You Should Have Asked For The Marfa Tapes On Vinyl For Father’s Day.
At the end of the last episode of HBO’s seminal True Detective Season 1, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s characters stare into the sky and discuss the struggle between light versus dark. Harrelson’s character assumes the dark is winning by occupying “a lot more territory” with far less stars speckled throughout the sky. To which McConaughey counters, “You’re looking at it wrong. Once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light’s winning.”
For the very brightest stars on the music scene marquee, there are always a handful of equally important collaborators, predictably wearing mostly black and blending into the background. Taylor Swift very publicly had Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff in her black t-shirt society when she made Folklore and Evermore. On The Marfa Tapes, Miranda Lambert enlists good friends and collaborators Jack Ingram and Jon Randall to join her on a “raw and intimate journey” seven years in the making. Although Ingram and Randall often joked they were the real masterminds manipulating Lambert, “Let’s try to get her to write a Kristofferson record.”
And damn if they didn’t pull it off. And thank God they did, because The Marfa Tapes is unlike anything out there right now. At a time when TikTok has reduced the music industry to a stick of Fruit Stripe gum that loses its flavor in less than a minute, The Marfa Tapes has more in common with a well-oiled baseball glove crammed between your mattress and box spring. Play it for your kid, maybe they’ll mix in a tumbleweed emoji.
At its core, The Marfa Tapes must be considered an experiment, and a true concept album. Created over multiple sessions spanning nearly a decade, The Marfa Tapes was recorded using only two microphones and two acoustic guitars in the dusty West Texas Town that bares its name. In fact, much of the songwriting on The Marfa Tapes took place with Lambert, Ingram, and Randall actually sitting around a campfire. And what comes through on The Marfa Tapes is a trio who clearly cares deeply for each other, as well as a mutual admiration society with Lambert exclaiming “Nailed it!” on more than one occasion.
Where the magic happened—Marfa, Texas.
It’s ironic that an album named for a town couldn’t be any less about a destination. Instead The Marfa Tapes embraces the journey, more specifically the unique creative process used to create the record. And the choice to unplug and go back to the roots of just making music with no other agenda than to play songs together. The Marfa Tapes is paired down to nothing but musicianship and friendship. If you find yourself loving this record, it’s worth watching The Marfa Tapes film on Apple TV directed by Steven Peeples, to see the genuine chemistry between the artists.
If you’re looking for a studio mixed album, The Marfa Tapes won’t be for you. Production is incredible sparse, at times sounding like it was recorded on a phone. And while this warm crackle delivers the crunchiness of vinyl even on Spotify, there are times you’re left longing for cleaner takes. Attribute some of this to the experiment of The Marfa Tapes, and the choice to be vulnerable. As it says in the trailer “you got nothing else to lean on.” In Marfa, it’s just “sky, desert, and emotion.”
That said, The Marfa Tapes is a beautiful record, exquisite at times. A rare return to a record that seems to get better with every listen. Perhaps the process of how they recorded, in a small house in a small town, playing music around campfires and sitting on tailgates—added to the magic. One thing is for sure, there’s plenty of Marfa in the production from an airplane flying overhead on “Tequila Does,” to every guitar squeak, wind ripple, between-song-banter, hiss, creak, laugh, false start, cow moo and crackle —The Marfa Tapes is as unpolished as the town it’s named for.
The Marfa Tapes journey begins in 2015, around the time of Lambert’s very public divorce from Blake Shelton. Looking to get away from everything, Ingram and Randall joined Lambert and holed up in Marfa. Marfa became a sort of dustier Camp David, a place for the trio to forget everything except making music. Much of the Kristofferson-like magic of the album was recorded during this early time period when all three of the collaborators were dealing with conflict in their private lives. Lambert, Ingram, and Randall made a pact of sorts to commit to the depth and dirt of Marfa. “Let’s bleed out here,” they said.
Fans of Lambert will know that one of the songs created in this early Marfa session, 2017 CMA Song of the Year “Tin Man,” which is included here in its acoustic and raw form. But this is just the beginning, as the batch of early songs written in this 2015 Marfa session, are the real magic of the album. “The Wind’s Just Gonna Blow” reminds of Ryan Bingham’s “The Weary Kind.” It’s the sort of song that could keep you in your seats for the entire end credits at the movie theater. It offers a heavy happiness, with lyrics that will cut you to the bone reminding us all that just because a relationship ends doesn’t mean it didn’t matter, “Halo’s in the dresser drawer. I don’t wear my ring no more. Kids in time will learn to love us both.”
