In his 18-year recording
career, Lyle Lovett has achieved the kind of staying power that tends
to belong solely to Nashville crooners and never-say-die pop songsmiths.
In 1986 Lovett released his self-titled debut on MCA Records, and only
two years later, Pontiac gave us "If I Had a Boat," "L.A.
County," and "She's No Lady"—songs that immediately
earned pride of place in the Americana songbook. How did Lovett, with
his odd hybrid of country two-stepping and off-kilter big-band showmanship,
become a household name? Perhaps its his magical amalgamation of head
and heart, the essential songcraft that tugs at our emotions in "Baltimore,"
makes us laugh in "Here I Am," or wows us with the wit and
elegance of "Private Conversation."
After a decade of quirky
hits and Hollywood cameos, Lovett's My Baby Don't Tolerate,
released last September on Lost Highway Records (www.losthighwayrecords.com),
is a return to basics. The songs cover a lot of ground, from the familiar
truck-stop fare of "Cute As a Bug" and "Nothing but a
Good Ride" to the bossa nova lilt of "You Were Always There"
and the full-out gospel blast of "I'm Going to the Place."
As for Lovett's live show, this year's model is a stripped-down version
of his Large Band—no horns, but lots of guitars. At Oakland's
Paramount Theater, just a few dates into a six-month road show in support
of My Baby Don't Tolerate, Lovett's ironic persona and dry
wit were in full flower. But backstage, his manner was decidedly low-key
and sincere. We sat down for this interview on Lovett's tour bus.
This is the first album
of new songs you've made in seven years, since The Road to Ensenada
in 1996. Were you writing these songs all this time?
Lovett Yes,
I've been writing these songs over the last five years. The first two
from this group were "The Truck Song" and "San Antonio
Girl." Those were also on the Anthology, Vol. 1. They
wanted a couple of new songs for that one and I said only if I could
keep them, because I had this group of songs I was working on and I
wanted to keep them together. Those two are an important part of this
batch of songs.
Were there songs that
got left off the record?
Lovett Yeah, the
worst ones [laughs], the ones I really hated. It's true, you
can't record everything you write. The gap between this record and the
one before it was really because I wanted to make sure I liked the songs.
Which songs did you
write most recently?
Lovett Well,
I kind of worked on them all together. But Viktor [Krauss] and I finished
our song ["You Were Always There"] more recently. And "My
Baby Don't Tolerate" was one of the last ones I wrote. Recording
can give you a reason to try to finish something. I had the chorus of
"My Baby Don't Tolerate" for a long time before I figured
out how to put it together with the verses.
Do you have a songwriting
routine?
Lovett
I like to get up early and play my guitar and try to make stuff up.
It's really a process of trying to stop the bad stuff that comes to
you naturally, the stuff that creeps into your mind. I think a lot of
songwriting is forgetting the really bad stuff. [Laughs.] It's
not just that it's not original—it may be completely original
and originally horrible. So you have to push all that stuff out of your
mind and hope some good stuff replaces it. It's always different. Trying
to figure out how to write songs for me is a never-ending process. It
never works the same way twice.
Are there any particular
tunings you tend to favor in your songwriting?
Lovett
On this record I'm all in standard tuning. I always keep my guitar in
standard tuning for songwriting. I generally start working on songs
early in the day when my voice is lower, but the key usually changes
before we record. I prefer chords with open strings, rather than closed
chords. As a result I use a capo relentlessly, especially since the
key changes. I'll find a voicing that I like for a particular song,
and rather than change the voicing, I'll just move the capo as my voice
changes in pitch.
When you were first
starting out, learning to be a songwriter, did you listen to a lot of
other songwriters?
Lovett Sure
I did, as a fan. All the songs we recorded on Step Inside This House
[Lovett's 1998 album of cover songs] were songs I started playing when
I was around 17. And all those songwriters like Townes Van Zandt and
Guy Clark taught me what a song was—what you can write about,
how you can talk about things. Because those songs were so different
than the songs I was hearing on pop or country radio at the time. To
listen to a Guy Clark song and realize the things you could talk about
and the imagery you could use, it helped to define for me what a song
could be.
