Sunday, October 25, 2009
Lyle Lovett heads to Roanoke with His Large Band
Lovett emerged in 1986 with songs such as "The Waltzing Fool."His sad, scratchy but resonant voice is equally suitable to country, jazz and folk.
Bryan Adams and Lyle Lovett
If a musician is wired for songwriting, he is going to write songs, regardless of what's happening with his career. Ups and downs might stop the creative impulse from time to time, but ultimately, the melodies, chords and lyrics will come.
Bryan Adams and Lyle Lovett, who hit Roanoke in separate shows this week, couldn't be much further apart stylistically. But they do share at least a couple of things in common: They both came to national prominence during the 1980s with songs they wrote or co-wrote; and both have recently released records including more of their own original tunes.
Here, we take a look at what made them big, what has happened since and what they're up to now.
Lyle Lovett is not one to do a lot of interviews. Who could blame him?
Even some 15 years after the fact, there's no telling how many hacks would work in a question about his marriage to and divorce from actress Julia Roberts.
But Lovett, who declined an interview request from The Roanoke Times, has always been a low-profile guy.
You'll see him on stages, hear him on records and see him in the occasional television show or movie. But despite that long-ago marriage, Lovett is not tabloid fodder. He's an honest-to-goodness Texas singer/songwriter, and a farmer. He told The New York Times in 2003 that his proudest achievement was restoring his family's century-old farm and working it with an uncle.
But we know his songs better than his agriculture work. Lovett emerged in 1986 with his self-titled debut album. Songs such as "If I Were The Man You Wanted," "The Waltzing Fool" and "God Will" showed what was in store.
But it was the following year's "Pontiac" that put him on the national stage. "If I Had A Boat" and "She's No Lady" were quirky, funny country hits that flirted with crossover chart success. The latter tune, a swinging number with horns, presaged Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, which will appear at Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre on Saturday night -- Halloween night. Among that act's biggest tunes was Lovett's brave cover of the old Tammy Wynette hit, "Stand By Your Man."
From 1988 to 1998, Lovett released six consecutive gold records, each selling at least 500,000 copies. The focus was on good songs, strong arrangement and Lovett's sad, scratchy but resonant voice, equally suitable to country, jazz and folk.
The record sales haven't been as strong in the years since, but the quality has remained.
The Large Band joins him on his two most recent albums. 2007's "It's Not Big It's Large" is a tour through some of his best work -- "I Will Rise Up/Ain't No More Cane," "South Texas Girl" (featuring Guy Clark) and "This Traveling Around."
Lovett's newest, "Natural Forces," opens with four tunes he has written, co-written or adapted. His quirky/funny bent emerges early, with his arrangement and rewrite of "Farmer Brown/Chicken Reel." Lovett sings of Farmer Brown's violence around the hen coop: "I'm gonna choke my chicken ... till the sun goes down."
Much of what remains of "Natural Forces" is a tribute to some of Lovett's favorite Texas songwriters: Eric Taylor, Don Sanders, Tommy Elskes, David Ball, Vince Bell and Townes Van Zandt.
Lovett and another great Texas singer/songwriter, Robert Earl Keen, combined to write "It's Rock And Roll." Keen and Lovett go back to the mid-1970s, where the two Texas A&M students were next-door neighbors and porch-picking buddies.
But it's the title cut that stands out, with existential cowboy lyrics that include these lines: "And now as I sit here safe at home/With a cold Coors Light and the TV on/All the sacrifice and the death and war/Lord I pray that I'm worth fighting for."
