Miranda Lambert Joins Jack Ingram + Jon Randall for Stripped-Down ACMs Performance

Miranda Lambert shared songs from opposite ends of the musical spectrum during the 2021 ACM Awards on Sunday night (April 18) in Nashville. After opening the broadcast with a raucous duet with Elle King, she stripped her music down to a bare minimum for a joint performance with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall, singing "In His Arms."

Donning an all-denim outfit and a cowboy hat that looked awfully comfortable on the Texan's head, Lambert looked in her element as she sang the touching song with Ingram and Randall by her socially distanced side. The subdued stage setup, which simply featured the talented trio sitting on their respective stools with their guitars on their laps, allowed the song and the magic of the harmonies shine.

Lambert, Ingram and Randall are old friends, and they have made frequent songwriting trips to the small town of Marfa, Texas, over the years, where they have written and recorded a long string of songs, While some of those songs have seen the light on Lambert's albums over the years, a number of them have gone unrecorded other than the original acoustic demos recorded in Marfa. The trio have collected those raw tracks into an album titled The Marfa Tapes, which is set for release on May 7.

"In His Arms" is one of the songs from that project. In an interview with Taste of Country on Saturday evening (April 17) prior to the ACMs, Lambert said the project might have gone unreleased in a normal year, crediting the pandemic for giving the unreleased songs the chance to see the light of day.

"I don't think I would have gotten to do that if there wasn't a break in the normal sequence of things," she said. "Sometimes you write a bunch of songs that just disappear into this abyss of work tapes and demo land or whatever. And I think this year, people are ready to hear different types of versions of songs from artists they may already follow, or not. But I think last year gave me the freedom to do that."

Lambert opened the 2021 ACM Awards by performing "Drunk (and I Don't Wanna Go Home)" alongside Elle King. She is nominated five times in the ACMs, which air live on CBS and stream live on Paramount+. Sign up for the streaming service here.