Texas Wrangler

Lambert released an independent CD and continued to do hard time on the Texas music circuit, with her mother handling her booking and her dad sometimes paying the band with his own money. She also tried acting and worked at a department store, where she cleaned hanger racks and sorted underwear. She quit after two weeks.

Then, in 2003, Lambert tried out for a new USA Network talent show, "Nashville Star." She wound up flooring the program's producers at her Houston audition. "We knew we'd found someone special who'd really help put the show on the map," says H.T. Owens, an executive producer. "She was this incredible 19-year-old ingenue from the heartland of Texas who had so much talent."

Lambert didn't win the competition (she finished third to Buddy Jewell and runner-up John Arthur Martinez), but "Nashville Star" put her on an accelerated schedule to country stardom.

"The show was an incredible shot in the arm for her," Owens says. "But I think she would have made it anyway. I'll put it this way: Being on 'Nashville Star' wouldn't have been that helpful if she wasn't so great."

While Lambert has an effective voice, her true strength is her songwriting, which was deeply informed by her parents' work. That was especially true on "Kerosene."

"When I was writing for that album, I was 17 to 20 years old and I didn't have a lot of life to write about," she says. "So I was really taking from other experiences. This time around, I feel like I've lived a lot more and I feel like I have more soul to me than I did when I was 20. So a lot more of this album is me. But not all of it. 'Gunpowder & Lead' isn't me. It's more like a mini-movie -- though I'm not saying I wouldn't be like that if it came down to it."

Rick Lambert believes he knows exactly what inspired that song. "We used to take in abused women and their kids," he says. "Miranda's been moved out of her room several times to make room for a mother and her teenage daughter. She's heard me tell those wives, 'If he comes over here, he might get shot 'cause we're not going to take [guff] from anybody.' She saw these women break down and talk about how they were mentally and physically abused. She gleaned content just by listening. She did that a lot. We didn't hide anything from the kids. So the content of her songs doesn't surprise me."

Nor does her spitfire attitude. "People say: Where'd she get that anger? But it's not necessarily anger. It's a lifestyle." Just consider that guns-and-wings logo, he says. "You know what that means? It means if you jack with the Lamberts, we'll send you to heaven."

Radio Barriers

If you want to see Miranda Lambert get worked up, start talking about country radio, where the format's gatekeepers regard her as a bit too tough, or left of center. The men who program the format generally like Lambert but say she just hasn't delivered "that song."

It's mystifying that her singles never reached higher than No. 15 on Billboard's Hot Country chart, which is where the Molotov cocktail of a title track from "Kerosene" peaked. (Lambert, by the way, had to give Steve Earle co-writing credit on the song after realizing she'd swiped the melody from Earle's "I Feel Alright." "I pretty much ripped him off without realizing it," she says.)

Her struggle to break into the upper reaches of the singles charts is a festering wound. "I really don't understand radio at all," she says. "I don't feel like I'm too edgy or out there. A million people don't. I don't know what I could do differently. And if I did anything differently, I wouldn't be me. So I'm not going to. But I'm really frustrated."

Gregg Swedberg, program director for the Minneapolis-St. Paul country station KEEY, says Lambert "is one of the most talented females we've got." And: " 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' is an awfully good record." And: "I suspect that anybody who buys the album is going to be really happy they did." Yet Swedberg doesn't think there's anything like a hit on the CD. "I hear 11 really good songs, but I don't think there's a giant anthem.

" 'Gunpowder & Lead' is one of the nastiest songs I've heard in any genre, and I love it," he continues. "But I don't think it's a number one record because it's too angry."

Joe Galante, chairman of Sony BMG Nashville, says Lambert's struggles to break through on radio seem strangely familiar. "I've been through this before: I worked Waylon in the '70s, and heck -- we didn't have a Top 10 with him for six years." Galante's message to Lambert: "It's the same thing we tell all our artists -- you have to show patience. Some people are going to be late to the game with her, but so be it. They'll catch up eventually."

Even if, for now, it makes her crazy.

Miranda Lambert will appear in concert with Toby Keith on July 14 at Nissan Pavilion.