It’s time to recruit Kacey Musgraves back to Austin. No slight to Nashville, it’s just that Kacey is a more natural fit in the capital city of her home state. She is one of us, and it’s time to come home with the Armadillo and rule the city alongside Willie Nelson and Matthew McConaughey. Austin has a perplexingly antagonistic attitude towards newcomers, but that’s okay because Kacey boasts a resume that will silence even the most vocal curmudgeons. Musgraves might be the girl from Golden, but as soon as she graduated high school she hightailed it to the City of the Violet Crown. Like many before her, it was the first step on a successful musical odyssey.
She was an unknown teenager when she arrived—she hadn’t even been booked as a contestant on Nashville Star yet. Austin charted every step of her rise to stardom. In those early days, she played a show at Threadgill’s – on a Wednesday night and split the bill with Shinyribs. Getting booked by Eddie Wilson (founder of Armadillo World Headquarters) to play a $5 show with a local legend is as vintage Austin as you can get, and a feather in any musician’s cap.
Fast forward to 2013 when Kacey released her debut album, Same Trailer, Different Park. It’s a witty album, and an outspoken Kacey Musgraves left a lot of country music fans confused why this girl played traditional music but was singing about rolling joints and telling kids it was okay to be gay, but Austin got it. We invited her to christen the new amphitheater at Circuit of Americas and, since she opened for Kenny Chesney, she truly was the first one to play the stage.
Same Trailer, Different Park put her on the radar, but she was still hustling to build a fanbase. She joined Dale Watson for her first taping of an ACL episode and local music journalist Michael Corcoran encouraged folks to go, not because of the can’t miss performance, but since neither artist was “huge” it was “as good a chance as any to get in for a free TV show.” There was a lot more buzz by the end of the year when she tied Taylor Swift for the most nominations (six) at the CMA Awards and won the trophy for Newcomer of the Year. Swift and Musgraves went head to head later that year at the Grammys, with Kacey coming out on top again for Country Album of the Year.
In 2015, Musgraves was celebrating the release of her second album and spending a lot of time in Austin with her BFF Willie Nelson. She performed at his Fourth of July picnic and then joined him again for a three-day New Year’s Eve extravaganza at the ACL Live Theater. The two also met up at the White Horse, a funky East Austin honky-tonk, to record a music video of Kacey performing a song Willie wrote in 1965.
While her first two albums solidified her reputation as a trailblazer in country music, it was Golden Hour that catapulted Kacey into the stratosphere. The album debuted at number four on the Billboard charts and the trajectory only went up from there. It took home four Grammy awards, including the coveted album of the year, and was ranked number 270 on Rolling Stone’s 2020 list of greatest albums of all time. Before the album’s release, she was playing the opening slot for John Prine. Afterward, she was selling out arenas on a headlining world tour. Kacey brought the party to Austin with two sold out shows at Stubb’s before returning for the ACL Fest where she took the stage as the sun set over the festival grounds.
Kacey Musgraves has followed an eerily similar path to Willie Nelson. She’s paid her dues in Nashville and produced a catalog of hits that establish her as one of the premier songwriters of her generation, but she doesn’t fit in with the other country stars. In fact, she seems to enjoy pissing them off, usually with a snarky comment and a sly smile. On her most recent album, she croons, “My home state of Texas / The sky there, the horses and dogs / But none of their laws.” That’s basically the unofficial Austin motto! It’s time to follow in the steps of her good friend and come home to Austin and claim the title of weirdo in chief.
