Hi, congratulations on the new project! What was it like, after all this time, releasing a solo album again?

I didn’t think I’d ever really release anything that wasn’t collaborative. It was kind of fun to get to put some solo music out.

Yeah, it’s kind of weird, I guess, because it’s been such a long time.

Well, I’ve just been working as a producer, helping everyone else make records. I would record a few things up for myself and then I would go start working on another record. There was no time to focus on myself and then I got to the point where I was like, ‘Man, I really do want to put out some music’ – just because it’s fun to make your own music. Once I wrapped up some of these other projects I was working on, I was able to put some stuff out yet. To answer your question, it is a new world out there for releasing music. You don’t have to have a big major label behind you just to get it out for people to hear.

What I loved about the project is it felt so free. It was so authentic, it wasn’t too much production and allowed the songs to speak for themselves but also let production come in where it needed to. It was very much ‘this is who I am,’ a take it or leave it kind of approach, which must be very refreshing.

Yeah, thank you, I’m glad, that makes me feel like I did my job because that’s exactly what I was going for. The little spark for everything was that song called ‘Streets of Dallas,’ it was me and Jerry Douglas on dobro and I kind of wanted to do a record of just really acoustic stuff, but there were a couple songs that just needed that lift and I didn’t want to over overpower it. I definitely wanted the vibe to be underneath that, so I was trying real hard to blend those two thoughts together.

You talk about Dallas and I know you grew up around Dallas. Everyone talks about the Texas country music scene being so different and so unique. What does Texan country music mean to you?

Well, it’s funny, Texans still think we’re our own country. There is a pride that comes with that mentality that we are our own region, because it is such a big state, it’s pretty diverse musically, as well. A lot of great artists have come out of there, and so, there’s a lot of pride in that. It is kind of the regional stories of the people I know and the people that I grew up around and seeing Guy Clark for the first time on Austin City Limits and knowing that you’re in the bloodline of your heroes. I think that’s where the pride for that comes from and where that influence comes from.

Obviously, you’ve been in Nashville now. How have you blended the two?

Well, it’s funny because I grew up playing bluegrass and being a bluegrass musician. I moved up here with some bluegrass musicians because there was a scene in Texas, but all of our heroes were in Nashville, all the cats that we were listening to. We thought that’s kind of where we’re supposed to be. When I did move to town and I met all the Bluegrass people, I realised ‘oh man Guy Clark lives here’. I thought Guy lived in Houston, but Townes Van Zandt lives here, Steve World is here, Rodney Crowell lives here, Gary Nicholson, all these guys. Kristofferson came up, and Willie and Waylon and all those guys, because it was such a songwriters’ town and it was a great place. I think one of the guys said, ‘man, you got to move to Nashville because they love hippie poets there’. That’s how they kind of got here, so when I got it, it kind of felt like I had permission to be here a little bit. If I was hanging out with those guys a little bit, I always have gone back and played in Texas, I’m probably in Austin once or twice a month. I’m in Dallas all the time, so my roots are still split in between the two places.

People always forget that Nashville has so many influences more than just country.

I think a lot of guys came up from Texas and tried to do major label deals and then they hated themselves. They hated Nashville and they hated the labels. It is way beyond Music Row. There’s just so much more here. There’s so many musicians from all over the world, we just have all kinds of fantastic musicians and different music. It’s great because you can reach into those worlds and and learn things from playing with musicians from other parts of the world and sometimes make music together and people that are in different genres are all cross-pollinating. I understand there’s a little bit of mainstream sell out, but there’s so much more to offer than that.

