“All My Ex’s Live In Texas”: Kacey’s version.
Yesterday, Kacey Musgraves played the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, headlining the Mojave tent, where she played a total of 13 songs, with some of them of course being from her forthcoming sixth studio album, Middle of Nowhere, which Musgraves produced alongside longtime collaborators Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk.
Kacey’s album is out everywhere on May 1st, and I can’t wait, and so far, she’s put out two songs from the 13-song tracklist, including the lead single “Dry Spell,” as well as the title track “Middle of Nowhere.” Kacey will have four features from some fellow artists as well, an absolutely stacked lineup that features Willie Nelson, Billy Strings, Gregory Alan Isakov and Mrs. Miranda Lambert herself… it’s a dream.
And she delivered a very unique cover of George Strait’s “All My Ex’s Live in Texas,” which is of course one of his signature songs and a country classic written by Sanger D. Shafer and Lyndia J. Shafer. It was released in April of 1987 as the second single from Strait’s seventh studio album, Ocean Front Property, following the album’s title track.
It would go onto become Strait’s 11th number one hit single, and he received his first Grammy Award nomination for “All My Ex’s Live In Texas” for Best Male Country Vocal Performance at the 1988 Grammy Awards.
Kacey covered the song recently at a different event, but this time, she put her own spin on it, telling the crowd:
“You guys all know George Strait’s version of this song? Well, I rewrote the verses from my perspective, so here we go.”
She started naming off guys she knew from different towns in Texas, saying one she knew drank “too much patrón,” and one guy named Cody is now “doing time”:
“Okay, listen
Stephen down in Stephenville
Drank too much patron
Richard down in Richardson
Won’t pick up the phone
Cody in Midlothian
Now, he’s doing time
Sometimes you’ve gotta learn to love it
Or leave it all behind”
In the next verse, she recalls a Houston guy with “the bluest eyes,” though she seems to have forgotten his name, and an ***hole she knew in El Paso broke her heart, and that verse finishes with her signature witty humor:
“I left my shirt in Forth Worth
With some old college fling
That Houston guy had the bluest eyes
But I forgot his name
Some ***hole down in El Paso
He left my heart all broke
Everything’s bigger down there
So I’m sad that I can’t go”
She closed it out by saying that no one in Texas will marry her, even though that’s where she’ll be buried, but for now, she’s “alive and well in Tennessee”:
“Well, no one there will marry me
Some day that’s where they’ll bury me
But I’m alive and well in Tennessee”
I absolutely love this take on a classic from a female perspective, and while unfortunately, this cover isn’t on the tracklist for Middle of Nowhere, we absolutely must get a studio version at some point… it’s too good:
