Rolling Stone (June 19th 2014)
Gunpowder & Girl Power
At home on the range with Miranda Lambert, country’s turkey-hunting, bar-fighting, Beyoncé-loving platinum pistol
[edited version]
Back when she and Shelton were dating, Lambert bought 700 acres here, one ZIP code over from Shelton’s place. “I had a really good feeling about Blake,” she says, “but I wasn’t ready to move in with him. I kind of just wanted my own thing. I always wanted property of my own.” She fixed up the old farmhouse and got some rescue dogs, and although they live at Shelton’s place now, they kept this one for guests. They also have a house in Nashville, where they work, and rent one in L.A., where The Voice films – “but we live here,” Lambert says. “This is our home. This is where we’ll be rockin’ in a rockin’ chair when we’re 85.”
Lambert and Shelton got married three years ago. “My only regret is that I was so busy saying hi to everybody at the wedding that I never got a proper buzz,” she says. They spent three days honeymooning at Shelton’s ranch, fishing for bass, then three days in Cancún at Reba McEntire’s house. And then Shelton went back to The Voice and Lambert went back on tour.
At the time, The Voice had been on the air for less than a month, and wasn’t yet the smash it is now. She was wholly unprepared for what came next. “It was pretty instantaneous,” she says. “One day we were country singers, and the next we’re on the front of the tabloids.” Nowadays it seems like every week they’re having an affair, getting divorced or having a baby. “I’m, like, really magical,” Lambert jokes. “I’ve been pregnant for two and a half years.”
Lambert credits The Voice with boosting both her career and Shelton’s into the mainstream: “It put him on a whole new level, and I kind of got up there too, by marriage.” But it’s not always easy, having a spouse who does the same thing as you, only more famously. There’s a song on her new album called “Priscilla,” an imagined girl-talk session with Priscilla Presley about what it’s like to be a “permanent accessory, when everybody wants your man.” At least one line of the song comes straight from real life: “Didn’t know I was his bodyguard.”
“We were in New York City,” Lambert recalls, “and we were gonna walk to the Walgreens to get some lip gloss or whatever. And we walked around the corner and straight into the holding area of Letterman. And it was a mob. There were cameras, TMZ. And it just hit me: ‘We’re by ourselves. One of us has to be an ass-hole right now.’ I was wearing my workout clothes and no makeup, so I was like, ‘Gotta go, guys, gotta get him to an interview. Make a hole!’ My tour manager told me, ‘You were using all my lines!’ ”
When they’re in Tishomingo, though, things are different. They’re usually up at 7:30 or 8 a.m. to feed the dogs, a cup of Folgers Country Roast in hand. Lambert spends her day at the shop, hanging with the girls, or across the street talking to her contractor, while Shelton plants corn or clears brush or whatever else he does on his tractor. Sometimes they’ll order pizza, or get BBQ Baked Potatoes from the Rockin Rib. Usually they will cook: Shelton loves her hamburger steak with mushroom gravy and peanut-butter pie, and Lambert loves when he fires up the grill. In the evenings the couple will go back-roading or sit on the porch with a cooler full of cocktails, and a big weekend is taking the pontoon boat out on Lake Texoma, or maybe hitting the Walmart in Durant. “He likes when I cook him a big country breakfast on Sundays, or when he’s on the tractor and I bring him some sweet tea,” she says. “I know that sounds like a Kenny Chesney song. But it’s real.
“We can be really sarcastic with each other, but we know when to really be sweet too,” she says. “We really don’t fight much at all – he’s very laid-back, and he’d rather not fight than fight. I’m definitely the more irritable one. But when it’s time to call me on my shit, he will. Like, ‘Are you really about to get into a bar fight right now? Aren’t you too old for that?’ ”
Lambert isn’t speaking figuratively here. “The last two scuffles I’ve seen her get into were in the same bar in Nashville,” Shelton says. “People always try to pop off or call her bluff at bars. One of them, I don’t want to say the guy’s name, but he’s the lead singer of a very popular rock band. His initials are C.K.”
It soon becomes apparent that Shelton is talking about a 2010 incident with Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. “He tried to get her to drink some moonshine, and she said no,” Shelton says. “He was drunk, and I can’t remember what he said to her, but she grabbed that jar out of his hand and threw it on him. So then me and him ended up getting into it. And then at the same bar a few months ago, somebody called her booking agent an asshole. You call out anybody in Miranda’s circle, and she’s like a guard dog. She’ll knock shit over – and she did. Trying to get across a bunch of people, cussing and swinging. I’m holding her back, like, ‘But he is an asshole!’ ”
A WEEK LATER, LAMBERT IS in L.A., at the office of one of her publicists, whom she shares with Scarlett Johansson. A few days earlier, she was nominated for six CMT Awards, the most of any artist, despite not having released an album since 2011. This came on the heels of a weekend getting drunk at the Kentucky Derby with her mom and four girlfriends, an annual trip. “We just drink a lot and bet on the horses,” she says. “I think I broke even – I always bet on a female jockey, Rosie, and she came through for me pretty good. Girl power.”
Lambert used to come to L.A. a lot more while The Voice was in production, but now that Shelton usually works Mondays through Wednesdays, she often stays at home. “When I’m here, he’s working all day anyway, so I never get to see him,” she says. “I’m waiting around while he does red carpet. It was funny – yesterday my sister-in-law said, ‘If I wanted to hang out in a trailer all day, I’d have just stayed in Oklahoma!’ ”
Lambert’s sister-in-law is visiting from Oklahoma too; they have two kids, and they’ve never been to The Voice, so Lambert and Shelton flew them out for a few days. “Yesterday we went to Grauman’s Chinese Theater and saw the Walk of Fame,” Lambert says. “And I got my picture with Mickey and Minnie on Hollywood Boulevard – that was great. I’ve never done anything touristy in Hollywood. Every time I’m here, I just work or go to work with Blake. I feel like if I got out more, I would probably like L.A. more. I need to see wine country at some point. I’ve never been to Disneyland. After all this is over, I doubt I’ll be spending that much time out here, so while I’m here, I need to take advantage.”
But she does have one good Hollywood story, and that was meeting Queen Bey herself, Beyoncé. They’ve actually met twice, although the first one doesn’t really count: Lambert stood in line at one of her Dallas concerts for a meet-and-greet. (“I met her with Emmitt Smith and Donald Driver,” she says. “You know you’ve made it when you have celebrities lining up to meet you.”) But the second one – that one was awesome.
“I sat behind her at the Grammys last year,” Lambert says. “My manager was sitting with me, and she was like, ‘Tap her on the shoulder!’ I wouldn’t have done it, but I had just sung and she was in the front row, so I at least knew she wouldn’t think I was some random fan. So I was like, ‘Hey, hi…’ and she was so, so sweet. She was like, ‘I love you and your husband!’ ”
Lambert laughs. “I was like, ‘No! Just me!’ ”