Miranda Lambert called a very special surprise guest to the stage during the taping of an upcoming television special in Nashville Tuesday night (Sept. 19) — her father, Rick Lambert.

Lambert took the stage at Marathon Music Works in Nashville Tuesday night along with a lineup of top songwriters who helped her write the songs for her acclaimed double album The Weight of These Wings, which was recently certified platinum after selling a million units. She celebrated the album's success by taping a special episode of Front and Center as part of the CMA Songwriter Series, playing stripped-down acoustic versions of some of the key tracks from the album along with her co-writers and sharing the stories behind each track and how it was written.

Shane McAnally, Liz Rose, Jessi Alexander and more were among the many writers who joined Lambert onstage Tuesday to play songs including "Vice," "We Should Be Friends," "Ugly Lights" and "I've Got Wheels," and despite the serious tone of much of the material — which was largely inspired by and written in the period after Lambert's very public divorce from Blake Shelton — Lambert and her friends kept the evening light. She shared stories about her "magic porch," were many of the songs took shape, and recounted exactly what she and her co-writers were drinking when they worked on each track.

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The mood was informal to say the least, with Lambert joking to the audience early in the taping, "I'm just warning you, this could be a s--t show."

Lambert's boyfriend Anderson East joined her for an emotional rendition of "Getaway Driver" that was one of the musical highlights of the night, accompanied by Natalie Hemby, whose contributions to The Weight of These Wings are so extensive that she spent nearly as much time onstage Tuesday as Lambert did. Jack Ingram and Jon Randall joined Lambert for another standout moment when they performed "Tin Man" together, but Lambert saved the evening's most meaningful guest for next to last. The singer admitted that having her dad join her onstage was a last-minute decision.

"I texted my mom last night and said, 'Get on Southwest and come to Nashville,'" she told the crowd. "My dad was my very first co-writer I ever had. He taught me how to play guitar and he taught me my love of music. Dad and I haven’t sang this song together, except by a campfire, in a long time."

With that, the father-daughter duo deviated from the night's program to perform "Greyhound Bound for Nowhere," an early song they wrote together that boosted Lambert during her run on Nashville Star and then appeared on her debut solo album, Kerosene. One could almost feel Lambert replaying her long journey from there to stardom in her head last night as she sang wistfully, and the moment was that much sweeter when she and her co-writers received their platinum certification plaques for The Weight of These Wings at the end of the night.

It was the final completion of a process that Lambert admits took her from broken to whole, and she gushed again and again about her collaborators on Tuesday night, saying how special it was to have everyone together to celebrate.

"It’s very much the story of my last couple of years and all the things you go through in life," Lambert said about The Weight of These Wings  "Thank you to all of the songwriters for going down this road with me and spending your time on my journey."

Lambert's Front and Center episode as part of the CMA Songwriter Series will air on PBS some time in 2018.

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