Classic Country

Miranda Lambert's a hammer, looking for a nail.

Her favorite color's pink, and she can be a girly girl, blonde and comely, with the kind of features you're used to seeing on the covers of fashion rags in the grocery store checkout line.

But she also knows how to gut a fish and likes to shoot wild animals -- think Barbie with a handgun.

Basically, the 25-year-old singer-songwriter isn't afraid of getting her hands dirty -- or bloody, depending on the scenario.

"I'm a crazy ex-girlfriend," she sings on the title cut of her second disc, a song about starting a bar brawl when Lambert sees her former beau out on the town with another gal.

In the video for her hit "Kerosene," Lambert burns down her boyfriend's house, and on the steely-eyed "Gunpowder & Lead," she sings of loading her shotgun and getting revenge on some fool who can't keep his hands to himself.

Hate to see what she'd do if you forgot to put the toilet seat down.

"Well, being born and bred Texan, I guess I've just got that fiery personality as part of my heritage," Lambert writes in a recent e-mail exchange. "I've learned to stand up for myself and not take any crap, so I suppose that self assertiveness holds true on and off the stage."

Of course, it's not all flying bullets and ducking dudes in Lambert's catalog.

There's a vulnerability in her songs as well -- on the breathy ballad "More Like Her," Lambert's voice flickers with longing as she sings of a former lover who returns to another woman's arms.

"She's beautiful in her simple little way," she purrs. "She don't have too much to say when she gets mad."

Unlike many of her peers, Lambert writes or co-writes the majority of her songs, and as such, they feel a little more reflective of the woman standing behind the mic.

"Songwriting isn't for everybody, I guess, but it comes first and foremost for me -- it's just always been like that," she says. "My dad taught me to play guitar and write songs when I was a teenager, and I do think songwriting is an art.

"I've been lucky in that I get to pour my heart out on my records, and so far fans really have responded well, but I know I want to keep growing as a songwriter," she adds. "There are so many talented songwriters in Nashville, and in country music in general, so with each record, I try to reach the next level. When I hear songs from some of my heroes, like Merle Haggard, I'm still blown away."

As Lambert alludes to, she's something of a traditionalist, a bit more of a throwback to the wizened sounds of the classic country era than the poppy and polished contemporary country ranks.

Early on in her career, while still in her teens, she left a Nashville recording session after becoming frustrated with the overly pre-fab nature of the material and returned home to learn guitar so that she could pen her own tunes.

Granted, Lambert's songs are still full of the kind of spit-shined hooks that Nashville has become known for in recent decades -- she's become a staple on the country airwaves in the past couple of years and first came to fame as a contestant on "Nashville Star" in 2003 -- but she's also the kind of plucky, earthy performer who can open up for honky-tonk elder statesman George Strait and Ronnie Milsap and not seem out of place, as she did in 2006.

"I truly do identify with old classic country," Lambert says. "Don't get me wrong, I love the contemporary stuff, too -- I was a huge Garth Brooks fan growing up -- but I've always related to more traditional country as it relates to my work."

And that makes sense considering where Lambert comes from.

She grew up in Lindale, Texas, which has a population of just over 5,000.

"Everybody dies famous in a small town," she sings on her hit "Famous in a Small Town," sounding decidedly nonplussed, like she'd rather be shooting deer than a shooting star.

"Coming home to the farm is always a good reality check," Lambert says. "My animals don't care about where I just performed or if I nailed every note. They're just looking for the lady with the feedbag."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.