Tough country

She was sitting by the door one night with a gun, waiting for her abusive man to come home from jail. She once stalked an ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend and confronted them in a pool hall. It wasn’t pretty.

She threatened another guy who cheated on her, saying she’d burn down his house with kerosene.

Miranda Lambert is one tough cookie – at least in her songs.

She makes up those stories, people. Really she does. She’s not some wacko scouring Nashville with her rifle, looking for a lover in all the wrong places.

By her count, the “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” singer has five ex-boyfriends, but “only one or two would say I’m crazy.”

The craziest thing she ever did to one of them – that she’s willing to talk about, anyway – was in high school.

On the phone one night, he told her he planned to stay home for the evening. But when he mentioned he was ironing a shirt, she got suspicious.

“There was this nasty bar that I knew he was going to,” recalls Lambert, who comes to the Spokane Arena on Wednesday with Alan Jackson.

“So I drove with my friends to see his car, and I put a picture of myself on his windshield so when he came out he knew I was there. And the next day I dressed up really cute and broke up with him.”

Sort of a one-woman Dixie Chicks, Lambert was country music’s critical darling in 2007.

In a poll of 96 country critics by the weekly Nashville Scene, she captured top album (“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” her second disc), single (“Famous in a Small Town”), songwriter, female vocalist and overall artist of the year.

The Scene story drew parallels between Lambert, 24, and Carrie Underwood, 25 (who comes to the Arena on May 24).

Both are blondes who grew up on Southern farms and got their big break on a TV talent show (“Nashville Star” and “American Idol,” respectively).

Each scored a big hit about getting even with a no-good guy (“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and “Before He Cheats”).

But the comparison Lambert liked best was one to Merle Haggard, for her confrontational approach, rough-edged arrangements and mixed-message lyrics.

She grew up on a farm in the tiny East Texas town of Lindale. Her father, who was a narcotics cop/aspiring country singer, started a private-investigation business with her mother. In fact, they were hired by Paula Jones’ litigation team to investigate Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

So Lambert was exposed to two things at a young age: guns and cheating couples.

“Our dinner conversations were about divorce cases and who was cheatin’ on who,” says Lambert, whose latest single, “Gunpowder & Lead,” is about a battered wife gunning for her jailbird husband.

“My family took in abused women and their kids for about two years. So ‘Gunpowder & Lead’ didn’t happen to me, but I saw firsthand what it could do to a family.”

A lifelong country-music fan, she sang in talent shows at age 16. After getting a house gig at a nearby honky-tonk, she took her GED test in the fall of her senior year and hit the Texas bar circuit, which led to a third-place finish on the USA Network’s “Nashville Star” and a record contract.

On her 2005 debut, “Kerosene,” Lambert wrote or co-wrote 10 of the 11 tunes. Even though the album reached No. 1 on the country chart, the best she did on the singles list was No. 16 with the scorching title track.

Similarly, her second album climbed to No. 1, but its title track failed to chart and the second single, the medium-tempo “Famous in a Small Town,” peaked at No. 14.

The explosive “Gunpowder & Lead” rose to No. 22 on this week’s Billboard country chart.

Lambert says she’s not just the aggressive, angry young woman her hits might suggest.

“There’s so much more to me, but if you don’t have my album, you haven’t heard it yet,” she says. “I’m a tomboy but I’m a 24-year-old girl. I cry and throw fits and love makeup and I’ve had my heart broken.

“My whole album is about strength, about being a strong woman. I think it takes strength to say ‘I’m vulnerable,’ and I think it takes confidence to say ‘I’m desperate for you,’ which is the song ‘Desperation.’ “

She’s also a businesswoman, with a line of wine that her parents created. Each is named after one of her songs.

“Red 55 is my favorite; it’s a merlot,” Lambert says.

And, yes, Lambert enjoys guns and hunting. She got a BB gun when she was 7 and learned how to shoot a real rifle at 12 or 13.

She’s a serious hunter –whether she goes with her dad, a gal pal or her boyfriend, country singer Blake Shelton – who started bow-hunting last year.

“I mostly deer-hunt and turkey-hunt,” Lambert says. “Usually during deer season I try to take Mondays through Thursdays off for a couple of weeks to go hunting.

“I’ve got some trophy mounts,” she adds. “The first deer I killed with a bow was like a terrible-looking, sick deer that needed to be taken away from the Earth. Bless its heart; it had been run over (by a vehicle). But I killed it with my bow and I definitely kept the horns from that one.”

Maybe that will inspire a song, too.