ABC AudioOn her way to perform eight shows in ten days, Miranda Lambert stopped off to make an appearance at Country Radio Seminar in Nashville, TN on Wednesday. In a rare intimate conversation, Miranda talked about her earliest days making music, her current album Wildcard, and more.
Miranda, who said that she was such a shy kid that she wouldn’t even order by herself at McDonald’s, recalled that her first public performance came in the third grade, when she sang Holly Dunn‘s hit “Daddy’s Hands” in the school talent show. Not long after, she wrote her first song, about a girl named Mandy Lee going to Nashville to become a star. Her little brother said it wasn’t that great but noted she was “getting there.”
After that, Miranda entered a competition and came in third, which landed her a house gig at a bar at the age of 17. Onstage, she recalled, “My personality came alive.” After that, she auditioned for Nashville Star and bombed, because, she says, she didn’t put any effort into it. Her mom forced her to re-audition in a different city — she sang “Crazy” a cappella and made it. As most of us know by now, she came in third, and admitted she really didn’t want to win.
Miranda then spoke about how making her new album Wildcard was a lot like making her very first album. Following the somber record that was The Weight of These Wings, Miranda says, she wanted to get back to the kind of sassy, fun material that was on her first album, Kerosene.
Recalling the highlights of her career — singing with Loretta Lynn, paying tribute to Merle Haggard with Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson, and meeting Dolly Parton — she admitted that sometimes when she gets down, it helps to remind herself, “You’ve done some stuff!”
And when asked to say what she’s most proud of, Miranda said, “the honesty, and that I’ve never strayed away from exactly who I am. I’ve never cut a song I was iffy about…my manager and I have a saying: “If it’s a maybe, it’s a no.”
And even if her career hasn’t always resulted in her topping the charts, she noted, “It’s real and it’s the truth.”
Moving forward, Miranda says, she’s looking to “quality not quantity” in her life and adds, “I just try to keep growing and moving forward.”
She also treated the crowd to acoustic renditions of two Wildcard songs: “Dark Bars” and “How Dare You Love.”
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