When Miranda Lambert penned “Hello Shitty Day” with Jesse Frasure, Jessie Jo Dillon, and George Strait hit machine Dean Dillon, she knew just who she wanted to record the song: Jake Worthington, a rising honky-tonker who shares her reverence for traditional Texas music and barroom weepers.
“Jake was the first person I thought of to sing it,” Lambert says of the new tune, released September 27. “We’re both Texans who grew up on the same traditional country music, and I love watching his star rise. I was really proud to hear that he wanted to cut this song for his project, and I was thrilled to sing on it with him.”
The La Porte–raised Worthington, however, never expected to receive a call from the Grammy winner about a song she wrote with his voice in mind. Though Worthington has earned accolades from country icons, such as Lambert and Ronnie Dunn, and his stone-cold country, drum machine–averse peers (he’ll join fellow traditionalist Zach Top on tour next year), he has yet to reach the chart or album-sales success of some of Lambert’s other collaborators.
“I got records that went aluminum, you know what I mean?” Worthington jokes. “It really meant a lot that she . . . not only sent the song my way but decided she could be a part of it. Coming from where she comes from, I think I speak for quite a few songwriters and singers—she dang sure opened the doors to a lot of folks down here.”
Teaming up with Worthington is the latest element of Lambert’s Texas homecoming. Last year the singer cofounded Big Loud Texas, an imprint of the record label Big Loud that’s dedicated to elevating singer-songwriters in the Lone Star State. Her new album, Postcards From Texas (released September 13), is the first album she’s recorded in a Texas studio since she was a teenager.
Postcards finds her writing with fellow Texans Shane McAnally, who cowrote Lambert’s hit “Mama’s Broken Heart,” and Jack Ingram. Her three “Hello Shitty Day” cowriters make an appearance too, cowriting “Santa Fe,” on which Lambert duets with Conroe-raised Parker McCollum. Her latest career turn is reminiscent of Willie leaving Nashville to search for more creative freedom in 1970s Austin. Only this time, Lambert is bridging the gap between Texas and Nashville.
“Hello Shitty Day,” inspired by a dreary day at a writing retreat, even sounds like a lost track from the Red Headed Stranger, with Lambert adding an echoey “hello, hello” that evokes Willie’s “Hello Walls.” “I thought, ‘Holy cow, she just came in and smoked it,’ ” Worthington says of Lambert’s vocals on the song. Against the backdrop of a saloon piano and lonesome fiddles, the two artists sing about a pair of down-on-their-luck, heartbroken souls taking solace in a humdrum day.
“Hello shitty day / Glad you came my way,” Worthington and Lambert sing. “Brought all this pain and all of this rain / Washed my joy away / I was doin’ just fine / In this world of mine / Now the skies are all gray and all I can say is / Hello shitty day.”
Both Worthington and Lambert were raised on music born of the dance halls and honky-tonks of Texas, which sparked a deep appreciation for what is arguably one of the state’s greatest artistic exports: songwriters. Both took pit stops on reality television singing competitions (The Voice for Worthington; Nashville Star for Lambert), which gave them an early lesson on refusing to bend to the whims of music-industry tastemakers—not that either of them needed much guidance on staying true to their roots.
While Worthington says he’s never “flat-out asked” Lambert for career advice (“I’ve just enjoyed being able to pick and grin and shoot the bull,” he says), Lambert’s twenty-plus-year career has served as a guidepost for him.
“My hat’s off to her. . . . I can only hope that I show the same level of authenticity there,” Worthington says. “I don’t see why I wouldn’t. I’m too hardheaded to change in a lot of ways, I reckon.”
Like Lambert, he has remained devoted to making the country music he was raised on—something television producers and label execs didn’t always recognize. “When you’re going on TV and you’re seventeen years old, I’m not too sure there’s a whole lot of folks on there that knew nothing about no Gary Stewart music, like I might have,” he says. “I just think they need a cold Lone Star beer and a barstool and to put some Gary Stewart music on, and all the stars will align.”
With Big Loud Texas, Lambert has created a home for like-minded spirits right in the heart of Texas, operated by folks—including label cofounder Jon Randall—who know their way around the kind of joint that’s always stocked with “the National Beer of Texas.”
And Worthington is grateful for it. “There’s an abundance of the independent spirit that’s in all of us down here,” he says. “It’s really cool to see a label go up in Austin. I think it’s even cooler that somebody like Miranda and Jon are on the forefront of that. . . . I hear them old glory days stories [about] when there used to be some players in the game—labels in Texas. It’s really great for our music. It’s going to give a lot of songwriters and singers a new avenue. And it’s great for the state of Texas.”
