Miranda Lambert is gearing up to release her new album Postcards From Texas with a brand new label, after leaving longtime label Sony last year.

Now signed to Republic, Miranda went back to her Texas roots and co-produced the record alongside Jon Randall, and recorded all of the songs at Austin’s legendary Arlyn Recording Studios. She’s described it as “honky tonk as hell,” and I really believe it’s shaping up to be one of her best albums yet.

And while Miranda penned a lot of the songs with frequent collaborators in Luke Dick, Jack Ingram, Natalie Hemby and more, there’s a brand new co-writer featured on one of the already-released singles, “Dammit Randy” which is her husband, Brendan McLoughlin.

When I first read the writing credits for that song a little while back, I was surprised to see Brendan’s name and wondered how much writing he actually did… and it sounds like he did quite a bit.

On a recent episode of Bunnie XO’s Dumb Blonde podcast, Miranda told the story of what happened, and how it all started out when Brendan was talking some sh*t one day to Miranda and her co-writer, Jesse Frasure:

“My husband got his first cut on any record ever, and disclaimer, my husband is a retired police officer, not a songwriter. One day he was just talking sh*t to Jesse Frasure, he was like, ‘Writing’s not that hard! It’s easy.’ Jesse was like, ‘Oh, okay.’

So he made Brendan come in and do a literal write with me, and Jesse and Brendan. Like, he had tracks pulled up and he made Brendan sit there… he came from the golf course, he was in his golf outfit, and we were there for like four and a half hours, writing. I mean, it’s a lot. And he was like, ‘Oh, it is really hard.’ He taught him a lesson.”

So that was his first go at it, but not actually the session where they wrote “Dammit Randy.”

A while later, Jon and Miranda were doing some “pre-production” at her house (talking and drinking tequila) and naturally, started writing a song that was inspired by Miranda’s feelings about leaving Sony and a situation that no longer served her.

Before long, Brendan was piping in while watching a football game, putting those newfound songwriter skills to good use:

“We started writing this song, and Brendan kept piping in while he was watching football, and I was like, ‘Are we doing this? Are you in our out? You’re gonna have to turn the game off. You’re a songwriter, so get your pen out.’

We started writing it together, and he wrote some of the greatest lines in the song. And JR was looking at me like, he’s killing it.

It was really special, actually, because also the situation I wrote this song about, Brendan is my husband, so he’s had to hear me b*tch about it for so long that he kind of knew the story better than I did, you know? So he had the same emotion in it that I did and I’m real proud of him.”

Miranda told Bunnie that Brendan’s really excited about his first cut, and that he actually got a little “misty eyed” when she told him they’d cut it and played it for him for the first time:

“He’s super excited about it, too, like he came in in the afternoon and I was like, ‘I wanna play you something.’ Push play, and he’s like, he won’t say it but he got a little misty-eyed.

He was like, ‘You cut my song?’ It was awesome, and it’s one of my favorites on the record.’”

I think I’d shed some tears, too. I mean, what a cool moment, and it’s honestly really cool how that all played out so naturally and completely on accident, really.

I tend to agree with Miranda in that it’s one of my favorites from what I’ve heard so far off the album, too, and maybe Brendan has a future in songwriting now… who knew:

And if you haven’t heard the song yet, I know you’ll want to after reading that story: