How Miranda Lambert became country's queen without ever kissing the ring
When Miranda Lambert was preparing to open her Casa Rosa Tex-Mex Cantina here last year — it sits across a busy stretch of Lower Broadway from Jason Aldean's Kitchen + Rooftop Bar and just a few doors down from the joint owned by Lambert's ex-husband Blake Shelton — someone on the country singer's team tried to convince her to make a prominent space for the oversize birdcage she occupies in the music video for her 2019 hit "Bluebird."
Lambert had misgivings.
Jammed with memorabilia from her nearly two-decade career, the black-and-pink-bathed Casa Rosa is the first of Nashville's many celebrity saloons to be branded by a female country star; as such, she was after a certain vibe.
"It had to be, like, girly," she said. "Nashville is No. 1 for bachelorette parties" — the city not long ago surpassed Las Vegas for that title, according to Lambert — "so I want them to have somewhere they can feel comfortable because it's a female-driven bar." She laughed.
"I'm not having girls dancing in cages here."
Lambert settled on putting the prop in a corner of the VIP balcony, mostly out of sight of any potential leering dudes, above Casa Rosa's main stage, which is where she was rehearsing on a recent evening ahead of a launch party for her excellent new album,
