Lovett, Lyle

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LYLE LOVETT

Born: Klein, Texas, 1 November 1957

Genre: Country

Best-selling album since 1990: The Road to Ensenada (1996)

Singer/songwriter Lyle Lovett inadvertently riled the Nashville music establishment by embroidering his country-rooted sound with a literate fusion of big-band swing, jazz, blues, and gospel. Unclaimed by any musical genre in particular, Lovett possesses a style of his own design and is one of the craftiest songwriters in contemporary music.

Motorcycles and music received most of Lovett's attention growing up on his parents' horse ranch near Houston, Texas, in a town called Klein, which was founded by his great-great-grandfather, Adam Klein. He was his parents' only child, and as a teenager, worked in a motorcycle shop and raced competitively. Songwriters also fascinated Lovett and Texas has a rich history of them. At any opportunity, the teenaged Lovett would slip off to Houston to see his favorites play. Among them were fellow Texas natives Guy Clark, Townes Van Vandt, and Willis Alan Ramsay; all became huge influences on Lovett's music. While attending college at Texas A&M, he organized the hiring of talent for the campus coffee-house and began writing his own songs, performing them in local venues. After graduating college with a degree in journalism—which he never used—Lovett traveled around Germany where he met a musician named Buffalo Wayne. Wayne asked Lovett to play in a country-western event that he had organized and Lovett went on to achieve modest musical success while in Europe.

The Next Country Music Star

Bolstered by his European experience, he returned to the United States in 1983 and settled in Nashville, Tennessee, to shop his musical wares in the country music capitol of the world. Singer/songwriter and fellow Texan Nanci Griffith remembered Lovett from an interview he did with her at college and recorded one of his songs, "If I Were the Woman You Wanted." (Lovett's original title was a male gender-specific "If I Were the Man You Wanted.") Lovett also sang backup on two of her albums and was able to get a demo tape of his own songs to her label, MCA. They signed Lovett, and his debut album Lyle Lovett (1986) met glowing reviews and five songs from it made the country charts.

Lovett's highly acclaimed second release, Pontiac (1988), firmly set his reputation as a top-notch songwriter with a yen for the avant-garde. On the album, he explores the big band sound and defines his style of jazz-influenced honky-tonk shuffles, black-humored sometimes spoken blues, and offbeat ballads. Lovett gained the ground that he was losing in traditional country music as a wider audience, including pop, jazz, and rock fans, listened to Pontiac. On his next album, Lyle Lovett and His Large Band (1989), Lovett rattled Nashville with his rendition of Tammy Wynette's ode to female devotion, "Stand By Your Man." (Lovett did not change the gender.) With Lovett's rascally wit already a trademark, critics listened carefully, certain that Lovett was lampooning the country music icon's signature song. However, no parody was evident and Lovett's effort appears earnest. Nevertheless, the country music establishment, already flummoxed by his penchant for accompanying himself with a twenty-plus piece jazz band, unofficially disowned Lovett.

Lyle Lovett and His Large Band brought him his first of four Grammy Awards, this time for Best Male Vocalist of 1989. In addition to his off-the-wall songwriting, Lovett's appearance and performance style added further intrigue and cemented a cultlike following. His rail thin body and long, angular face is exaggerated by elevated hair that rests scruffy and out-of-kilter to the right—more the look of a French painter than that of a country-western singer. His performance style is discernible by shy politeness, Zen stillness, and a deadpan delivery with humor that catches its listener off guard. Lovett's country tenor is a pleasing mix of restraint tinged by a bluesy grind mysteriously emerging from a mouth that barely moves. Lovett generally accompanies himself on acoustic guitar and approaches his work with a theatrical bearing, mixing spoken lyrics, scripted monologues, and stories into his musical interplay.

Music and Movies

He left Nashville for Los Angeles in 1990 and during the recording of another well-received album, Joshua Judges Ruth (1992), Lovett received a call from film director Robert Altman. He asked if Lovett was interested in appearing in his new film, The Player (1991). Critics commended Lovett's honest, subtle acting performance, making his screen debut a success. Additionally, the movie was notable because he met superstar actress Julia Roberts during the filming. Their romance and subsequent marriage in 1993 received an excessively high level of media attention, as did their divorce in 1995—reportedly brought on by the pressure of constant media scrutiny. Lovett appeared as an actor in three more Altman films, Short Cuts (1993), Ready to Wear (1995), and Cookie's Fortune (1999), in addition to roles in several other films including The Opposite of Sex (1998), and The New Guy (2001).

However, Lovett's forays into acting have not interfered with his music career. He released three more successful studio albums in the 1990s including, Step Inside This House (1998), a twenty-one song, double-CD tribute to Texas songwriters. The album contains songs from Guy Clark, Walter Hyatt, Robert Earl Keen, and many other songwriters that have influenced his work. He followed that by recapping his own songwriting and music career with Live in Texas (1999), a live recording featuring many of his classic songs. Included is the wistful ballad, "Nobody Knows Me" about a man's guilt over cheating on his girl and another ballad, "If I had a Boat" where Lovett absurdly declares his dedication to a horse. He sings, "Go out on the ocean, me upon my pony on my boat." He humorously explores a bad choice in a marriage partner in "She's No Lady" (written well before his failed union to Roberts). It is a blues shuffle on which he sings, "And the preacher said, I pronounce you ninety-nine to life. Son, that's no lady, she's your wife."

Lovett scored the music to the Robert Altman film, Dr. T & The Women (2000), and released Smile (2003), a collection of twelve songs that he has performed on various movie soundtracks. It includes a duet with fellow songwriter extraordinaire, Randy Newman, "You've Got a Friend in Me," from the popular children's hit film Toy Story (1995).

While his unusual style, eclectic music, and cross-media jaunts offer intrigue and perplexities, Lovett is primarily a storyteller whose song lyrics inspire his listeners to examine issues—comic or otherwise—in an honest light.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Lyle Lovett (MCA, 1986); Pontiac (MCA, 1988); Lyle Lovett and His Large Band (MCA, 1989); Joshua Judges Ruth (MCA, 1992); I Love Everybody (MCA, 1994); The Road to Ensenada (MCA, 1996); Step Inside This House (MCA, 1998); Live in Texas (MCA, 1999); Smile ( MCA, 2003). Soundtrack: Dr. T & The Women (MCA, 2000).