ABC RadioMiranda Lambert came to Nashville’s Marathon Music Works to record a new episode of the PBS show Front and Center, but she ended up delivering some of the most personal insights yet into both her split from Blake Shelton and her subsequent relationship with Anderson East.
The Tuesday night CMA Songwriters Series concert paired the Texas native with the tunesmiths who helped her craft her CMA-nominated double album, The Weight of These Wings.
Shane McAnally recalled how devastated Miranda was when they wrote the set’s first single, “Vice.”
“I felt like you just took your heart out…” he remembered.
“I also brought a roller cooler,” Miranda quipped.
From there, things only got more confessional.
“I did get divorced in 2015,” the six-time CMA Female Vocalist of the Year said candidly. “I did start drinking a lot, and I did go to [Midtown Nashville bars] Losers and Winners a lot.”
She admitted she started writing the track “Ugly Lights” on the way home from a trip to retrieve her car from the Music City hot spots.
The night’s theme seemed to be how Miranda’s nearest and dearest helped her both craft the album and work through her emotions at the same time, often drinking on what became known as her “magic porch.”
“We’re all friends,” she explained. “I’m more than friends with one of ‘em. Welcome my boyfriend please, Anderson East!”
From there, the couple performed “Getaway Driver,” the first song they ever wrote together, and Miranda’s revelations continued.
“After we wrote that song we got in a big fight, because that’s how it goes,” she laughed. “I said, ‘Are you gonna break up with me? He said, ‘I think I’ll wait 60 years.”
That experience inspired the tune “Pushin’ Time.”
Near the end of the night, Miranda revealed she’d made the last-minute decision to fly her mom and dad in from the Lone Star State on Monday night. She recalled how a song she wrote with her father was the first one that helped her grab national attention on the singing competition Nashville Star, before bringing Rick Lambert out to duet on “Greyhound Bound for Nowhere.”
You can experience the evening for yourself in early 2018, when the show airs as part of Front and Center’s 8th season on PBS. The episode will likely air in February, after the new season starts after the first of the year.
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