Not long before Garth Brooks began country’s rock/pop rush into the mainstream it currently resides, there was a flurry of earthen, bookish, lit-witty, not-at-all-hillbilly songwriters that hit all at once during the mid-1980s. Rustically and snappily character-driven as if blending the styles of Townes Van Zandt and Raymond Chandler while finding the intimate, intricate and intelligent side to rootsy, folksy song and melodic country craft, Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen, Nanci Griffth and Lyle Lovett road in like the Four Horsepersons Of The Fresh Dust Bowl Apocalypse and never left. They didn’t knock the charts over like Brooks soon would, but they recreated country in their 10-gallon English-major image. Most particular to these smarty-pants country stakes were Earle, who would go on to become a sort of ragged poet laureate to the cause, and Lovett, the sartorially correct, talk-singing, dry-humored toast of Houston.
Lovett has been absent for a minute, busy as he’s been becoming a late-in-life husband and a later-in-life first-time father to twins. (His two most recent albums were released in 2012, then 2022.) But Lovett started his spare-sounding, two-man tour of (mostly) City Wineries across America in May, concluding it with a three-night stand at its Philadelphia outpost.
For the last night of his last stop, a soft-spoken, quiet, acoustic-guitar-playing Lovett and electric guitarist James Harrah captured everything wise, wit-filled and good-natured about the Texan’s songcraft—and just a little bit more. Like how much Lovett loves being a dad (a lot), what from his many conversational sidebars and the inclusion of several family-matters-filled songs such as the kid-centric “12th Of June”
Craning his long neck upward to sing his chatty, raspy-voiced tunes of devotion to Lone Star State womanhood (“South Texas Girl”) and happily married jealousy (“She’s No Lady”), Lovett was in love with love in all of its wordy, rapping forms. He welcomed his love of language into the conversation while talking about fellow Texan Keen (their shared love of paragraphs and getting paid in hamburgers for local gigs while still in high school) and quoting Van Zandt (“It’s not the heat, it’s the humanity”). Throughout the evening, Harrah did an amazing job of adding layers to Lovett’s skeletal songs with dollops of soulful blues leads and musty-yet-modern, open-prairie ambience
Lovett’s absence did indeed make my heart grow fonder for him, his supple melodicism and his cleverly tough/tender way with a phrase, such as his countrypolitan blues of “Natural Forces” (“Home is where my horse is”) and his bashful bossa nova of “Her First Mistake” (“May I say your eyes are the loveliest shade of jade”). Though it may have seemed as if he was teasing in regards to Nashville traditionalism when he said, “I spent most of my life taking advice from Tammy Wynette,” then earnestly, full-throatedly covering “Stand By Your Man,” Lovett’s old nu-country manner is now firmly installed as the gold standard, one that announced itself proudly through the country blues of “I Know You Know,” the dusty balladry of “Her Loving Man” and his naked take on Bob Willis-style Western swing with “Don’t Touch My Hat.”
Welcome back.
—A.D. Amorosi; photos by Chris Sikich (taken two days earlier at City Winery Philadelphia)
