The 47th season of the long-running live music series, Austin City Limits, is kicking off in just one month with the Marfa Tapes trio in Miranda Lambert, Jon Randall and Jack Ingram.
But, they’re giving fans a taste of their hour-long acoustic set today with a new video of them performing one of my favorites from their recent record, The Marfa Tapes, called “In His Arms”.
Miranda starts it off by talking about her longtime friends, Jack and Jon, and how they ended up as a band performing at ACL:
“If it gets weird up here it’s because we’ve all been friends for like over 20 years. And I’ll tell you what, it’s crazy because I’ve grown up watching Jack since I was 15.
Been going to every club around Texas following him around, he’s one of my heroes. And Jon the same, we met, I don’t know, almost 20 years ago and [he] just sings like an angel and is an angel of a personality.
And so, sittin’ up here with these boys gettin’ to sing songs we wrote in Marfa, Texas, I can’t believe it’s happenin’. Thank y’all so much for listening.”
Then, Miranda says that writing love songs about men with men is one of her favorite things to do. I’m guessing it’s because we sure as hell can’t figure out how y’all think on our own, to which Jack responds:
“We know ’em better than anybody.”
And then Miranda comes back with this:
“Well, somebody’s gotta get to know y’all ‘cuz we sure can’t.”
Couldn’t have said it any better, Miranda. Of course, to be fair, relationships can be pretty damn difficult both ways, and I think Jack agrees:
“Oh, and we have such an easy time?”
But, that’s part of what makes this song so damn good.
It’s told from the perspective of a woman, but knowing that all three of them wrote it together makes it seem a little more balanced and interesting when you listen to it with that in the back of your mind.
And, a good sunset for inspiration always helps, too:
“Anyway, we wrote this song staring at the sunset one day.
We were just lookin’ at the sunset over the desert goin’ down to Marfa and talkin’ about all the people we don’t know and the ones we do wanna know and a love song came out of it.
It’s called ‘In His Arms.'”
The teaser for the entire show that premieres on October 2nd includes snip-its of other awesome songs like “Two-Step Down to Texas” and the fan-favorite “Tequila Does”.
I can’t wait to see the whole hour, because these three are some of the absolute best in the business right now:
This season of ACL will also feature other country and bluegrass artists in Billy Strings, Charley Crockett and Brandy Clark.
The second half of the season will be announced at a later date.
First half of season 47 airdates and lineup:
October 2: Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram & Jon Randall: The Marfa Tapes
October 9: Jade Bird / Dayglow
October 16: Jon Batiste
October 23: Sarah Jarosz / Billy Strings
October 30: Brandy Clark / Charley Crockett
November 6: Leon Bridges / Khruangbin
November 13: Jackson Browne
November 20: Brittany Howard
