Miranda Lambert Tours Through ‘The Weight Of These Wings’ For CMA Songwriter’s Front & Center Taping

Pictured (L-R): Crystal Dishmon, ShopKeeper Management; Damon Whiteside, CMA Chief Marketing Officer; Ken Robold, Sony Music Nashville Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer; Miranda Lambert; Randy Goodman, Sony Music Nashville Chairman & CEO; John Zarling, Sony Music Nashville Executive Vice President Marketing & New Business; and Marion Kraft, ShopKeeper Management. Photo: Donn Jones / CMA

Miranda Lambert brilliantly toured through her now certified Platinum album, The Weight Of These Wings, on Tuesday, Sept. 19 at Nashville’s Marathon Music Works.

The event, taped for public television’s Front & Center, was part of the CMA’s songwriter series, presented by US Bank. In fact, Lambert’s acoustic event was the CMA’s 121 st songwriter show.

“Tonight we’re celebrating The Weight of These Wings going Platinum,” said a proud Lambert. “It’s a double-record and very much the story of my last couple years and all you go through in life. It’s a privilege and blessing to be able to write songs to help you get through something in your life that is really hard. Every songwriter on this record completely embraced where I was, whatever day that was—I was all over the map. I’m so thankful that I can say that some of my best friends in the world also get in the trenches with me and put words on paper. Music is medicine. So thank you to all the songwriters for going down the road with me and spending their time on my journey.”

Lambert then invited a variety of co-writers to the stage including Natalie Hemby, Anderson East, Aaron Raitiere, Shane McAnally, Luke Dick, Jessi Alexander, John Randall, Waylon Payne, Adam Hood, Scotty Wray, Brent Cobb, Jack Ingram, Liz Rose, and Gwen Sebastian.

Additional co-writer guests, many of whom were in attendance, recieved plaques to celebrate the sales success, including for Mando Saenz, Terry Jo Box, Rodney Clawson, Nicolle Galyon, Foy Vance, Lucie Silvas, Ashley Monroe, Josh Osborne, Shake Russell and Danny O’Keefe.

“I wanted this night to feel like being in our living room or our magic porch, where we write songs,” said Lambert. “We’re literally all friends, so this is really special.”

Miranda Lambert. Photo Donn Jones

While Lambert wrapped with “Greyhound Bound For Nowhere,” a song she wrote with her first co-writer—father and special guest Rick Lambert, helping her get a foot in the door on season one of Nashville Star (2003)—the Vanner Records/RCA Nashville star kicked off the evening with her only solo-write on The Weight Of These Wings album, “We Should Be Friends.”

“Natalie has a direct line to Miranda,” teased McAnally with Dick and Hemby on stage before playing a rare outside cut and fun title for the album, titled “Highway Vagabond.” “They have two cups with a string in the middle and Natalie just picks it up and says, ‘I’ve got a song,’ and Miranda says, ‘I’m cutting it.’

“Natalie has 10 songs on this record, so she’s kinda just got a permanent seat on this stage,” prefaced Lambert.

Of those 10 songs of Hemby’s, the Front & Center taping played through five, also including “Tomboy” with Raitiere, who was featured on “For The Birds.” Additionally, fabulous harmonies were featured on Hemby, Lambert and Alexander’s “Things That Break” and Lambert’s new beau, Anderson East joined for a three-way on “Getaway Driver.”

The lead single, “Vice,” was a co-write with McAnally and Osborne, who could not be in attendance. “Miranda came in [the day we wrote ‘Vice’] and I feel like she took her heart out of her chest and put it on the table,” said McAnally, who Lambert reminded she also brought a rolling cooler to the write. “She showed up…with the vulnerability of, ‘Let’s do this, let’s talk about this, let’s write a song.’

The depth of evening also touched on Lambert’s 2015 divorce, chronicled in the album.

“I did start drinking a lot,” said Lambert. “ I did go to bars in Midtown: Losers and Winners. I did have to pick up my car that had been there for three days, and I still had mascara on from the first day. And it was a Monday.” Rose and Hemby thus helped tease out the track “Ugly Lights.”

From Carnival Music Publishing, owned by Lambert’s producer Frank Liddell, the evening welcomed Hood and Cobb on “Good Ol’ Days” in addition to Payne for the traditional country song “To Learn Her.”

The evening concluded with Lambert’s Sebastian and Wray co-write, “Wheels.”

“We wrote this song in a dressing room at a venue,” said Lambert. “It basically says everything this record said and everything this journey amounted to—You gotta keep rolling on. You gotta keep going. You can’t stay in it.”