Kacey Musgraves covers the latest issue of The Cut, and it’s all about her new album, her new vibe, going back to her country roots and more. I did not realize that she’s 35 years old! I thought she was a decade younger. I also didn’t realize that she had such a reputation as pothead, and that she’s completely given up weed at this point. She used to wake-and-bake every day, then her marriage fell apart, she sold her post-divorce f–k-you house and she learned how to be alone. Some highlights from The Cut:
The physics of the gravity bong. “It was a cutoff. It was a two-liter cut in half and then on the lid you put … I don’t know. You fashion some sort of socket or something.” Yes, the lyrics to her new song “Deeper Well” are true; she really used to wake up, hit her homemade gravity bong, get high off her face, and go about her day. And yes, much to the dismay of her stoner fans on the Kacey Musgraves sub-Reddit, the lyrics that come after — “I’m getting rid of habits that I feel / Are real good at wastin’ my time” — are also true. She really has given up weed.
No more stoner life: “It’s not for this chapter,” says Musgraves, who now, at 35, is in a different phase: a chiller, late-millennial, Zillow-is-my-favorite-thrill era where sleep and time in nature is a priority and anything that might make her anxious isn’t. Not that she’ll never revisit her stoner days. “Maybe later, when I’m a 60-year-old lady with nothing to do and I’m just doing pottery all day, maybe. We’ll see.”
Returning to her country roots: “It’s just funny because country music has been such a massive part of my life since I can remember. I literally grew up wearing rhinestones in fringe and cowboy hats and cowboy boots. It was my life… Country feels like home to me. It may come and go trend-wise in other genres, but there’s always something really timeless to me about it, whether it’s popular in pop music or not.”
Her life now at 35: “I definitely feel way more grounded now than in the past. I feel like my feet are firmly planted on the ground, and no matter what comes my way and tries to rock me, I feel more planted, if that makes sense. Also, I think turning 35, you’re like, I have less time for superfluous sh-t.”
She couldn’t be alone, so she sold her big house: “It’s always given me anxiety, and especially when you’re on the road a lot and you’re surrounded by people and it’s go, go, go, it’s fast paced. There’s a lot of stimulation. And then you go home and there’s no one there.” Some of it was her — youth and all that — and some of it was that house. “I didn’t feel super-settled. There was just something that was not fully at ease there.”
She got a cottage in the woods: “It’s a happy place, and it feels very neutral and clean and clear. There’s deer and fox and turkeys everywhere and cardinals. I luxuriate in my bed. I hang out with Pepper. I cook for friends. I get song ideas there. I have a sauna. I use that. I just feel like I’m more well there, and I just have gotten better at not being intimidated by alone time.”
See, I enjoy being/living alone but I could never do it if I was truly isolated in some cottage in the woods. That would make me panicky and uncomfortable, because I would feel endangered rather than peaceful. It would be too quiet, and I would feel like I was being watched! Kacey showcased her big post-divorce home to Architectural Digest a few years ago, and that’s the one she sold… to Kelsea Ballerini. As for quitting the weed… like, I lived that wake-and-bake life when I was in college, which was a very different time. I wouldn’t be able to function at any level if I was still getting high like that, so it’s amazing that she was able to be a high-functioning stoner for so much of her career? Also, gravity bongs are no f–king joke. One hit from a gravity bong and you really will be stoned off your face.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.