative influences .

“My dad didn’t teach me that country music was three chords, and the truth – he also taught me G, C, D and E minor. He knew three was enough, but he taught me a fourth just in case. Lambert jokes.

“('Postcards From Texas') also conveys the spirit of my favorite people in their favorite places,” she adds.

In 2020, she worked with her frequent collaborators Jack Ingram and Jon Randall to release “They've Closed Down the Honky Tonks.” This song mentions Austin's Broken Spoke and the Fort Worth mega venue Billy Bob's.

But this album? Instead of these vaunted spaces, think of every dusty dance hall, Mexican restaurant and dive bar for 500 miles along Interstate 35 from Gainesville to Laredo. Also visit the routes along the 600-mile stretch of Route 287 from Amarillo to Port Arthur.

Yes, that's a lot of territory.

But she's drawn more heavily than ever to influences like Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, George Strait, Steve Earle and Guy Clark. Also appearing are Country Music Hall of Famer Dean Dillon, his award-winning songwriter daughter Jessie Jo Dillon, Luke Dick (Lambert's “Bluebird”), Jesse Frasure, Natalie Hemby and Shane McAnally.

Shane McAnally, add more to the fun songwriting process

Songs inspired by previous Lambert hits such as “Kerosene”, “Gunpowder and Lead” and “White Liar”, as well as partnerships such as the 2011 Pistol Annies track “Hell on Heels”, “Something Bad” with Carrie Underwood from 2014 and “Drunk (And I Don't Wanna Go Home)” with Elle King appear on “Postcards From Texas”.

The way these influences have aged like wine is what makes the album remarkable.

Speaking of McAnally, Lambert adds a funny story about how he came into his own as a songwriter on “Postcards From Texas” in a way not dissimilar to when he joined her ACM, Country Music Association and Grammy Awards. nominated hit “Mama's Broken Heart” decade earlier.

“Natalie Hemby and I were writing one day and agreed that Shane (who now lives in Los Angeles) was spending too much time in California,” recalls Lambert.

She explained to him what they were working on, and he took a trip to Lambert's 400-acre farm outside Nashville.

“He looked so smug when he arrived,” she says.

The reason? He already had the song title “Looking Back on Luckenbach”. They immediately wrote the corresponding song.

When McAnally joined the duo a month later, he smiled again.

This time he had a line:

“If you leave me in San Antone, think about the upkeep,” she remembers him saying.

“You little sob – why didn't I think of that?” she replied.

“I love a funny Texas song.”

'Armadillo'

Other songs on the record include Aaron Ratiere and Jon Decious' work with Parker Twomey on album opener “Armadillo.”

Ratiere co-wrote Riley Green and Ella Langley's fast-growing hit “You Look Like You Love Me.” Decious is one of the wordsmiths behind Lainey Wilson's “4x4xU”.

For Lambert's album, they've contributed a piece of fun that's perfect for an hour after work at honky-tonk, about a snotty, marijuana-smoking, beer-drinking mammal.

The performer was sent the song while traveling through Austria after performing at the Country Night Gstaad Festival in Switzerland in September 2023. She played it nonstop throughout the half-day hike. Immediately upon her return to the United States, she cut and sequenced it as the No. 1 track on the album.

“It’s a perfect representation of the freedom I have right now,” Lambert says.

“Life is a lot'

The “Kerosene” singer has never been one to shy away from the wildness of her existence in conversation or song. “Postcards From Texas” contains songs like the aforementioned “Alimony” as well as “Dammit Randy”, “No Man's Land” (described as a “Love her and Leave her wild” anthem) and “Wranglers”. The songs play fast and loose with defining and overlapping chapters of different eras in Lambert's own life, the lives of her parents and friends, and, yes, the lives she overheard during long nights at her favorite bars in Central and South Texas.

Lambert described “Wranglers” as not just a song about how long it takes for denim to burn, but as “a classic story about a time in our lives when we needed to find our strength and get a little revenge.”

“Life is a lotsays Lambert, emphasizing all four syllables of the sentence.

“This album is all about the good, the bad and the ugly as my friends and I see it,” she says. “There’s truth and humor, reliving moments when I was hurt, everything.”

This “everything” is best explored on “Santa Fe”.

The collaboration between Dean and Jessie Jo Dillion is particularly poignant for Lambert, as she often worked as a co-writer with her own father in the early years of her career.

“We agreed on how to share that dynamic, and the song (we arrived at) was exactly what I was hoping for,” Lambert says.

Parker McCollum guests as vocalist on “The Loveklorn Memory,” which evokes the best parts of Dean Dillon's four decades of work, with George Strait as an obvious influence.

They sing: “Santa Fe / Every September I come back here / I cling to a memory that will never fade / It's lit a fire in me, are you burning too? / All the way in Tennessee, Is it calling you? / Something in the fall, we might not get it back / We'll always have Santa Fe.

“Texas is giving me so much life right now.”

“Postcards From Texas” symbolizes a tour that launches Lambert’s career development.

In November 2023, she moved from her home of 18 years at Sony Nashville to become a signed artist to Republic Records and co-founder of the Big Loud Texas label.

“From Willie, Waylon and the Boys to Jerry Jeff Walker, George Strait and now the state's (mainstream country) resurgence, I'm glad I get to be a Texas artist now, but also contribute to that legacy “To preserve it,” says Lambert.

“In many ways, Texas is giving me so much life right now.”

“My fans have supported me for half my life”

Over the course of her career, Lambert has received ten No. 1 hits on country radio and nearly 60 ACM, CMA and Grammy awards.

When asked what continues to drive her work, she expresses a thought that isn't aimed at greater success or even ultimately settling down with Brendan McLoughlin, her husband of just over half a decade reconcile.

“I have a new record deal, a great circle of friends and my fans have supported me for half my life,” she says.

Present her with an increasingly popular country music industry in which she – all female artists – joins Ashley McBryde, Megan Moroney, Carly Pearce and Lainey Wilson in the genre's most significant pool of established and potential stars in 30 years.

She offers a raw tone to her music that unites fans who have supported her for two decades and those who will be around for decades to come.

“This album is for people who are open-minded and welcoming but also don’t put up with shit.”

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