A star-studded show for a great cause.
Last night, Miranda Lambert put on her first-ever Music for Mutts benefit concert, which raised money for her MuttNation Foundation that she founded as a 501c3 nonprofit with her mother, Bev, in 2009. She has already donated over $100,000 to Hurricane Helene relief through the origination, so I can only imagine this will increase that number quite a bit.
She had surprise guests like Riley Green, and of course, did a few performances with her openers in Jake Worthington (who just singed with her label Big Loud Texas), as well as Lukas Nelson, who joined her for a very special song.
Sadly, country music icon Kris Kristofferson passed away at the age of 88 years old this weekend. He was at his home in Maui, Hawaii. Of course, he will be greatly missed, and his contributions to not only he country genre, the music world in general, cannot be overstated.
Seeing as he’s a musical hero to both Miranda and Lukas (who knew him growing up since he was close friends with his father, Willie), they decided to honor him with a duet of his friend, Merle Haggard’s, “Silver Wings.” Miranda had performed it with Kris a few times throughout her career, but she had to get Lukas away from the cute MuttNation puppies first…
“Y’all, we literally had to kick him out of the dressing room a while ago because was holding a puppy for like five hours. Him and the puppy were both asleep, I was like dude, we gotta go rock soon, you gotta get up.”
Miranda called singing with Kris a “highlight” of her life:
“Well, one of our dear, dear friends and heroes just passed, away, Mr. Kris Kristofferson. And I got to sing this next song with him a couple of times and it was one of the biggest highlights of my career.
So Lukas and I decided we would do a Merle song, because we know Kris loved Merle, right? We’re gonna do y’all a little Hag tonight.”
Of course, “Silver Wings” was included on Merle’s 1969 album A Portrait of Merle Haggard. A solo write from the record, it’s all about Merle’s heartbreak when the woman he loves gets on a plane to go somewhere far away and leaves him lonely back home.
It’s still beloved by fans to this day (even though it was never released as a single and it definitely should’ve been), and has remained a country classic for 55 years now.
I can’t get over what an amazing job they did. It’s so special to see two incredibly talented artists honor their friend and hero like this, and it goes without saying that they sound absolutely perfect. From a music standpoint, the two Texans are a natural fit, and I’d love to hear a lot more form the two of them together.
Inject this into my veins, please…
Here’s Miranda performing at Merle Haggard’s Kennedy Centers Honors ceremony in 2010: