'It gave me my grit': Miranda Lambert on cutting her teeth in Texas honky-tonks

After more than 20 years in the music business, three Grammys and 35 Academy of Country Music Awards, Miranda Lambert is coming home. Her 10th studio album, Postcards from Texas, is a love letter to the state she grew up in.

"My last record was all about travel and road trips and characters you meet along the way," she tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "I just felt like I was ready to go back to the root of where everything started and the music that really got me through the last two decades."

Lambert cut her teeth in honky-tonks across Texas, long before social media and streaming platforms made it easy for artists to release their music on their own. "It is such a different world these days," she says. "I'm jealous sometimes. I'm like, 'Dang, they don't have to get in their mom's minivan and tour around these dingy bars like I did!' But I'm so thankful for my honky-tonk days."

It was in those honky-tonks where Lambert says she "learned everything," from making a set list to making a show flow.

"It gave me my grit," she tells Power. "When there's four people in there and they couldn't care less about what you're doing up there, you find it within you to try to make them care." She remembers her eagerness to write better songs to "get people to stop and put their beer down for a second."

The return of Revenge Miranda

Lambert's parents worked as private investigators. They also sheltered survivors of abuse from the time Lambert was 14 to 17 years old. "That's where I got a lot of my early songs," she says. "Even though I was pretty sheltered in a small town, I could kind of see the ugly in the world from their job."

She wrote her first cheating song at 17, not from personal experience, but from hearing about the work her parents did. "They would go to work like anybody else's parents and come home and make dinner like anybody else's parents," she says. "They just happened to be doing stakeouts instead of working at the bank…. But I'm glad that I saw all that because it really gave me some fuel for those early days of songwriting."

Many of Lambert's older songs tap into fiery rage and a desire for vengeance, which got her the nickname "Revenge Miranda." This includes tracks like Kerosene, Mama's Broken Heart and Gunpowder & Lead — her first Top 10 hit on the Billboard Country Songs chart. On Postcards from Texas, she returns to that early raw intensity that defined her music.

"At the beginning, I really got almost pushed in a corner," she says. "I had so much more to offer, and I was like, 'Oh no, am I just going to be known as this crazy girl in a corner with a shotgun forever?' … But songs like that are still such staples, and they're my bread and butter. They're staples in my show and they're still such a part of my personality."

The full interview with Miranda Lambert is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. She also talks about why losing the reality singing competition show Nashville Star was a blessing in disguise. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Miranda Lambert produced by Vanessa Nigro.