I think that’s what you kind of take away from this record. You look at ‘Tequila Kisses’ and I feel like it’s almost got a more edgy, darker rock side to it and then you’ve got the ones that are much more stripped back and feel more outlaw country. I guess, when you were working out which songs were going to go on this record, how did you kind of go about selecting them? These are the songs that hadn’t found a home, but you write more every day and you’re writing all the time, so there must be 1000s of songs that haven’t found a home elsewhere.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it was when I started looking through the songs that I was saving and the ones I’d recorded, there became a little bit of a theme in Texas and traveling as part of that theme. It’s a movement record for me and that’s how I kind of was able to tie a little bit of Texas, where I grew up some stories about people I knew, and then I also just love records that you want to roll the window down and drive the backroads on. It started with ‘Streets of Dallas’ that I wrote, because I’d been co writing so much and then I was like ‘I don’t know if I can write a song by myself again’. I decided to write a song by myself and I’m going to just write about something. That got the wheels rolling for me to find that guy again, that used to only write by himself, I found that writer again. A few of those songs were from that journey as well.

Obviously, you had ‘Girls in Texas,’ which was cut by Pat Green, obviously the rest of them have been songs that haven’t been cut, why did that song stick with you as one which you wanted to cut?

So, I produced that record for Pat and I had been working on the road with Lyle, so I got to come do the duet with Pat. It became such a huge song down in Texas, I kind of wanted everybody in Texas to know that I had written it. I love patent law, but come on, it’s really my song. I also had to make it up to Ingram for letting that song get away and not doing it together. We did our version of it, you get me and Jack and it’s still growing, no matter how you slice it.

For this record, you also gave up the reins of production. How did that feel, being a producer yourself?

It’s actually very comfortable with Brandon, we’ve worked on so many records together. I had a pretty clear vision of things. but I need someone outside of myself to make sure we’re getting the sounds right, the vibe and the feeling. Brandon and I have worked on so many projects together, he’s just my partner in crime and when we’re in the studio, it’s very, very comfortable to to have him behind the glass.

I just wanted to briefly talk to you about The Marfa Tapes, it’s one of my favourite records of the year – the transition from ‘Ghost’ to ‘Breaking a Heart’ is magic. How special was that project? I just love it, because it’s a return to the way people used to record records? How special was it to record and spend that time just recording in that way?

Oh, it was really awesome. What’s cool about that record is we didn’t set out to write a record. We were in Marfa writing songs as friends, we were going deep and we were trying to impress each other and do our best Kris Kristofferson and all that lyrically in writing. For us to come back full circle and realise, ‘gosh, guys, there’s a whole body of work here’. If we go in and record everything with bands, it loses what was special to us. Miranda was like, ‘let’s just record it,’ it’s a little bit scary to do that, but once you commit to it, and you just go, ‘Hey, man, this is the deal’. You realise that when people listen to it, they feel like they’re sitting at the campfire with you or they feel like they’re in the room listening to you, you are being a part of it. That’s what kind of made it special and the fact that they’re two of my best friends in the world, and we got to make some music together, it was a dream for us.

It was songs that we had written between 2015 and last year, we had about 20 songs, we would go to Marfa every year. It’s a little getaway, but the three of us can’t help once the fire is gone and there’s a tequila, somebody starts playing the guitar. The next thing you know, we’re writing a song and we can’t help ourselves. It’s really kind of a neat thing, because when we first went down there the three of us had never written together. I’d written with Miranda, I’d written Jack, but the three of us had never written together. So, we didn’t know if we could write songs, we just were going to go hang out. We ended up writing like nine songs in like five days. We had a body of work and we would have just put out the the phone work tapes, but the cows were so loud on some of it and and the wind was blowing so hard. You can manipulate some of that a little bit, but it was more fun to go film it and show us how we are together working.

Well it was such a special finished project, so thank you and thank you for your time today!

The post INTERVIEW: Jon Randall on His Self-Titled Record appeared first on off the record.

