Kacey Musgraves, a hometown hero, had her sister take most of her album art for “Middle of Nowhere.”

Kelly Christine Sutton

After exploring different shades of country music on previous albums — journeys through the Celtic and folk-rooted “Deeper Well” and pop-country critically-acclaimed “Golden Hour” — Kacey Musgraves returns to her earlier sound with “Middle of Nowhere.” Now, Musgraves is bringing her eponymous tour to the American Airlines Center for a two-night stand from October 10-11.

We recently caught up with the Golden, Texas-raised singer-songwriter to talk about the wide-ranging themes of the new record, the traditional and regional sounds that shape modern country, and her sparkly new tour.

“It’s nice to explore all of these different sounds that co-exist alongside country,” Musgraves tells us. “Country is a melting pot genre, and it came from a lot of different places, and different music and cultures have contributed to the sound that it has today.”

She says “Middle of Nowhere” is “a love letter to all of these different flavors of country music.”

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The record is rooted by warm guitar textures while nodding to Louisiana Zydeco music, Tejano music from Northern Mexico and the Czech polka tradition. Though she says these sounds have long shaped her understanding of country music and informed her music for much of her career.

“Texas is a big melting pot of different cultures, and I think that’s one of the most interesting parts of growing up as a Texan,” she says.

After splitting her time living in Mexico in recent years, Musgraves was inspired to explore the cross-cultural borders of Texas music, incorporating facets of Tejano and Norteño music, as heard on tracks like the penultimate breakout track, “Mexico Honey.”

“My creative endeavors just naturally follow wherever I am at that time in my life. Whatever I am listening to or ingesting through osmosis, it finds a way to inspire me,” Musgraves says.

Musgraves’ Texan roots — including time spent right here in Big D — also permeates the album, leading to the visual inspiration for “Middle of Nowhere.”

“We roamed around Dallas to all these different spots, looking for somewhere that gave us a sense of that middle-of-nowhere liminal space,” she says about the record’s cover art, taken by her sister. “… There was something in the metaphor of having a bull behind me. You can take it a bunch of different ways; whether that’s your fears are behind you or the bullshit is behind you and learning to face it or look away from it. It was intimidating to have a real bull behind me. He was real docile and very shy.”

Can’t take the Texas out of the cowgirl

The homecoming shows in Dallas will see Musgraves perform for more than 40,000 people across two nights. Coming home always feels like a full circle moment for Musgraves, who cut her teeth performing around the city for “as long as [she] can remember.” Musgraves’ parents, who are often in attendance for her Dallas shows, encouraged her dream of becoming a country singer and would “load up the van and travel state to state.”

“It’s hard to imagine what I’d be doing now if I didn’t have that support,” she says. “I don’t think things would have turned out the same. I’m grateful that I had parents to champion my interest, and I was able to have the time to explore who I was creatively before having it put out on an international level. I was grateful to have that footing and compass and who I wanted to be rather than, ‘I want to be famous.’ If I’m going to do this, I want it to be on my terms creatively.”

For the Middle of Nowhere Tour, the at-times rotating stage is shaped like a star while the setlist leans heavily into Musgraves’ Lone Star sensibilities — she closes the show with a reworked version of George Strait’s “All My Ex’s Live in Texas.”

Almost immediately upon hitting the road, the tour received a lot of attention on social media for two very big, shiny reasons: As she reaches “Rhinestoned,” in the setlist, Musgraves is lifted into the air while perched on a pair of mirror-covered supersized testicles.

“I’m really not a heights girl, so I was a little nervous being up there,” she says. “But I have a seatbelt so I’m strapped into the balls and I’m not going anywhere. They told me that if there was any malfunction, then they’d have to get me down via a large ladder, which would be absolutely insane … It’s a fun part of the show and I guess you could say I’m really having a ball out there.”

The Middle of Nowhere Tour comes through Dallas Oct. 10-11 at the American Airlines Center. Tickets are available now.