What a story…
Way back in 2013, on the brink of George Strait scoring his 60th #1 single right before his 61st birthday, fellow Texan Miranda Lambert sat down to talk about her favorite memory of The King.
And honestly, it’s better than I could’ve ever possibly imagined.
When Miranda was just starting out in country music, around the year 2006, she went out on the road with George, and her dad also joined them on the trek.
She says she was 22 years old at the time, and had just gotten her very first tattoo… and her dad, Rick Lambert, was not happy about it. At all.
In fact, he was so upset with her “horrid, hideous” tattoo that he refused to speak to her for two whole weeks, even though they were sharing a bus at the time:
“When I was on tour with George, I was 22 and my dad was on the road with us. And I had gotten a tattoo, and it ruffled my dad’s feathers pretty good, and he was really, really mad.
We rode the same bus together on the Strait tour, and so I had to wear I had to wear long sleeves for two weeks and he wouldn’t talk to me.”
Somehow, word got back to George that Miranda and her dad were in a fight, and I’m sure George could understand what that was like, seeing as he’s a father of two himself, Bubba Strait and a daughter named Jennifer, who tragically passed away in a car accident at the very young age of 13 in 1986.
On the last day of the tour, the whole crew was supposed to meet up to take a photo, and George had apparently sent out for 75 stick-on tattoos so that they could all put one on their arm, in the same spot Miranda’s was, to poke fun at how silly their fight ultimately was and help mend the relationship.
When Miranda showed up for the picture, not only did 60 members of their tour crew roll up their sleeve with a tattoo on, so did Rick Lambert:
“The last day of tour, before the end of tour picture, George had apparently heard about all this and sent out for 75 stick-on tattoos.
And when we took our group picture, everyone that was in the photo, which was like 60 people, rolled up their sleeve and they all had a tattoo exactly where my tattoo was, even my dad.
So I have to thank George for helping me get back to talking to my father again after I got my horrid, hideous tattoo. So thanks George, for mending our relationship.”
I mean, helping fix a disagreement like that between a 22-year old girl and her dad is something only George Strait could pull off, I’m fairly certain.
And as someone who doesn’t have any tattoos, but has a dad that would likely have a similar reaction to Rick if I did get one, I can only imagine how helpful it would be to have George Strait himself on your side helping patch things up.
Hey, they don’t call him The King of Country for nothin’…
You can watch Miranda tell the whole story herself here, it’s one of the best I’ve heard:
And back in 2014, George Strait performed the final show of his touring career at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, for a crowd of over 104,000 people. To this day, it’s the largest single-show stadium attendance on American soil.
Miranda joined him for “How ‘Bout Them Cowgirls” and once again “Run,” which was of course one of the highlights of the show.
I’m not kidding when I tell you I could watch this all damn day:
