Lyle Lovett

Singer, songwriter, guitarist

Classifying the type of music Lyle Lovett writes and plays has often been difficult. Although his music is generally called country, Lovett incorporates jazz, blues, pop, and big band sounds into his music. Sam Hurwitt wrote in Salon, "Lyle Lovett has for the last decade had the dubious honor of being a country singer for people who hate country music." Hurwitt added that Lovett's music is "a simpler, down-home kind [of country music], with educated forays into jazz and gospel and talking blues."

Lovett's style has had little in common with mainstream country music. He has instead been compared to singers and songwriters of the 1970s such as Guy Clark, Jesse Winchester, Randy Newman, and Townes Van Zandt. These artists, along with Lovett, have had the ability to combine "a talent for incisive, witty lyrical detail with an eclectic array or music," according to Stephen Thomas Erlewine in the All Music Guide. Lovett has also been famous as one of the few artists who creates all his own material, both melodies and lyrics. Apart from the 1998 release of Step Inside This House, Lovett's albums consist almost solely of his own original material. He is also one of the few artists who has been able to write contemporary material for a 1930s style big band, and to surmount the financial challenges of keeping such a band on the road consistently.

Lovett was born in Klein, Texas, just outside of Houston. Growing up as an only child on the family's horse farm, Lovett had ample time to pursue his two passions—riding his motorcycle and playing the guitar. All through high school, Lovett worked at the Cycle Shack in his home town. He competed in local competitions and got his father interested in motorcycling as well. In Canadian Biker, Lovett told Maurine Karagianis, "My dad got involved when I got my first bike and he started riding because I was interested in it. And we still ride together today." Lovett continued to ride motorcycles competitively even after his musical career took off.

Lovett did not consider a life in music until he began writing songs while attending Texas A&M in the late 1970s. While studying journalism and German, Lovett performed covers and original songs at local folk festivals, coffee shops, and clubs. As a graduate student in Germany, Lovett continued to write and perform in Europe. He met country musician Buffalo Wayne while in Europe in 1979, and the musician booked Lovett for a show he was organizing in Luxembourg in 1983. At that time, Lovett was introduced to keyboardist Matt Rollings and guitarist Ray Herndon, both of whom played central roles on some of his later albums. While in Europe, Lovett also played with J. David Sloan and the Rogues. Lovett developed a friendship with the Rogues, whom he later recruited for his sessions after signing with MCA Records.

Lovett did not pursue a musical career in earnest until he returned to the United States in 1983 and landed a spot in the Mickey Rooney television movie Bill: On His Own. The following year Nanci Griffith, whom Lovett had interviewed for a school paper while attending Texas A&M, covered his song "If I Were the Woman You Wanted" on her Once in a Very Blue Moon album. Lovett sang on that album, as well as on her next, Last of the True Believers. In 1984 fellow Texas songwriter/singer Guy Clark heard Lovett's demo tape. Liking what he heard, Clark sent the recording to Tony Brown of MCA Records. Brown signed Lovett in 1986 and produced his first three albums.

Later that same year Lovett released his debut album, Lyle Lovett, which was an immediate hit, its Western swing rhythms proving a perfect fit for the neotraditional country music that dominated country radio in the late 1980s. Five of the album's singles reached the country top 40, including "Cowboy Man," which reached the top ten. In Erlewine's words, "Despite his strong showing on the country charts, it was clear from the outset that Lovett's musical tastes didn't rely on country, though the genre provided the foundation of his sound." Overall, Lyle Lovett was a "spectacular debut," in the opinion of Daniel Durchholz of Music-Hound Rock.

Lovett followed his debut with Pontiac, released early in 1988, an album that defined Lovett's ability to reach across the defined boundaries of country and pop/rock music. Although only two of the singles reached the top 30 on the country charts, Lovett gained "enough new fans in the pop mainstream to guarantee him a strong cult following," reported Erlewine. The bluesy sound of Pontiac confirmed that Lovett was "one of country's more offbeat performers," wrote Hugh Gregory in The Rough Guide to Rock.

The singer's crossover reputation grew with the 1989 release of Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, which won him a Grammy Award for best male country vocal performance. The album included guitars, a cellist, a pianist, horns, and a gospel-trained backup singer, Francine Reed. Most critics "drooled over Lyle's eclecticism and sense of humor," Gregory recalled. Lovett's male-perspective cover of Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man" received a great deal of attention and some criticism from Nashville. The song was later used in the 1993 movie The Crying Game.

