Miranda Lambert pays tribute to her Texas roots in the new song “Two-Step Down to Texas,” a track on her collaborative album The Marfa Tapes, a stripped-down, rustic record with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall.
“If you ever get time to two-step down to Texas/find yourself down ’round Austin way,” Lambert sings to kick off the song, which includes a multitude of Austin allusions. She name-checks live-music haunts like the Broken Spoke dance hall, the Continental Club, and the Carousel Lounge, along with venerable Texas artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Western swing group Asleep at the Wheel.
For their performance, Lambert sings lead while Ingram and Randall back her up on guitar, with Ingram providing some teeth-whistling during the track’s breakdown.
Released last month, The Marfa Tapes was born from the songwriters’ writing retreats in Marfa, Texas. To capture the vibe of West Texas, they recorded the LP mostly outdoors.
“They’re all our babies,” Lambert says of the songs, which include versions of her solo releases “Tin Man” and “Tequila Does.” “Every songwriter says that, but [we have] this friendship and that magical place, and we’re all from Texas, and we all have the same kinds of influences and grew up on the same kind of music. It felt like all three of us would be really sad if these songs never had a life.”