Thomas Rhett ‘Got Emotional’ Watching Miranda Lambert Break Down at First Concert in Over a Year

Miranda Lambert recently played a series of shows at Billy Bob’s Texas, marking her first shows in front of an audience in over a year. Footage from the first concert shows the singer becoming emotional during her set, and Thomas Rhett shared that he felt the same while watching virtually. “I got emotional just watching her be emotional,” Rhett told Taste of Country.

He continued, “It’s one of those things like, when you do anything for a living and it’s taken away from you for over a year and you get to go back to do that thing that you love and it’s reciprocated with such gratitude — like, man, as much as we miss playing, other people miss that as much.” The 31-year-old added during a recent chat with media that “just getting to watch people’s reaction to someone singing on stage and getting to watch her reaction to hear people singing her words back to her” was “intoxicating, in a way, and it’s a feeling that you can’t really replicate without a real live audience.”

Rhett is heading to Billy Bob’s for some shows of his own this month before setting out on his The Center Point Road Tour later this year, sharing that he is “so pumped” to be able to play for fans again. “To say that I’m excited is an understatement, especially just getting back in the band and with the band and getting to rehearse for these shows, it’s something that we’ve missed so bad,” he declared. “Like a little part of our heart was missing, and now it’s starting to reform. I’m very, very pumped.”

Rhett and his band are busy working on their upcoming shows, which Rhett admitted has been “somewhat of a shock” after not being able to play so much new material, including his latest album, Country Again: Side A, for fans before hitting the road.

“Usually you have some feelers of going, ‘Okay, we played this song a couple of times last year and it worked or it didn’t work,’” he explained. “We have no gauge. Nobody has a gauge of anything. It’s like you’re just shooting in the dark here. But it’s kind of fun, too, because then you get to try a whole bunch of stuff out on the road and curate your set as the year goes along, because it’s the first time we’ve got to do it in a year and a half.”

The “Country Again” singer’s shows in Texas will also be the first opportunity for his 1-year-old daughter, Lennon Love, to see her dad on stage. “It’s crazy that my daughter, Lennon, was born in February of 2020, so she’s never actually gotten to see me do anything musical,” Rhett said, “so my whole family will get to come to Texas and that’ll be Lennon’s first time to see me play a show.”