In 1990 Lovett moved to Los Angeles, where he recorded his next album, Joshua Judges Ruth. Although the album was ignored by country radio in general, pop audiences embraced the sound. Lovett received wide airplay on adult alternative radio and on the cable television network VH-1. Joshua Judges Ruth reached number 57 on the album charts and was certified gold for sales of 500,000 copies.

Lovett reached a new level of stardom in 1993 when he married film star Julia Roberts, whom he met while making the Robert Altman film The Player. The film marked Lovett's acting debut. Lovett became a regular in the tabloids and celebrity magazines. Also in 1993, Lovett appeared in another Altman film, Short Cuts.

Lovett's next album, I Love Everybody, released in 1994, failed to reach gold status. Many critics felt it was not Lovett's best work. Durchholz described the release: "Lovett's only recording made during his brief tenure as Mr. Julia Roberts has its moments of wry humor, but it mostly consists of stale leftovers and trifles." Some critics received the album with warm reviews, although still admitting it had problems. Lovett and Roberts divorced in the spring of 1995, allowing Lovett to retreat from the spotlight to some extent. He spent the remainder of the year touring and writing.

For the Record …

Born November 1, 1957, in Klein, TX; son of William and Bernell Lovett; married Julia Roberts (an actress), 1993 (divorced 1995). Education: Texas A&M, College Station, TX, bachelor's degree in journalism and German.

Performed folk music at festivals, coffee shops, and clubs during college; continued to write and perform while a graduate student in Europe; signed with MCA Records, released debut self-titled album, 1986; released album Pontiac, 1988; released Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, 1989; released Joshua Judges Ruth, 1990; released The Road to Ensenada, 1996; released tribute album Step Inside This House, 1998; released Live in Texas, 1999; released soundtrack album Dr. T and the Women, 2000; signed with Lost Highway label, released My Baby Don't Tolerate, 2003; released It's Not Big It's Large, 2007; toured with John Hiatt, 2008.

Awards: Grammy Awards: best male country vocal performance, for Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, 1989; best country album, for Road to Ensenada, 1996.

Addresses: Record company—Lost Highway Records, Universal Music Group, 2220 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90404. Web site—Lyle Lovett Official Web site: http://www.lylelovett.com.

In 1996 Lovett released The Road to Ensenada, his first album since Pontiac with a dominant country flavor. Not only did the album peak at 24 on the pop charts, but The Road to Ensenada also entered at number four on the country charts. The album, which was widely thought to depict aspects of Lovett's relationship with Roberts, won the singer a Grammy Award for Best Country Album.

Step Inside This House, released in 1998, marked a significant departure from all of Lovett's previous albums. In the two-disc set, Lovett stepped away from the role of songwriter to pay homage to fellow Texas singer/songwriters. Lovett turned to artists whom he numbered among his strongest influences, including Townes Van Zant, Michael Martin Murphy, Walter Hyatt, Stephen Fromholtz, and Guy Clark. Ever since he had taken part in the Nanci Griffith album Other Voices, Other Rooms, Lovett had considered devoting an album to songs by Texas-based singer/songwriters, but he was not spurred on to make the album until the deaths of two of his biggest influences, Townes Van Zandt, who died on New Year's Eve of 1996, and Walter Hyatt, who died suddenly in an airliner crash in Florida that year. "That sort of determined the theme of the album really," Lovett told Michael McCall of LAUNCH Music. "It was a difficult year in a lot of ways, and this seemed like the most appropriate way to deal with it."

Michael Evans of the Oregonian commented, "Equipped with a dry vocal delivery (and a sense of humor), Lovett not only paid ample tribute to such idols as Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, but also sang their personal and often provocative story songs as if they were his own." Lovett himself admitted he chose songs that had had a great influence on him. "It's really a personal list of songs for me," Lovett told McCall. "These songs were favorites of mine long before I ever went to Nashville."

Lovett continued to strive for change with the 1999 release of Live in Texas, his first live performance album, which was recorded in San Antonio, Texas. For the recording, Lovett was again joined by his acclaimed large band. Critics praised Lovett's versatility and ability to record a live album. "Lyle Lovett is one of those rare performers who pretty much sounds exactly the same live in concert as he does in the studio," wrote Mary Jo DiLonardo on the CNN Web site. "Because of his stark, unmistakable vocal style, he doesn't require the magic of studio enhancements to make his voice richer or more resonant."

