Lee Ann Womack – Dances with wolves
Ah, but do not mistake ambition for insecurity. Earlier she has been asked what she wants out of the business she has studied to assiduously. She pauses and phrases her answer carefully.
“Well, for sure I want to be able to take care of my kids financially. I want to work, and I want to do what I like to do for work; there’s so many people that have to do jobs that they don’t like in this world. I love [this], and you can make a good living doing it. But I’d be really lying, I mean, I’d be dishonest if I said that was all I wanted out of it. Obviously, I’m just driven to be at the top, and that’s what I want.”
She smiles at the confession, and laughs a little. “If nothing else just to prove, I guess, that I can do it. You know, I love people who are great at what they do. Whether it’s Ricky Skaggs — I just can’t get enough of him, I just think he’s awesome — or if it’s somebody like [her producer] Mark Wright, who is so good at what he does, Frank [her husband], who knows songs better than anybody I’ve ever worked with.
“I just love people who are great at what they do, and I guess part of me really wants to be great at what I do. And wants to have other people that I work with, you know, think that.”
Those framed records on the wall don’t convince you of that yet?
“No.”
What will?
“I don’t know. I don’t know, but there’s too many framed records around this town that ain’t that good,” she says, and she laughs again, brightly. “That’s not enough. I’d rather be Ricky Skaggs than Garth Brooks.”
Buddy and Julie Miller sing backing parts on Lee Ann Womack’s version of their “Does My Ring Burn Your Finger” on her new album, as they did two years ago when she recorded Julie’s “Don’t Tell Me” for Some Things I Know; Womack recorded Julie’s “I Know Why The River Runs” (also on the new disc) without them.
“Really, she didn’t need us on the songs,” typed the self-effacing Buddy via e-mail. “She is an incredible singer easily capable of doing her own backgrounds (and much better than we could do). But it meant a lot to us that she wanted us involved, and we were blown away with her treatment of the songs.”
The two interpretations are, of course, entirely different animals. Buddy writes, “I’m sometimes surprised that people in Nashville can hear past our funky versions of the songs.” In fact, Brian Mansfield reports in ICE newsletter, Womack cut “Does My Ring Burn Your Finger” three times before she was satisfied. Ultimately, Liddell (and not Wright, who has produced everything else on her three albums) produced the two Miller tracks, and Robison’s “Lonely Too”.
“It’s the way things happened,” she explains easily. “I knew what I was going for, and I knew how great Frank was at it. It just seemed natural. Hey, I’m on my third record, the budget was a little bigger, so we could go play and do some fun things. And man, am I glad we did. I’m so proud of those.”
Womack also ended up in the studio when George Strait and Alan Jackson recorded Larry Cordle’s song “Murder On Music Row”. That’s her voice you hear in the background. But her participation wasn’t meant to signify rebellion.
“I don’t think it was meant to make a difference. I think it was meant to entertain,” she insists. “I think it is most definitely doing what it was supposed to do. The song’s at #33, with a bullet I think right now, and they’re not even asking anybody to play it. I know for a fact, since I know George, it was not meant to be any kind of huge statement. He loved the Larry Cordle cut on it, and he listened to it over and over and over, and he’s just like me, he finds something he loves and he’s going to cut it. I don’t think he meant for it to be any kind of big, flag-waving thing for country music.”
But surely he knew it would be.
“I’m sure he did, yeah. I’m sure he knew it would bring out some passions and listeners in radio and business and all of that. But, again, I think the main goal there was just to be entertaining.”