Miranda Lambert Overcome With Emotion While Performing ‘The House That Built Me’

Miranda Lambert had an emotional moment during her show at the Guthrie’s River Ruckus Festival in Guthrie Center, Iowa over the weekend, her first concert since losing her dog Jessie last week. A video taken by a fan shows the singer starting to sing her 2010 hit “The House That Built Me” before stepping away from the microphone, visibly overcome as she wiped a tear from her face.

The crowd took over for her, and her backing vocalist Gwen Sebastian gave her friend a hug and a kiss on the cheek as the spotlight was taken off Lambert and put onto the audience. The Texas native began to sing once the song was into its second verse, though she had a difficult time getting through the poignant song. Lambert recently became emotional while singing “The House That Built Me” during a show at Billy Bob’s Texas in April, her first since the pandemic, and she told CMT‘s Cody Alan that there’s always a chance she’ll cry when she performs the song.

“I expect to cry when playing ‘The House That Built Me,’ like I always know there’s a possibility, especially if I am playing in Texas. Especially if I know my family is there,” she said. “Billy Bob’s was kind of a honkytonk ‘house’ that built ME. So, I felt like I knew I was going to get a little bit teary, but I actually just ugly cried. That was my first time back, and I had not been on the stage in 401 days or something, and I felt it.”

On Thursday, Lambert told fans that her dog Jessi had passed away. “Today we had to say goodbye to our sweet Jessi,” she captioned a series of photos of the dog, sharing that she “got to love” Jessi and “be her mom” for 13 and a half years. Jessi’s brother, Waylon, died in October, and Lambert wrote that “Today they are reunited at the rainbow bridge.”

“We sent her off with the song ‘Storms Never Last’ from the same record she heard playing the first time I put her in my truck,” she continued. “I can’t put into words what a dog’s love does to a heart. But if you have one you already know.”