There’s a kind of magic that ensues when Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert and Jon Randall get in a room together. The proof was first shown on Lambert’s extraordinary double album The Weight of These Wings released in 2016, also recorded in Marfa, Texas. Marfa is an eccentric outpost in the middle of nowhere – a place to find or lose yourself. For Lambert, Randall, and Ingram, it’s both. Over the past several years, the desolate location has become a songwriting haven for the trio, yielding both massive hits and profound personal growth. When they returned for five days this past November though, they came not to write, but to record, capturing a captivating new album inspired by the stark beauty of west Texas and the deep, lasting bonds the three have forged there. Recorded raw and loose with just a pair of microphones and an acoustic guitar, The Marfa Tapes is a stunning work of audio verité; an intimate, unadorned snapshot of a moment in time fueled by love, trust, and friendship that is brought to life through the unedited, raw nature of the project. It’s the kind of record that sums up the magical tradition and roots of the country genre itself – almost painfully intimate sonically, yet universal lyrically. You can feel the weight of the history and years of the genre’s evolution hanging over the entirety of the project.

There is a ragged and loose edge to the project – you can hear crackling fires, winds and airplane sounds in the background at points – that makes it feel like a true snapshot of time into the friendship between these three artists, a candid and rare look into their chemistry as performers. As Ingram says, “There’s something singular that happens in that moment of collaboration and creation, something you can never really recreate in the studio…Our hope with this album was to share a little bit of that magic with people.”

The joy and exuberance of the genre comes through in the project. As they joke at the end of ‘Homegrown Tomatoes’ about not even knowing what the song is about. There is a sense that the artists have not taken themselves too seriously on this project – on this last, it feels like they are about to burst into laughter throughout – and it is this very idea that makes it more endearing as they sing about ‘being fucked up and falling in love.’ There is already a feeling that this track will fast become a campfire classic, as will later track ‘Two-Step Down To Texas’ – a fun, finger-snapping jovial track led by Lambert layered by light harmonies, the trio on the verge of losing themselves to laughter throughout. For fans of Lambert’s sassier side, ‘Geraldine’ will pack a hefty punch, a punchily delivered track about a woman trying to put her down.

Elsewhere, the trio reach to the longing side of love on the yearning ‘In His Arms’ that really brings to life their harmonies and on ‘The Wind’s Just Gonna Blow’ where they sing about love gone astray – Lambert’s vocal here is exceptional. Sonically, the trio are at their best in the layered harmonies on ‘Am I Right or Amarillo’ whose harmonies bring back the rounded sense of the heritage of the genre they are a part of. There is a true sense of pain and regret here that is carried through into ‘Waxahachie,’ where Lambert unpicks an argument with a lover. On ‘Ghost’ and ‘Breaking a Heart,’ the trio reach inside the most painful, intimate parts of themselves – this is the most stunning part of the record by far. On ‘Breaking a Heart,’ Ingram takes the lead to sing about which is harder, ‘being heart broken or breaking a heart.’ ‘Ghost’ is the standout track on the record, by a country mile, where Lambert sings about a lover now just being a ghost, it’s tender and emotional in a way that Lambert’s vocal seems to be able to capture like no other. ‘Anchor’ celebrates the liberating power of love in a blissfully tender, lyrical track. ‘Be my anchor, pull me under… I can’t breathe when I’m with you, when I’m with you I could fly.’ It is the very authenticity and the unedited nature of the record that gives it the emotional pull that underlies all these tracks.

Two of the tracks on the record we have heard before on Lambert’s other projects – ‘Tin Man’ and ‘Tequila Does’ – yet they are given new life in the desert atmosphere, and a reminder of the power of Lambert’s vocal that is best in its rawest form. The album is rounded out with ‘Amazing Grace (West Texas),’ where the trio prove their power to pack a weighty emotional punch, breathing new life into the well-worn hymn.

On The Marfa Tapes, Lambert, Ingram and Randall are able to underline the power of their own artistry. It’s an incredible departure from the gloss of her studio records – these songs would stand up against any of her others with the proper treatment. Having recorded these tracks with the external noise – cows, helicopters and birds – and revealing the mistakes, shows both the human side of the artists, but also the fact that even with mistakes, these are truly phenomenal artists who don’t need the gloss and polish to make them stars. It’s a stunning project that takes country music back to its roots – making it phenomenally special.

