Lambert, Ingram and Randall Bring Excellent 'Marfa Tapes' to 'Austin City Limits'

by Julian Spivey

Photo: PBS

“Austin City Limits,” the wonderful PBS music program out of Austin, Texas, premiered its 47th season on Saturday, Oct. 2 with country music singer-songwriters Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram and Jon Randall performing selections from their album The Marfa Tapes, one of the best releases of 2021 thus far.
​
The episode, which was taped in late April, was the first performance on the show since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 and you could tell Lambert, Ingram and Randall were all thrilled to be performing music in front of a live (and masked), audience once again.

Lambert said on the program that the trio have been friends for more than 20 years (which means going back to her teenage years) and began getting together to write songs about six years ago. Their first foray into writing together led to “Tin Man” off Lambert’s critically-acclaimed 2016 album The Weight of These Wings, which would go on to win Song of the Year at the 2018 ACM Awards. A version recorded specifically for The Marfa Tapes appears on the trio’s album, as does the song “Tequila Does,” which they all wrote together that appeared on Lambert’s 2019 album Wildcard.

Both songs were performed on “Austin City Limits,” with an even different performance of “Tin Man” with Randall taking lead on the first verse.

The trio got to perform almost the entirety of The Marfa Tapes on ‘ACL,’ with the only two tracks from the 15-track album they didn’t get around to (or at least didn’t make the cut on the episode) being “Breaking a Heart” and “Homegrown Tomatoes,” which is likely the most fun song on the album but would’ve required some censoring of the “F-word” on the chorus by PBS.

The almost hour-long performance kicked off with “Two-Step Down to Texas,” a highly appropriate song to get the first performance back on “Austin City Limits” in more than a year started with. From that point Lambert, Ingram and Randall took turns on lead songs, as they do on their exquisite album, in what felt like an old-fashioned Saturday night guitar pull.

Lambert blew the audience away with leads on “In His Arms,” “Waxahachie” and “Ghost,” which is likely the best song on the entire album. The trio’s excellent three-part harmonies coming off nicely on the chorus of “In His Arms.”

Ingram took lead on the emotional “Anchor,” “I Don’t Like It” and “The Wind’s Just Gonna Blow.”

Randall’s finest performance on the show and on the album was “Amazing Grace (West Texas),” which could easily wind up on my year-end top 10 list (in addition to Lambert’s “Ghost”).

Other tracks that really energized the audience were “Am I Right or Amarillo” and “Geraldine.”

These three songwriters really mesh well together both when it comes to writing these terrific songs and performing live and I’d love to see another collaboration down the line, of course it may take some time to write this many great songs together again.

The rest of the 47th season of “Austin City Limits” will continue on your local PBS station on Saturday nights and feature such performers as Jade Bird and Dayglow (Oct. 9), Jon Batiste (Oct. 16), Sarah Jarosz and Billy Strings (Oct. 23), Brandy Clark and Charley Crockett (Oct. 30), Leon Bridges and Khruangbin (Nov. 6), Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Jackson Browne (Nov. 13) and Brittany Howard (Nov. 20).