There’s a sign at the edge of Golden, Texas — population about 200, deep in Wood County, east of Dallas — that reads: “Golden, TX: Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere.” Kacey Musgraves grew up reading it, and she named her sixth studio album after it, which tells you something about what she came home to on this record.
Middle of Nowhere dropped May 1 and is the most country-sounding thing she’s made since Same Trailer Different Park in 2013, maybe more so. Saving Country Music gave it an 8.4 and called it “the most country-sounding Musgraves has been to date” — not a phrase anyone was throwing around during Star-Crossed or Golden Hour. Paul Franklin is on steel guitar throughout. Willie Nelson shows up. So does Miranda Lambert, who grew up in Lindale, not far east of Golden, and whose duet with Musgraves on “Horses and Divorces” is the kind of East Texas convergence that makes traditional country believers want to call their friends at midnight.
She worked up to this run the right way. In early May, she played three nights at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels — the oldest operating dance hall in Texas, built in 1878, capacity in the hundreds — before the arena portion of the Middle of Nowhere Tour launched August 21, her 38th birthday, at the United Center in Chicago. From Gruene Hall to the United Center in less than four months. That arc is worth tracking.
Now she’s home, for two nights. Night one is October 7. Night two — this show — is Thursday, October 8, at Moody Center. William Beckmann opens: another Texas voice, fitting company for this particular homecoming.
I’ll say this: the stretch from Golden Hour through Star-Crossed to Deeper Well was Musgraves finding out how far the orbit could go — and it went far, and it was worth the distance. Middle of Nowhere is not a retreat from any of that. It’s a return, which is different. You come back to the origin carrying everything you learned on the way out. The sign in Golden never changed. The music around it did.
Moody Center, 2001 Robert Dedman Dr., Austin. Thursday, October 8. Showtime 7:30 PM. All ages. Tickets via Ticketmaster.