Watch Kacey Musgraves’ ‘Hee Haw’-Inspired ‘Biscuits’ Video
Years before Same Trailer Different Park made her one of country music’s leading women, Kacey Musgraves spent her weekends on the Texas Opry circuit, where she sang cowboy songs and western swing tunes while dressed up like Dale Evans.
She resurrects that world of old-school variety shows — a place where fringe, twang, barnyard animals and Bible Belt schtick all collide — in the music video for “Biscuits.” Released Wednesday, the clip finds Musgraves churning butter, petting chickens, dueting with a fiddle-playing Jim Henson muppet and square dancing across the stage. In a behind-the-scenes video of the shoot, she compares the clip to “Hee Haw meets Pee-wee’s Playhouse meets Wes Anderson.”
Musgraves stumbled across the song’s cheeky tagline — “Mind your own biscuits and life will be gravy” — during a songwriter’s session with Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally. At the time, the three were working on “Follow Your Arrow,” a song that would ultimately appear on Musgraves’ debut and, a year and a half later, win the 2014 CMA Award for Song of the Year. While working on material for her second album, Pageant Material, they pulled “Biscuits” out of storage, quickly beefing it up with lyrics about blazing your own path, minding your own business and, to paraphrase a piece of advice from Musgraves’ mother, killing your enemies with kindness.
“Biscuits” was recorded in one of Nashville’s most historic studios, RCA Studio A. Musgraves brought catered biscuits into the session to help lighten the mood, and session drummer Fred Eltringham wound up banging one of the cast iron biscuit pans during the song, turning the catering tray as an instrument. That same sort of “anything goes” spirit resurfaces throughout the “Biscuits” video, which, in addition to Musgraves, her road band and a host of boot scootin’ extras, also stars a goat, a man dressed up as an ear of corn and, during the song’s final chorus, an animated biscuit that bounces its way along a scrolling line of lyrics. Archie Campbell would’ve been proud.