Miranda Lambert Scolds Montana Crowd After Audience Members Fight

Miranda Lambert has a tendency to stop singing and start talking -- and she did that yet again this weekend ... getting on her audience's ass for apparently fighting in the crowd.

The country singer was performing Saturday at the Under the Big Sky festival in Whitefish, Montana -- where she was a headliner -- and at one point during her set ... she halted the show and started to kinda chastise the people down on the ground.

The video picks up right in the middle of her lecture -- ML says to no one in particular that she can see some folks out there are not facing her and enjoying the music ... and to that she says, eyes up here!

Miranda notes that her set isn't a place for squabbling -- something that was apparently going on out in the audience -- and that instead ... people should be there for the freakin' music.

Interestingly enough ... Miranda suggests that it was women who were going at it -- saying it's always the girls that are kicking up dust and starting trouble. She was pretty lighthearted about the whole thing ... but her pause in the show lines up with what she's done before.

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Remember ... Miranda did something similar about a year ago during her Vegas residency -- when she called out a group of ladies who were taking selfies instead of watching the show.

That was a whole ordeal at the time, and thankfully ... this one wasn't nearly as dramatic. Still, it's obvious Miranda will pump the brakes in the biggest of spotlights to speak her mind.