Flashback: Lyle Lovett (1986)

From piled up platinum bee-hive hairdos to braided pony tails, from helmeted pompadours to sweeping and shiny knee-length tresses, to a multitude of mullets, what goes on on the heads of country stars – including cowboy hats and backward facing snap-backs – can be used as a fairly accurate indicator of which era to slot an artist into, as well as a dependable predictor of a connection with a specific style or sound.

The mullet and moustache came mighty close to defining country music in the ’90s the way the big hair did for the glam metal and rock & roll hair bands of the ’70’s and ’80s. Hairstyles are inescapably a cheap way to make a quick guess about an artist’s bona fides, a chance to unfairly judge a book by its cover.

Before Joe Diffie, Alan Jackson, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Tracy Lawrence in the ’90s, Lyle Lovett made a solitary and singular statement in the late 80’s with a hairstyle he described as “having a mind of its own.”

Thankfully, his music did as well.

The hair, however, was as much a red herring as anything, an easy talking point for critics and late-night talk show hosts. It’s greatest strength was its ability to knock you off balance and challenge our preconceived notions of what a cowboy singer should look like, sing about, and sound like while doing it.

Above all, Lovett was a Texan. And right out of the chute, the hat-less horseman from Houston who admitted to being afraid of cows messed with listeners expectations.

Lovett would alternately be defined as: idiosyncratic, misogynistic, eccentric, subversive, quirky, and exotic.

Nobody ever accused him of not being country, but few people ever acknowledged just how country he actually was.

By the end of 1986, Randy Travis was celebrated as having saved the entire country music genre. Dwight Yoakam made it sexy, mysterious, and cool again. Steve Earle rocked it with a raw and reckless heartland spirit.

Lovett’s debut rode his listeners up to a scenic overlook where we could take in just how wide and expansive the country music horizon line was before charging down into a new decade.

Although never the “Big Daddy” of that class of pioneers, Lyle Lovett proved he was certainly not a nobody with his eponymous MCA/Curb Records debut album he co-produced with none other than Tony Brown.

Lovett went to Nashville in 1994 to sell his songs, and ended up with his own recording deal. He always maintained was country by association. His music had twang and swing. He was a cowboy and a dandy. He was as much a Texan folk storyteller as he was a blues musician. Jazz imparted a gravitational pull on his sound he didn’t often fight to resist. His band was not big, it was large. From the start, he was always the man that he was.

In the liner notes to Lyle Lovett, iconic Texas songwriter Guy Clark wrote,” The first time I met Lyle I thought he was a French blues player. You can’t tell he’s Texas ’til you hear the songs. Then he is so Texas he doesn’t have to say it. These songs are true and timeless. That’s cause Lyle likes to make everyone count.”

If Lovett was country by association, his country associates on this album were top shelf. Rosanne Cash provided harmonies. Vince Gill played the electric rhythm guitar. Francine Reed sings with him for the first time on record. Robert Earl Keen co-wrote a Texan classic with Lovett, “The Porch Song.” It’s hard to imagine a world in which Kip Moore’s “The Bull” and Ashley McBryde’s “Girl Going Nowhere” were not inspired by this song of hard work and triumph.

Lovett got play at country radio with his first four singles .“Farther Down the Line”, “Cowboy Man,” “God Will,” and “Why I Don’t Know” all were top twenty hits but only “Cowboy Man” would reach the top ten, but only barely.

Lovett’s career would quickly take flight, especially in Hollywood, but he would increasingly fly just below the radar of what was happening in mainstream Nashville. He might be as famous for his short-lived marriage to actress Julia Roberts as anything else. Lovett doesn’t even register on a feature like Country Universe’s retrospective honouring the #1 hits of the 80’s, but Mary Chapin Carpenter would famously name drop Lovett in her 90’s hit “I feel Lucky.”

In many ways, it would be easy to pretend Lovett never happened .

Until you listen to this debut album again. He brings charisma and creativity in spades. His laconic charm drips from the songs. Self-deprecating humor is as much a part of his songwriting as are his wickedly sharp observations about people, love, and life. It is a brilliant collection of songs that resist easy categorization.

Lovett was Red Dirt and Americana back in 1986, but almost forty years later still demonstrated he is at the height of his quixotic artistic game with his 2022 Verve album 12th of June.

It must mean something that Willie Nelson would cover both “Further Down the Line” and ‘If I Were the Man You Wanted” on his 1993 Across the Borderline album. Patty Loveless would cover “God Will” on her 1991 album Up Against My Heart.

“You Can’t Resist It” anticipates the best of 90’s country by more fully leaning into a pop production than any of the other neo-traditionalists. What is “The Waltzing Fool” other than achingly beautiful and tender? “Closing Time” is as empathetic an ode to the people who work a bar as any Haggard tune sung to the back-of-the-house team after the front-of-the-house scene Clint Black would later describe in 1989’s “Winding Down.” has gone home. I won’t even try to make sense of “An Acceptable Level of Ecstasy (The Wedding Song)” beyond saying it is a twisted blast of contagious lyricism and mysterious vocal vibes.

This entire Lyle Lovett album has endured as the truest of companions.