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.
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- BEVERLY HILLS, CA – APRIL 02: Kacey Musgraves attends the 33rd Annual GLAAD Media Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on April 02, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California.,Image: 679702543, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Kacey Musgraves, Credit line: Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon
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- Kacey Musgraves performing on the Other Stage during the Glastonbury Festival on Sunday, Jun. 26, 2022 at Worthy Farm .,Image: 702977304, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Julie Edwards / Avalon
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- Kacey Musgraves attends the Broadway Opening Night of “Shucked” at The Nederlander Theatre in New York, New York, USA on April 4, 2023.,Image: 767271558, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Kacey Musgraves, Credit line: Robin Platzer / Twin Images / Avalon
I have a number of friends who smoke pot and/or do edibles but I have never used marijuana myself. I’m obviously not down with the lingo because I have never heard of a gravity bong before. Is it bigger than a regular bong? Does it have more weed in it? What’s the extra component that makes a bong a gravity bong rather than a regular bong? Stoners, help me understand, please!
A gravity bong is basically taking a whole pipe worth of weed in one hit. Also there is water… take a two liter cut off the bottom. Put it in a bucket of water. The two liter rests all the way down in the water with the top poking out. You screw a pipes worth of weed to the top and slowly pull up the two liter which fills with smoke, unscrew the top and inhale a two liter worth of smoke,
Oooohhh! Okay, got it. Thank you, @smegmoria!
For the bowl, take the bowl from a metal pipe that unscrews. Take the lid from the two liter and melt a small hole in the lid. Then shove the tip of the bowl into the hole and melt the plastic around the bowl so it is airtight.
I dont do drugs and have no idea what it feels like and what that lifestyle is like, I just know that a big house doesn’t necessarily make it great for one person or even a family. I have an ordinary size house and I always hang out in the same few spots, my guests always naturally hang around the same spots too except my bedroom. Those make me feel truly at home. I can’t imagine having those huge mansions with like 30 rooms, and living alone in it. Our cottage house in the “semi” woods is even smaller and we hang out in even less spaces. I think it’s natural to be “nesting” in small spaces, like animals? Bigger spaces is better than a large number of rooms in my opinion.
We have a smaller house in the suburbs/kind of rural part of town we are in and I love it. We have made it our haven for sure. It has just eno HH space for our small family, plus chickens and two biggish dogs. If I want more of anything it’s land and privacy. I wish I could take our home and plop it down in the middle of the woods. When we made plans to renovate, I was very clear that I wanted to keep the basic structure and floor plan of the home. I don’t like stairs. I didn’t want to tear down walls. I like rooms, and while the backside of our home is a more open floor plan, the front has a small receiving room and a hallway to the bedrooms and bathrooms. If anything I wanted higher ceilings. There are eventual plans for an office for me over the garage, but that means stairs, which again I don’t love AND it’s the most expensive project on the docket so it’s not happening for at least five years. We focused instead on converting our sunroom to a four season dining room and opening it up from the kitchen and den in the back, then the backyard with a beautiful wraparound deck. Anyway my point is our house is like 1500sqft and we love that it’s small. People do remark on it especially if they’re taller/larger people than us or are “new money” – one girl told my daughter she felt sorry for her bc she has a small bedroom. Not everyone wants to live in a McMansion with a “design” that’s just the centerfold of PBKids, Avaunaleigh.
She looks way older than 35, maybe its the lip fillers?
So i don’t get Kaiser’s comment that she thought that she is a decade younger 😒
Same 😬 she was obviously does not look a decade younger than her current age
I’m with her. After a certain age pot was just kind of tiresome, both for me on my own terms and also hanging out with people who smoke. I don’t get people who are 45 and get excited about new strains or edibles or whatever. If you want to relax Just read a good book and take a nap and you will not get that cough or smell bad or lose your erectile function.
I see Cannabis as akin to wine: there different vintages, various tannins, different regions of grape growth, etc, etc…I personally don’t like wine, but I do see their parallels in that sense, as there are wine enthusiasts (with entire cellars dedicated to the stuff!!) and Cannabis enthusiasts 🙂
ETA: didn’t mean to reply to you specifically @ Chaine! It was just a comment in general!! Sorry!
ageism! women at 60 have plenty to do. geez
YES. Plenty to do. Such as working full-time!! I found that remark pretty offensive and dismissive, but I also remember how “old” 60 seemed when I was 35. I like Kacey a lot so I’m choosing to give her a pass on this one.
@ooshpick and @deesa didn’t it sound more like what Kacey was saying she might want for herself at that time in her life, not a general proclamation for any woman in her 60s?
While I do think Kacey means personally for herself, I understand what you mean! I recently read Successful Aging which is a comprehensive explanation of the MacArthur Study of the same name and it really helped me shift my perspective and understanding on aging in the US. I’ve never been afraid of getting older and I’ve never been one to mourn my age, I love my birthday 😂 but it was a very informative read. One thing they touch on is productivity and how our culture doesn’t value unpaid labor like volunteer work which is partly why we have such a bias towards older Americans. But there are so many jobs paid and unpaid that older people do/could do that contribute to our society and our society could not run without them. The word “useful” comes up a lot when they interview subjects from the study.
I took it to me that she plans on accomplishing her career goals prior to then.
She is one of my favorite artists. Golden Hour was one of my Covid playlists. This album is really good and already getting a lot of play in my house. I just love her.
I actually like quite a bit of her stuff; until a local community radio station played Slow Burn I had not ever been interested in hearing her music. I feel like she has the faintest touch of Gretchen Wilson about her, she comes across as “I’m from a redneck family and I got a bad attitude but I’m learning and trying to get away from that.”