Where does the gospel
influence in your music come from?
Lovett
I think it comes from growing up in church. I grew up in the Lutheran
Church and that kind of gospel music is so different from the Lutheran
war anthem hymns we sang. When I was in choir in parochial school, I
would imagine being able to sing gospel stuff, but we never did. I just
love gospel and blues. The lyric is very simple and repetitive, so it's
all about the emotion.
I want to ask about
a few specific songs on My Baby Don't Tolerate. Who are Randy
and Danny Ray in "In My Own Mind?"
Lovett They're
a couple of friends of mine, a couple of guys I grew up with, Danny
and Randy Mittelstaedt. They used to be my ride to school, actually,
so I've known them all my life. They're wonderful carpenters. Their
father was a carpenter and their grandfather was a carpenter before
him, and they're Old World—style craftsmen. Danny and Ray restored
the house that April [Lovett's fiancée] and I live in. We live
in a house in Klein [Texas] that my grandpa built in 1911 and my mom
and all her brothers and sisters were born in. I was really just teasing
them in the song. They're in one of the pictures [in the liner notes],
the one with the "Hooked on Fishing" T-shirt. Anyway, we always
have some ongoing projects on the place, but they love to go hunting
and fishing. And so sometimes when you think they're going to be coming
over to work on something, they're just not there. They do show back
up; they always show back up. But one time I saw Randy with that T-shirt
on and I thought, I'm going to work that into a song.
Blaze Foley's "Election
Day" is the only song on the new record you didn't write. Why did
you choose that one?
Lovett
It's a song I've known since the late '70s, since I met Blaze. I used
to do shows with him down at Anderson Fair in Houston, and I was a big
fan of his. Blaze was one of the sweetest guys you'd ever want to meet–a
very sweet, very generous guy. This recording project was really fun,
and we just tried playing some things. I happened to play that one day
and we had fun with it and I liked the way it came out.
What's the story behind
"On Saturday Night" and the Nash family you thank in the credits?
Lovett It's
just a wacky song. There's a real Nash family I know from Abilene, Texas,
and I just found their names so fun to play with from a lyrical point
of view. It has no basis in reality, nothing to do with Nashville, Tennessee.
It's just wordplay with their names. I think their names are so great:
Iris, Doyle, Holly. I called Mr. Nash before we recorded it and asked
if it was OK to use it. He was really sweet and said, "Sure, as
long as I get a couple copies."
"Big Dog"
feels like a song you wrote for a real person in your life.
Lovett
That's true. I made the song up for my dog. No, it's true. [Laughs.]
We got a little dog from our horse veterinarian, and I was taking him
home for the first time. It's 25 miles from the vet's place home, and
he was really crying—he was not happy at all to be away from his
brothers and sisters and mom. So I just started singing this song, and
when I would sing, he would stop crying. I had to go through Tomball
on the way home and the speed limit there is a very strict deal. It
never took longer in my life to go through Tomball. He was in the front
seat with me and he was crying the whole time. But then it became a
song that's really about how my parents took care of me. So much of
this record, from "I'm Going to Wait" to "You Were Always
There," which I was lucky enough to get to write with Viktor, came
out of thinking about my dad, who died four years ago. So "Big
Dog," that's sort of how my dad used to take care of me. But it
started with our little dog.
How did you come to
co-write "You Were Always There?"
Lovett That's
something I've done very little of up to now, but I'm sure the process
would be different every time. In this case, Viktor played me this complete
chord change idea on the guitar and I just started singing along. I
made up the words and the melody to go with Viktor's changes, and all
of a sudden we had a song. But it was Viktor's idea. Viktor let me in
on it.
What was the recording
process like on this record?