Lovett continued to have a story to tell. "My music is all about communication," Lovett told Karagianis. "There's always one person that would understand a song better than anybody else. … The songs I write are directed specifically at somebody. So it's really a way to talk to somebody."

Lovett reunited with director Altman for the romantic comedy Dr. T and the Women, contributing 16 songs (a mixture of new and preexisting tracks) to the film's soundtrack. That soundtrack, released in 2000, became Lovett's final album for MCA. He moved to the alternative-country label Lost Highway for his next album, My Baby Don't Tolerate (2003). With a full complement of songs in Lovett's jazz-influenced country style, the album inspired a rave review from Elijah Wald in Sing Out!. "Lyle Lovett just keeps getting better," Wald wrote. "His writing keeps getting crisper and the music more quirkily cohesive."

The long gap between My Baby Don't Tolerate and its predecessors was due partly to a 2002 accident in which Lovett's leg was shattered by a bull on his family's Texas ranch. A bull Lovett had raised attacked his uncle. "He had my uncle down on the ground, with his head on my uncle's chest," Lovett recalled to Alastair McKay of the Scotsman. "So I took my ballcap and waved it across his ears a couple of times, and hollered at him to get him to move off, and after that he came after me." Lovett spent several months on crutches and in physical therapy in the wake of the incident.

He recovered fully, however, and returned to touring with undiminished energy. Although Lovett recorded less frequently in the 2000s than he had previously, he was still a strong concert draw, and his shows often involved his full-size Large Band, an ensemble bigger than that of almost any other touring musician. The title of Lovett's next album, 2007's It's Not Big It's Large, paid tribute to the group, and had critics marveling over Lovett's consistency as his career entered its third decade. Lovett took to the road once again with singer-songwriter John Hiatt in the spring of 2008.

Selected discography

Lyle Lovett, MCA, 1985.

Pontiac, MCA, 1988.

Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, MCA, 1989.

Joshua Judges Ruth, MCA, 1992.

I Love Everybody, Curb, 1994.

The Road to Ensenada, MCA, 1996.

Step Inside This House, MCA, 1998.

Live In Texas, MCA, 1999.

Dr. T and the Women, MCA, 2000

My Baby Don't Tolerate, Lost Highway, 2003.

It's Not Big It's Large, Lost Highway, 2007.

Sources

Books

Gregory, Hugh, editor, The Rough Guide to Rock, Penguin Books, 1996.

MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, Visible Ink Press, 1999.

Robbins, Ira A., Trouser Press Guide to '90s Rock, Fireside/Simon and Schuster, 1997.

Periodicals

Billboard, September 1, 2007, p. 55.

Buffalo News, February 23, 2008, p. C5.

Esquire, May 1994.

New Yorker, February 1, 2004.

Oregonian, October 8, 1998.

People, April 15, 2002, p. 19; November 3, 2003, p. 47.

Scotsman (Edinburgh, Scotland), October 4, 2003, p. 16.

Sing Out!, Winter 2004, p. 119.

Washington Post, September 5, 1996.

Online

"Lyle Lovett," All Music Guide,http://allmusic.com (February 27, 2008).

"Lyle Lovett: His First Love Was Motorcycling," Canadian Biker,http://www.canadianbiker.com/lyl.html (December 29, 1999).

"Lyle Lovett," iMusic, Country Showcase,http://imusic.com/showcase/country/lylelovett.html (December 29, 1999).

"Lyle Lovett," LAUNCH Music, http://www.launch.com/music/artist/ArtistContainer/0,2498,true_1016251_Bio_,00.html, 1999 (January 3, 2000).

"Lyle Lovett: Live in Texas," MCA Records, http://www.mcarecords.com/artists/artist.asp]artistid=46 (December 29, 1999).

"Lyle Lovett," Rolling Stone Press,http://rollingstone.tunes.com/sections/artists/text/artistgen/asp [afl=ses&Lookup string=949, 1995 (January 3, 2000).

"Lyle Lovett: Step Inside This House," LAUNCH Music, http://www.launch.com/Promotional/lyle_lovett_ft.html (December 29, 1999).

"Review: Lyle Lovett live and large," CNN.com,http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Music/9906/22/review.lylelovett/, June 22, 1999 (January 3, 2000).

"Thank God, He's a Country Boy," Salon, http://www.salon.com/weekly/music960624.html (January 3, 2000).

—Julie Sweet and James M. Manheim