For Miranda Lambert, who values music above all, her triumphant set at Stagecoach on Saturday night was one big celebration, complete with Reba surprising the crowd for a three-song finale that included "Mama's Broken Heart," "Fancy" and "Gunpowder & Lead." Having wrapped her 48-date Las Vegas residency, the show put her back amongst hardcore fans. It was also the celebration of both her new record deal with Republic Records and getting serious about her Big Loud Texas label.
Given Lambert’s penchant for bringing the fans into her newest music, the three-time Grammy winner and most-awarded artist in Academy of Country Music history thought the polo grounds in the California desert was the perfect place to debut her newest creation. Recorded in Austin, Texas with frequent collaborator and co-producer Jon Randall, “Wranglers” is a hard-won freedom song for a woman reckoning with a man who just doesn’t value what he’s got.
Written by Audra Mae, who sings on the track, Evan McKeever, and Ryan Carpenter, “Wranglers” opens with a tangle of brittle, incendiary guitars from Jedd Hughes and Ethan Ballinger as ambient organ steam from Austin legend Bukka Allen rises. The rhythm section works a foreboding reality: Rachel Loy’s bass lumbers across Conrad Choucroun’s sticks-on-the-rims drum part and Lambert’s siren’s cry cuts through the mix. Heavy, but not gratuitous, there’s a foreboding to the track that pulls you in, a tension that holds the listener as Lambert half coos, half sings the kind of song that has defined her career, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned/ When the knock down drag out’s over/ And Lord knows she took one too many...”
When Lambert dropped the Crazy Horse-evoking track on the sold-out Saturday night Stagecoach crowd, the yowls and howls were pronounced as the entire crowd swayed. Fists in the air, it may have been unfamiliar, but they were hanging on every word and riding the drama like any of Lambert’s taking care of business anthems.
“‘Wranglers’ is a classic tale of a woman taking her power back,” Lambert says of the sizzling post-Outlaw classic. “I think we can all identify with the character in this song, because we have all had a time in our life where we needed to find our strength, and also get a little revenge on someone who did us wrong or hurt us. This offers such a cool, raging take on how something like this unravels. I think the songwriters nailed it.
“I am so proud to sing it. It feels like it could have been on the same record as ‘Gunpowder & Lead’ in a lot of ways. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned is a pretty powerful statement, and the way it’s written, you can tell, we’re not kidding.”
For Lambert, who's spent the last few years stretching her creative muscles with the Wanda June Home line, the New York Times’ best-seller "Y'all Eat Yet?", her Vegas residency and launching a new label dedicated to protecting young talent from her home state from the over-homogenization of major label life, “Wranglers” in some ways represents burning down the past and making a run for all things you truly want. Certainly making music in new ways, including taking her high octane kick-ass country back to Texas to capture that energy on the recording studio floor.
“People don’t always know what it is, they just know they want some more,” she marvels. “It’s not that it’s so fancy or top secret, because it’s about as basic as you get. But that’s the magic: to strip things down like this and still create something new? Less is more, but it forces you to turn up the truth. So, get ready.”
“Wranglers” is available everywhere May 3.
