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Miranda Lambert was born in Longview on November 10, 1983. The city sits in East Texas at the edge of the Piney Woods, the kind of place where country music flows through the culture without anyone making a point of it. Her father, Rick Lambert, had played in a country-rock group called Contraband in the 1970s before becoming a police officer. Growing up with a musician father in East Texas, Miranda absorbed the tradition from the start.
As a teenager, she fronted the house band at the Reo Palm Isle, a long-running Longview venue with a history that stretched back decades. The Reo Palm Isle was the kind of East Texas institution that had seen everything. Elvis Presley had played there. Willie Nelson had played there. Brooks & Dunn, before they were Brooks & Dunn, had started out as the house band. Standing on that stage meant standing in a lineage.
Before Nashville Star
Lambert was still in high school when she was performing regularly at the Reo Palm Isle. At sixteen, she appeared on the Johnnie High Country Music Revue in Arlington — the same talent showcase that had helped launch LeAnn Rimes. She made a trip to Nashville, tried what a label wanted her to be, rejected it, came home to Texas, and asked her father to teach her guitar so she could write her own songs.
In 2003, she entered the Nashville Star competition and finished third. The Sony executive who signed her to Epic Records had discovered her there. But the Reo Palm Isle is where she learned what she was — a Texas singer who was going to do this on her own terms.
Lambert has gone on to win more Academy of Country Music Awards than any artist in history. The stage in Longview where she started had already hosted Elvis and Willie. It knew what to look for.