Lovett
Well, [producer] Billy Williams and I talk things over until we have
a pretty solid idea of how we want it to go. All the guys on the record
are such great players. They always give you something great. I don't
tell them what to play, I might sort of give them a direction in terms
of dynamics or activity if I want a solo to be more energetic in the
beginning or in the end. But they're so good, I try to stay out of their
way and rely on their instincts. The one thing I'm conscious of when
playing with great players like Matt Rollings, Stuart Duncan, Paul Franklin,
and Dean Parks is don't do anything to limit their creativity. They
know me really well and are very sensitive to what I'm going for. I
hire people because of who they are. The last thing I want to do is
tie their hands behind their backs.
You're playing with
ten people on this tour, all from different parts of the country. How
did you assemble this band?
Lovett We've
all worked together for so long. The show evolves a little bit over
the course of a tour, but the fun part is to figure out how it's going
to work with the song order and arrangements. With this band, to play
the recorded arrangements, we're able to divide up responsibility in
terms of solos, and that's the fun part. I get to stand there in the
middle of it and listen to everybody and that's a great pleasure every
night.
The show includes three
guitar players, besides you. I have to ask: Why so many?
Lovett Well,
it's really because of the people, and not so much of a musical idea.
It started with finding out that Ray [Herndon] was available. He was
on my first record and a bunch of my records and he was available, so
he had to come. And Mitch [Watkins], who has been playing electric guitar
with us for the last several years, was available. So it just seemed
like it might be fun to have two lead guitars. We'd never done that
before. And then Jeff White came primarily to sing, but he's such a
wonderful player that he has to play. This is our first time to work
with Jeff other than the Chieftains record [Down the Old Plank Road:
The Nashville Sessions]. So that's really how it ended up.
What draws you to a
particular guitar player?
Lovett Oh
gosh, you know, that's hard. I'm in such awe of people who can play
well. Mitch and Ray have very different styles, yet they're very complementary.
We're doing some arrangements where they'll play harmony lines, and
I really enjoy that. What attracts me to a player of any kind is not
so much technique as it is thought, how a person thinks. When we do
"Good Intentions" in the show and we go around trading solos,
it's different from night to night, and I love to watch them think.
Players like Mitch and Ray and Jeff, they have great chops–technically
their sounds are together, that's a given. It's the way they think and
the way they build something that draws me to them. Everything we do
in an arrangement is designed to support the song, what the song has
to say. And that's what all the guys in the band try to do.
Do you play guitar a
lot on your own?
Lovett I
play for fun because I enjoy it. But the thing that is the most fun
for me is when I get to come out and play with the band. Viktor's a
wonderful guitar player—he plays bass in the band, but he's an
amazing guitar player. So to get to drive around with him . . . Like
we're going to Salt Lake now and we'll be on the bus all night and tomorrow,
so I'll get my guitar out and get him to show me something. I really
enjoy getting to play with the guys from the band, and I always learn
from them. The opportunities to learn from these guys are endless.
Did you take guitar
lessons when you were young?
Lovett
I had a really great teacher when I was young, in grade school. I was
a terrible student. My mom worked in Houston, which was 25 miles from
home, and once a week she would drive out after work, pick me up, and
take me all the way back to downtown Houston. She made an extra 50-mile
round trip just for my guitar lesson. My teacher was a gentleman named
Chuck Woods—he passed away just a couple of years ago. He was
an interesting character; he would sell drums and stuff out of the trunk
of his car in the parking lot. He was a great guy. He taught me how
to read treble clef and never got on me for not practicing. He taught
me songs out of songbooks and lessons were always fun.
Then in high school I got
with a guy, Freddy Foss, who was in the music school at the University
of Houston, and his deal was he liked to transcribe Chet [Atkins] records.
I could take records to him and he would help me figure them out, write
them out in tab for me, so I was able to learn songs that way. He's
the one who helped me with my thumb and taught me alternating bass.
So in terms of my style of playing now, he was a real influence.
What do you say to people
who say you don't play country anymore?
Lovett You
know, I've been really lucky that the record company has supported me
in whatever style I've wanted to work in. I enjoy listening to different
types of music and the songs that I make up really reflect [that]. I've
worked with people who've been supportive enough to not require me to
do only one thing or another. What you hope for is that your own personal
style is strong enough to have things hang together.
Excerpted from
Acoustic
Guitar magazine, February 2004,
No. 134.
