From Nashville to Madonna: Kacey Musgraves brings country lovers and pop fans together with a soothing show

They stand shoulder to shoulder, two men, one about twenty years older than the other. One person’s T-shirt features the logo of country rock band Drive-By Truckers, while his neighbor’s has a photo of Beyoncé. And no, not one from her current country phase; it’s Beyoncé as a shiny disco robot, circa Renaissance (2022). In any case, it’s good to spot shirts in Paradiso, Amsterdam at the first of two sold-out Kacey Musgraves concerts. Nashville, beer brand Miller, but also Madonna and Lana Del Rey. Musgraves brings them all together.

The American country pop singer and seven-time Grammy winner released a beautiful new album last month (five balls in NRC). On Deeper Well she once again shows why she attracts such a wide audience, with as many country fans as pop fans: tender songwriting without frills, colored with arrangements full of idiosyncratic details. To bring these arrangements to life, the Paradiso stage is packed with instruments down to the last centimeter. At first glance we already count twelve guitars – and that’s not even counting the two banjos and the pedal steel.

First her eight-piece band appears on the scene, and then the Texan herself. She looks like a French yé-yé singer in a black mini dress with long sleeves, high boots and a sixties France Gall hairstyle. She really regrets that: “It is very hot here, under that pony. Why am I wearing a sweater?!,” she jokes halfway through the concert.

Pleasant warmth

At the first notes of folk rock song ‘Cardinal’ the audience is immediately showered with a soothing warmth. Her band is very good, yes, but the quality of the sound is especially striking: crystal clear, yet warm. It almost has something old-fashioned: nine excellent musicians, closely packed, with excellent sound. It’s basically like Kacey’s songs; it seems simple, but such quality is rare.

Kacey makes it look easy, like she doesn’t mind doing it. She laughs at herself when she loses her lines and throws in witty interjections while singing. „I need all your love, not just one piece, hoping that it ain’t too much for me to ask”, she sings in ‘Giver/Taker’, a vulnerable ballad. And then, as a dry aside: “It was.”

Musgraves’ songs are about her own life, she is not secretive about that. Golden Hour (2018) was about her marriage, Star Crossed (2021) about her divorce, and Deeper Well is about healing that pain and finding love again. That new love was over when the album was released.

„A lot of life has happened since the last time I was here”, she says, looking back on the last time she played in the Netherlands, in 2019. Older songs about the narrow-minded Texan village where she grew up (‘Merry Go Round’, 2012) and the now lost marital happiness (‘Butterflies’, 2018) give they offer subtle new arrangements, such as time and life experience, new perspectives. Her songs are full of memories, but Musgraves emphasizes the importance of the here and now: “This experience that we are living now, with these people around us, will never happen again,” she says. She seems to want to look everyone in the audience straight in the eye, one by one. “All I ask of you is that you be present in this moment. And I’ll be right here with ya.”

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