Miranda Lambert has set a release date, title and tracklist for her first album under a new deal with Republic Records. “Postcards From Texas” will be out Sept. 13, and in the meantime, the country star’s fans can collect “Alimony,” a track issued concurrently with the album news on Wednesday.`
The 14-track album is self-produced by Lambert along with frequent collaborator and fellow Texan Jon Randall; she co-wrote 10 of the tracks, although the album-closer is reserved for a David Allen Coe classic, “Living on the Run,” from the country outlaw hero’s 1976 album “Longhaired Redneck.”
“Alimony” was co-penned by Lambert with two of country’s most in-demand songwriters, Shane McAnally and Natalie Hemby, as was another track with an obvious Texas theme, “Looking Back on Luckenbach.”
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The chorus of “Alimony” relies on a classic-country-style pun that brings home the Lone Star-ness as well, with the singer playfully warning a husband (presumably not Lambert’s IRL one) that if “you start steppin’ out / only one thing can console me / If you’re gonna leave me in San Antone / Remember the alimony.” (That’s as in “remember the Alamo,” for anyone who’s forgotten.)
“Alimony” is the third track to be released from the new album, albeit the first with the overall project coming more into focus, following the currently charting single “Wranglers” and another album cut, “Dammit Randy.” Lambert talked in a release announcement about how “Alimony” came about, incuding the oft-mentioned fact that “my parents were private investigators in Dallas, Texas who worked a ton of divorce cases in highfalutin’ parts of town, so this wasn’t hard to write. I’d heard about it my whole life.”
Said Lambert, “We were out in my barn; I was showing Shane and Natalie the horses, and I asked if he had any other titles. He said he had one, and I was like, ‘What is it? Because your last one was “Looking Back on Luckenbach,” which I didn’t think you could top.’ He said, ‘Well, “If you’re gonna leave me in San Antone, remember the Alamo-neeeee…’’’ Natalie and I were like, ‘All right, Shane! Stop showing off.’ We went back to the house and got the guitars,, and I specifically was like, ‘I want a shuffle, man.’ I love to shuffle so much, and this record needed a shuffle! I knew I wanted one in my set, because I haven’t done one in a while – and everybody loves a shuffle… We used every Texas metaphor we could come up with on purpose; we wanted to take something kind of shitty and put some humor back in it. I mean, the guy gets out pretty easy if all he does is move back in with his mom.”
In an interview with PvNew in May, when “Wranglers” was released, Lambert offered some thoughts about the forthcoming album. Although the previous album had had some Texas flavor, there was a difference in the way the new one was created, she said.
“I made this record in Texas, and it meant the world to me,” she said I had not made a record in Texas since I was 18, my independent album. So I went there with Jon Randall, who’s my partner at Big Loud Texas [a label she has created to sign new artists] and my songwriting buddy and one of my best friends in the world, and he co-produced it with me. I just felt like finally, I’m home. I feel like that on the label; I feel like that recording it in Texas. And this music really reflects what made me the artist that I am. I feel like it’s pretty honky-tonk, which I’m very excited about. Lots of steel guitar on there.”
She also talked at the time about why she had made a label change. Lambert is one of a very small handful of country artists to be signed directly to Republic (Shania Twain is another), albeit in a deal that utilizes that label’s fruitful relationship with Big Loud Records to market her to her traditional base.
“I really wanted to take my time to find the right family and the right time, to be honest,” Lambert said of signing with the Lipman brothers for a new deal. “I mean, 20 years is a long time to be in one place. And a lot of good things happened there; my career’s been spent on one label. But sometimes it’s time to move forward and do something different. You know, I took meetings with everybody, because I also love Nashville and I love the people here and I wanted to talk through it with all of my friends that I’ve met in the business. But Republic just felt really like something fresh with new ideas and a different way of doing it. Since I’ve been doing it for now 21 years, I’m all about fresh ideas. There’s a whole other world out there now from when I first started releasing music to now.
“So I just thought I could learn a lot, to be honest, from a New York-based label,” she continued, “and try to grow my career still and do it in different ways than I have before. And I already was partnering with Big Loud to do Big Loud Texas. And so having them as my Nashville family, along with Republic, is just like a dream. It’s two amazing teams that are working on my music, and there’s this fresh energy, and it’s just making me have more fire. I’m so ready to get music done and get it out and go to work, because this is what I do. And after (finishing up a residency in) Vegas and then leaving Sony and making a new record, it just feels like a fresh start.”
“Postcards From Texas” track list:
- Armadillo (Aaron Raitiere, Jon Decious, Park Twomey)
- Dammit Randy (Miranda Lambert, Brendan McLoughlin, Jon Randall)
- Looking Back on Luckenbach (Miranda Lambert, Shane McAnally, Natalie Hemby)
- Santa Fe feat. Parker McCollum (Miranda Lambert, Jesse Frasure, Jessie Jo Dillon, Dean Dillon)
- January Heart (Brent Cobb, Neil Medley)
- Wranglers (Audra Mae, Evan McKeever, Ryan Carpenter)
- Run (Miranda Lambert)
- Alimony (Miranda Lambert, Natalie Hemby, Shane McAnally)
- I Hate Love Songs (Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, Jon Randall)
- No Man’s Land (Miranda Lambert, Luke Dick)
- Bitch On The Sauce (Miranda Lambert, Jaren Johnston)
- Way Too Good At Breaking My Heart (Miranda Lambert, Jon Randall, Jesse Frasure, Jenee Fleenor)
- Wildfire (Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, Jon Randall)
- Living On The Run (David Allen Coe, Jimmy L. Howard)
