Miranda Lambert Drops New Solo Acoustic Lament, ‘They’ve Closed Down the Honky Tonks’ [LISTEN]

Miranda Lambert sticks with a very stripped-down vibe for a new solo track that she released online early Tuesday morning (May 18). The country superstar offers up a very traditional country approach to "They've Closed Down the Honky Tonks," which fans can check out below.

The new song is very much in the same vein as Lambert's collaboration with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall on The Marfa Tapes, a raw, completely acoustic collaborative project that the three longtime friends recently released to document their regular songwriting pilgrimages to the small town of Marfa, Texas.

That project captures the initial, unadorned acoustic demos that they recorded on the spot, and that's the same approach Lambert takes for "They've Closed Down the Honky Tonks," which she wrote by herself in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as the music business began to shut down.

"Y’all they’ve closed down the honky-tonks / And now my world ain’t turning / The jukebox ran out of change / And the neon lights ain’t buzzing / There ain’t nothin’ sadder / Than covering Haggard / And nobody singing along / Y’all they’ve closed down the honky tonks," she sings in the chorus of the slow, dirge-like waltz.

"They've Closed Down the Honky Tonks" appears in the newly released The Marfa Tapes Film documentary, which director Spencer Peeples filmed over the course of five days of recording in the West Texas town in November of 2020. The film includes music performances, interviews and behind-the-scenes footage of the sessions in Marfa, and it's currently streaming on Apple TV.

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