NO DEPRESSION SESSIONS at AMERICANAFEST: Alex Lambert

Fort Worth-bred singer-songwriter Alex Lambert visited us at The Red Building on Nashville's Music Row during AMERICANAFEST 2025 to share three new songs in their most basic form, just vocals and acoustic guitars. The stripped down arrangement naturally put Lambert's soulful rasp front and center in the mix, right where it belonged.

It made perfect sense when I learned that Lambert's family record collection was heavy on Michael Jackson and Willie Nelson. Lambert clearly internalized both influences - adding inspiration from other soul greats like Sam Cooke and Bill Withers - folding them into the artist you see now, a soul singer with a little dust under the collar. It also made sense when I found out that he was musically guided at a young age by his grandfather, a singer, songwriter and producer in his own right, who actually worked with Willie Nelson back in the day.

This is the first No Depression Session that doesn't include a verbal intro, or host segments between songs where I chat with the artist. Right as Lambert arrived and started loading into The Red Building for his session, my brother called to tell me that our dad died. He had been in hospice at my brother's house in San Diego, but there was no telling if he had weeks or months left. The family had been preparing and making arrangements, but nothing really prepares anybody for it.

I was with my dad and my brother a week earlier in San Diego, we were doing our best to comfort him and each other after our mom died two weeks before. Dad had dementia, so mom's passing didn't sink in for him the same way it did for us. But on some level he knew she wasn't here anymore, and he followed her closely into whatever comes next.

This afternoon with Alex was mostly a blur for me. I couldn't really talk, I couldn't see my camera monitor, or much of anything else. But I remember being supported by everybody who was there. When Lambert played a medley of his last song "Amen" into the Lennon-McCartney classic "Let It Be," I felt something inside of me unlock, like I suddenly had access to the full weight of the moment. I must've moved through about a week of grief in those thirty seconds. After the cameras stopped rolling, Lambert confided that he wasn't planning to do the medley, but the spirit moved him. It moved me too. Thank you, Alex. Love you, mom and dad.

Alex Lambert - Vocals, guitar
Gabriel Thomas Broussard - Guitar, vocals

Setlist:
"You Make Sense To Me"
"I Think I'm In Love"
"Amen" / "Let It Be"