Kacey Musgraves stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday night to perform “Arm’s Length,” a song that appeared on Deeper Well: Deeper Into the Well, the expanded edition of her acclaimed 2024 album Deeper Well.
Bathed in reverb and backed by her denim-donned five-piece band, Musgraves provides a gorgeous rendition of “Arm’s Length.” Despite such a warm arrangement, Musgraves sings of a relationship rendered cold and distant: “I gave you water/ But I couldn’t make you drink/ Keepin’ me just within reach/ Always holding me at arms length,” she sings as the band behind her swells. Watch her performance of “Arm’s Length” below.
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Musgraves also sat for an interview with Colbert on Monday night to discuss Deeper Well, her long road to stardom, and her connection with the late songwriter John Prine. When asked by Colbert about the song “Cardinal” — the opening track on Deeper Well — Musgraves claimed the song was written about Prine, whom she considered to be a mentor.
“We did have a special connection, and he was a dear friend. And I don’t know, after he passed there were some interesting little things that would start happening, and one of them was a cardinal that would come visit almost every day… it would stare at me through this window, and it struck me as a song idea,” she said.
When asked about her friendship with Prine, Musgraves expressed a great deal of reverence. “His whole family was super welcoming… he was exactly like you’d think he would be, super funny, always telling stories,” she said. “When we got to write, we actually didn’t really get into finishing a song because I was just listening to all of his stories. He was a songwriter’s songwriter, such a storyteller, a magician with words, definitely gone too soon… but he is woven into the fabric of American music.”
She also told the story of trying to smoke weed with Prine in Nashville — after writing the song “Burn One with John Prine,” getting high with the folk icon was an item on Musgraves’ bucket list. When she snuck backstage to meet him in Nashville one night, she finally got the chance to ask him. “I was like, ‘Hey, this might be a weird question, but do you want to go burn one out in the parking lot?’ And he was like, ‘I’ve had throat cancer. No.'” Eventually, the song made its way to Prine, who put two and two together and eventually befriended Musgraves. Watch her full appearance on Colbert below.
Musgraves has a handful of tour dates left on her “Deeper Well Tour.” Get tickets here. Meanwhile, revisit our review of Deeper Well, which we named as one of the best albums of 2024 so far.