Perhaps the most intriguing character on The Marfa Tapes is Ingram. While Randall is clearly a load bearing wall throughout, Ingram is more of a flavoring agent, and his “Anchor” is the standout track on the album. Ingram comes across as an alpha, the sort of guy who can whistle with two fingers, cries less than it rains in West Texas, would only have condiments and a six pack in his fridge, and gruffly mumbles most of what he says. And while “Anchor” may very well be the best track on the record, sadly it benefits the least from the sparse production value as Ingram’s voice gets lost at times. Wait a minute . . .someone wrote a masterpiece that sounds a bit too sparse when he sings it himself, even though he’s cooler than anyone who will come on do it later on. Yep, sounds a bit like a Kristofferson record to me.
Expect “Anchor,” to be a song you hear again, likely rerecorded to much fanfare. Appropriately “Anchor” is the track with the most depth amid the dust of The Marfa Tapes. Ingram sings of the freedom of fully surrendering to love, equating it to the feeling of being pulled under water unable to breathe. Only to realize it’s actually easier when you let go, “When you give in, there’s a stillness and a comfort you can find. When you give up, there’s a salvation in the sweetest suicide.” Yes, old Jack Ingram is someone you best not let dance with your girl. He may not smile much, his jeans aren’t clean, but guarantee he knows how to two-step. And on “Anchor” he lets us all know drowning in someone is the fastest way to fly.
Also included in this batch of glorious early tracks about love and loss are Ingram’s “I Don’t Like It” as the second track on the record signals The Marfa Tapes is more of a super group than a one woman showcase for Lambert. “I Don’t Like It” is a simple and poignant love song about not wanting someone to walk away, and the creature comforts of just being there together in the everyday, “kiss me until the coffee’s cold.”
In total, The Marfa Tapes may have a half dozen of these Kristofferson-inspired gems. Bone honest tracks filled with love and loss and themes as timeless as the jeans and t-shirt they were recorded in. Songs that wouldn’t seem out of place if Rip Wheeler ever decided to put a jukebox into the bunkhouse at the Dutton Ranch. “Breaking a Heart” is achingly sad taking the time to show every breakup has two sides, “Goodbyes are never easy. I don’t know if the hardest part is being heart broken, or breaking a heart.” The Lambert-led “Ghost” is a song of strength, as she embraces moving-on completely unafraid as she burns a stack of pearl snap shirts and sees nary a silhouette in the smoke.
If you’re greedy enough to want more than a Kristofferson record from your next vinyl purchase, The Marfa Tapes is also chalk filled with a handful of new country standards that could light up the honky-tonk neon. “Am I Right, or Amarillo,” “Fried Green Tomatoes,” and “Two-Step Down to Texas” are a romping good time. Songs that sound so big the first time you hear them, you’ll swear they’re covers. Songs that could have been recorded fifty years ago, and will sound just as great around a campfire one hundred years from now.
This batch also includes “Geraldene,” an unapologetic trailer park cousin to Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” A standout for Lambert, “Geraldene” is delivered with a wink and a semi-automatic stutter that’ll have you dodging her spit. Lambert is most at home on this record equaling Ingram on “The Wind’s Just Gonna Blow,” and on the opening track, “In His Arms.” “In His Arms” is a cowboy song sure to provide listeners the same “border town buzz” the unique creative process recording this album clearly gave to Lambert.
It’s interesting that while already unquestioned hits, both “Tin Man” and “Tequila Does” both feel slightly out of place amid the dusty and sparse production value of The Marfa Tapes. Maybe it's the movie reference on “Tin Man” or the bar calling of “Tequila Does” that make those two songs feel like footnotes set against Marfa’s otherwise timeless landscape. Then again, any time you can rhyme “sombrero” with “Jose Cuervo,” you take that chance.
In the end, The Marfa Tapes gives us fifteen songs, and a record you could listen to one thousand times. And while we all can’t take off time to sit on tailgates and sip whiskey out of coffee cups, The Marfa Tapes will make you feel like you could. The record sounds a lot like the West Texas town that inspired it. A dry and dusty little place that goes to church on Sunday. Appropriately the album closes with a track titled “Amazing Grace,” a tip of the Stetson to “little bitty towns” just like Marfa (population 1,831), where “church bells ring,” and they pray for rain.
Only time will tell if Lambert, Ingram, and Randall found their amazing grace in Marfa. But one thing’s for sure, they gave it to all of us.
As for the town of Marfa. Let’s hope they finally get that rain, but not enough to put out the campfire.
