Two years ago, singer Kacey Musgraves released “Same Trailer Different Park,” an album of songs touching on third-rail topics in mainstream country: same-sex marriage, recreational drugs, wanting to escape small-town mores and narrow-minded people.
“If you save yourself for marriage you’re a bore,” Musgraves sings on “Follow Your Arrow,” a song she co-wrote with Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, and set to a steady-thumping kick drum, pedal steel guitar and the expected country-music signifiers. “If you don’t save yourself for marriage you’re a whore-able person.”
In the context of Nashville, this seemed like outsider talk: “You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t / So you might as well just do whatever you want.”
But a funny thing happened: “Same Trailer” won a Grammy for Best Country Album. It sold more than a half-million copies, topped the Billboard Top Country Albums chart and peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Music critics gushed, and Nashville blinked first.
Earlier this year, Musgraves released a follow-up, “Pageant Material,” with more pedal steel, lush string arrangements, close harmonies, even whistled melodies. Despite what she sings on “High Time,” the opening track — “Been missing my roots / I’m getting rid of the flash / Nobody needs a thousand-dollar suit just to take out the trash” — “Pageant Material” is a glammed-up companion piece to “Same Trailer,” without sacrificing any of its subversiveness:
“High Time” isn’t exactly a stoner anthem (“It’s high time to slow my roll / let the grass just grow and lean way back”), but I’m sure you could use it as one.
On Friday, Oct. 23, Musgraves brings her Country and Western Rhinestone Revue to College Street Music Hall in New Haven, with Sugar and the Hi-Lows opening.
“It’s been really fun and smooth,” Musgraves says of her live show. “People are really enjoying the retro, sparkly element of it.”
Musgraves’ touring band, with the exception of the drummer, has been with her for more than three years, through all the success and hoopla.
“They’re amazing,” she says. “They’re sweet guys, and they’re also talented, and I really like that they bring their own thing to the table and they keep it about the music, not about what they’re playing or how they can play. It’s just simply about what’s best for the songs, so they help it in that way. … And they’re always up for a wild suit to wear.”
Musgraves never wanted to change mainstream country: “I just kind of have always been doing my own thing, and how that fits into the grand scheme of country today isn’t really on my mind.”
A fan of traditional country, she largely avoids pop. “I’m happy to bring light to what started this genre and old influences that are still good. They’re kind of left out these days.”
As a child in Golden, Texas, Musgraves turned poems into songs. Collaboration comes naturally to Musgraves; she co-wrote with her parents, her grandfather, her guitar teacher.
“He would give me homework — to go home and write a song. I’d come back and he’d kind of critique it and ask me questions: ‘Why did you put this line here? What do you think about this chord?'”
Working with Clark and McAnally introduced her to the inner workings of the Nashville songwriting community. “That’s when I really learned a lot about how two brains work together in a room,” she says.
Musgraves writes what she knows. “This Town,” from “Pageant Material,” inspired by Golden, juxtaposes the classic trope of innocent, small-town life with something darker; the song begins with found audio of a nurse describing an addict who attacked a colleague: “I mean, she bit. You could see every tooth. It took two or three of us to get her off of her.”
“We finally got a flashing light,” Musgraves sings, as the band vamps on a bluesy chord. “They put it in last year / And everybody got real happy when the grocery store got beer.”
“Pageant Material” is only 4 months old — too soon for Musgraves to be thinking about her next record. Writing songs on the road, she says, is nearly impossible.
“If I do have an idea that pops into my head I will jot it down, but as far as flushing out full songs and ideas it’s not as easy as I’d really like for it to be,” she says.
She’d like to pursue side projects, to fill what she calls “a creativity void.”
“I would love to make a reggae record at some point,” she says. “It would be based on nothing but what feels good to me.”
THE KACEY MUSGRAVES COUNTRY & WESTERN RHINESTONE REVUE arrives at College Street Music Hall in New Haven on Friday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 p.m., with Sugar and the Hi-Lows opening. Tickets are $22 to $32. Information: collegestreetmusichall.com.
