Miranda Lambert maintains homes in both Nashville and Austin — hardcore country music’s equivalent of being bicoastal. One of those locales gets a bit more emphasis than the other on her just-released tenth album, “Postcards From Texas,” the first album she’s actually recorded in the Lone Star State since she rose to fame just over 20 years ago. It’s not as if the country superstar ever stood in much danger of having her semi-traditionalist sound watered down in Music City over the last two decades — pop crossover is not remotely within her field of vision.
But in making a label switch from Sony Music Nashville to the New York-based Republic Records , she felt the urge to call even one more shot than she otherwise might’ve, by physically rooting the making of the album where her honky-tonk roots are. Most things are really not changing much with her business switch from Music Row to Lipman Land. One of them is the groundedness in the classic sounds and attitudes of country music, which is one thing that has helped make her arguably the most valuable figure in the mainstream of the genre since the turn of the century.
That, and the fact that she has sometimes stood almost alone in bringing feisty feminine energy to what is still largely a boys’ club...
and the fact that, two decades in, she is as incapable as ever of making anything but a terrific album. Variety got on the phone with Lambert the day “Postcards From Texas” came out to discuss the new album.