The post ALBUM REVIEW: The Marfa Tapes – Jack Ingram, Mirandą Lambert and Jon Randall appeared first on off the record.

Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram and Jon Randall have announced the release of a documentary film telling the story behind their new album ‘The Marfa Tapes.’ The film will be available to view for 24 hours via Destination Country and Miranda Lambert’s official Facebook page – directed by Spencer Peeples and featuring live performances set against the West Texas backdrop, candid interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage. For the release, Destination Country have teamed up with the trio to premiere the track on Facebook.

The Marfa Tapes arrives May 7 via Vanner Records/RCA Nashville (pre-order/pre-save here). Anticipation continues to grow for the album, which Entertainment Weekly proclaims “both familiar and new in equal measure, and one of the most inspired projects Lambert has ever released.” The trio recently performed the debut release, “In His Arms,” on the “56^th ACM Awards.” Watch here.

The trio recorded much of the album outdoors, inviting the ambient sounds of the desert to seep into their live, bare bones performances, and the atmosphere is utterly transportive. While a couple of the tracks may already be familiar to listeners – “Tin Man” as well as fan favorite “Tequila Does” – the vast majority of these songs have never been heard outside of Marfa. The result is a candid, unvarnished look at Lambert, Randall, and Ingram’s undeniable chemistry in its purest, most honest form.

The post Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert and Jon Randall to Release The Marfa Tapes Film appeared first on off the record.

Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert, and Jon Randall have announced the release of their new album titled The Marfa Tapes on 7th May. The Marfa Tapes is a collection of intimate songs written and recorded together in the tiny, middle-of-nowhere town of Marfa, TX. The Marfa Tapes is available for pre-order HERE.

Hardly known, Marfa is an eccentric outpost in the middle of nowhere, the perfect place to lose – or find – yourself. For Lambert, Randall, and Ingram, it’s both. The desolate location has become a songwriting haven for the trio over the past few years, yielding both massive hits and profound personal growth. When they returned for five days this past November though, they came not to write, but to record, capturing a captivating new album inspired by the stark beauty of west Texas and the deep, lasting bonds the three have forged there. Recorded raw and loose with just a pair of microphones and an acoustic guitar, The Marfa Tapes is a stunning work of audio verité; an intimate, unadorned snapshot of a moment in time fueled by love, trust, and friendship.

“I’ll never forget pulling into Marfa that first night at 4am,” said Lambert. “The stars were like nothing I’d ever seen before, just this endless blanket hanging so low you could reach up and touch them. I immediately understood why this place was so special.”

“There’s no TV, no radio, nothing to do out there but pour a cocktail, sit around the campfire, and talk,” continued Randall. “Eventually, that just inevitably leads to songs. There’s no pressure to write, but most of the time, the three of us can’t seem to help ourselves.”

The trio recorded much of the album outdoors, inviting the ambient sounds of the desert to seep into their live, bare bones performances, and the atmosphere is utterly transportive. While a couple of the tracks may already be familiar to listeners – ACM Song of the Year “Tin Man” as well as fan favourite “Tequila Does” – the vast majority of these songs have never been heard outside of Marfa. The result is a rare glimpse inside the creative process of three of the genre’s most accomplished writers and performers; a candid, unvarnished look at Lambert, Randall, and Ingram’s undeniable chemistry in its purest, most honest form.

“There’s something singular that happens in that moment of collaboration and creation, something you can never really recreate in the studio,” said Ingram. “Our hope with this album was to share a little bit of that magic with people.”

Track List:

01) In His Arms

02) I Don’t Like It

03) The Wind’s Just Gonna Blow

04) Am I Right Or Amarillo

05) Waxahachie

06) Homegrown Tomatoes

07) Breaking A Heart

08) Ghost

09) Geraldene

10) We’ll Always Have The Blues

11) Tin Man

12) Two-Step Down To Texas

13) Anchor

14) Tequila Does

15) Amazing Grace (West Texas)

The post Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert and Jon Randall Announce The Marfa Tapes appeared first on off the record.