I will say as someone who doesn’t do drugs and never has (except the one attempt at weed in my late teens which I hated and never touched again), I don’t love that a fair few of her songs reference how much she enjoys it (or enjoyed it at that time in her life). I also happen to live in one of the most marijuana-friendly states in the US, so I’m surrounded by the culture – it literally permeates the atmosphere if you catch my drift. It can be a lot. I voted to legalize it here, I just wish people would chill a little bit more. When your kids are getting in my car to go to school and the smell is coming off their clothes then maybe cut back a little.
LOL at the number of people making sure to comment that they don’t do drugs/have never tried weed.
DARE really did a number on a whole generation of kids.
Yup, I was one of those DARE kids in the 80s and 90s. Plus, substance abuse is rampant on both sides of my family. I’ve managed to avoid damn near everything and got into yoga instead.
I love weed, but only in edible form these days, and not too much or too often. It’s taken me many years to figure out what works for me, but I love love love weed. DARE did nothing for me. 😂
Actually multiple studies have shown that the DARE program more often than not had the opposite effect.
American Hysteria has a good episode on it.
or maybe it’s just people stating a fact about themselves to try to give or find context to something they have no experience in? or still trying to find a way to connect to someone who does? neither doing weed nor not doing weed is something to be proud or ashamed of.
It’s just a bit funny that people feel the need to let us know – like they are running for US president in the 90s. No judgement, or anything but there are more weed shops in my neighbourhood than coffee shops. It’s legal. It’s part of life. If you do it or don’t do it, it doesn’t say much about you.
I never touched drugs until cancer came to visit. After some truly horrible chemo, I got pretty ill from the side effects of the anti-emetics, and OMG was I grateful to the voters in my state for making marjuana legal. I could have gotten my medical card, but it’s pretty expensive, and I was glad to be able to try them first. Now that I am in my first remission, I am totally unable to drink alcohol – it makes me violently ill. So I take tiny nibbles on an edible when I have pain or nausea or anxiety – maybe once every 6 weeks. My mother died of lung cancer, so smoking is a HUGE no-no for me, but small amounts of edibles, for certain people, are a lifesaver, and being able to buy them and know they are regulated (and not getting them from some illegal seller on the street), is a blessing.
Does anybody out there look good with lip fillers?
I can’t understand why people who would be beautiful are ruining their looks like this.
I think the same thing every time I see her. I love her voice, have followed her music for years and was taken with her natural beauty when I first saw her.
It bums me out that she’s doing lip fillers. It’s taken away from her pretty features and looks weird as always.
I agree! Lip fillers do most people no favors.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s adhd like me. I spent decades high every day and was uber productive. It helped me focus and put anxiety at ease. I quit for 15 years and then oh I have depression, I have anxiety, I have pmdd. I tried so many rx and now here I am 42 and back to what was ok for me. Meditation and yoga and time in nature help me so much and a cottage in the woods is my daydream. But yeah until the everyday grind of raising littles is done I’ll be using herb during pmdd week and getting by.
I saw Kacey perform Deeper Well a few weeks ago on SNL, the lyrics of which reeeeally spelled out this shift in her lifestyle… so specific! Lol. But I was really impressed she put that personal story out there, and I had no idea KM and I were on such a similar path.
I smoked/edibled/tinctured my way through the last 7-8 years or so (marriage collapsing, covid-times, a terrible family accident, continued issues with my ex), and I am now quite happily on the other side of it as well. Prior to being a daily THC-gal for that time, it was an occasional treat when hanging with friends, or social activities, not like I had started from complete scratch. Its been about 3 months without it for me, so I know its still new, and I do crave it sometimes, but I feel so good in other ways that I had missed, that I am not looking to restart.
I truly don’t think it’s bad for anyone to consume on a daily basis, or that it is better to abstain or anything, but it had become unhealthy for me in a number of different connected ways. I’m sure that for me, being a woman north of 35 is a big part of it. It just isn’t serving me in my current lifestyle and I’m slowly finding out who I am and how I feel (emotion & body) without being high every day. Pros and cons all over the place… haha.
I always forget that I enjoy her music as well (she falls off my radar for some reason??), and really liked Golden Hour; her voice is beautiful! Good for Kacey! It can be tough when you have a community around you into the same things you are too, and then you shift away from that.
Do what works works for you in life, truly!
Also, I would LOVE to have a small quiet woodland cabin homestead out in the middle of nowhere, dream house! Just wish I had that Musgraves $$ to buy it…
Her ex husband was a recovering addict so always found it interesting that she was such a stoner …so it wasn’t so shocking when they broke up-(true it’s possible to stay sober whilst married to someone who doe’s drugs recreationally BUT i imagine it’s difficult awkward and adds strain to a marriage. Anyway excited for her new album (she got into a new relationship and broke up with him) so you know her songs are going to be amazing. I hope she stops messing with her face-she is such a beautiful woman who and was so sad to see her kardashian Frankenstein lips.
Weed isn’t a drug in many countries of the world, such as Canada.
All the people posting ‘ I don’t do drugs’. Why bother? What do you want, a cookie? So lame.
In posts that talk about drinking, people will share their own stories on not drinking either as a life long habit or a recent change. This is no different.
I listened to her new album twice this weekend and LOVE it so much.
She really has leaned into that “Kardashian” look hasn’t she? She looks her age or maybe a little older.
She is very talented though, and I really like her new album.