NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Now that Miranda Lambert has swept the major country music awards for album of the year, she faces a daunting prospect: Topping "Revolution."
"I'll probably be panicked the night before my new record comes out because I love 'Revolution' still and I can't even imagine starting on a new record," Lambert said in an interview earlier this month.
"But I know I've got to and I know that I don't need to compare myself to myself. I've just got to keep doing what I do and moving forward. But, yes, I'm so freakin' nervous."
Lambert's last album, released in September 2009, went platinum, spawned two No. 1 hits and helped her win three awards at the CMAs earlier this month and three more at the Academy of Country Music Awards last April. The good times will continue for Lambert on Wednesday, when she performs during the hourlong CBS television special when Grammy nominations are announced.
And, her tour with Eric Church and Josh Kelley continues into the new year.
It's on her tour bus with Church and Kelley, brother of Lady Antebellum's Charles Kelley, where she's slowly been gathering the songs that might be candidates for her next album. She said the guitar came out the first weekend they were on tour together and so far she's written four songs with Church and three with Church and Kelley.
"It's kind of crazy," she said. "I guess when you have three writers and musicians on a tour together, some music is going to be made somewhere. It's a blast."
Church, whose 2009 album "Carolina" drew plenty of attention, is excited about the songs that have come out of those sessions.
"We're a lot alike," he said of Lambert. "She's kind of the female version of me. We grew up listening to the same kind of music and we write great songs together. We do a lot of that, as much as we can on the road. ... Hopefully the songs will turn up on each other's records."
