Photo by Michael Wilson
Toward the end of Lyle Lovett’s new album, 12th of June, comes “Are We Dancing,” a lushly orchestrated tune that evokes young lovers sweeping across a ballroom floor in a Golden Age movie.
It’s romantic and grand, sounding like something out of the Great American Songbook. But it’s a Lovett original, and he remembers exactly where he was when he wrote it: “It just kind of came to me, just dancing around the living room with my babies.”
12th of June’s title honors the birthdate of those babies, a twin boy and girl who will turn 5 this summer, and the songs stay true to Lovett’s career-long dedication to blending musical genres, wit, and sharp-eyed storytelling.
Ten years after his last album, 2012’s Release Me, Lovett returns with music made on his own terms (mostly — COVID required some concessions, including a release date two years later than intended) and new inspiration in his professional and personal life.
A Better Man
Release Me marked the end of Lovett’s original record deal, penned with Curb Records in 1985, giving him a chance to pull back and consider his career.
Photo by Michael Wilson
“I just, frankly, wanted to take my time to figure out what I wanted to do next,” he says.
He toured as he pleased (which is heavily; in a typical year, with or without a new album, he has more than 100 dates on the calendar), and he didn’t need anyone’s permission if a friend asked him to contribute to a song.
Most significantly, he married his longtime girlfriend and became a first-time dad, which bolstered his already strong ties to home. His ranch north of Houston has been in his family since the 1840s, and he shares it with cattle and horses, coming by his cowboy songs honestly. His mother is his neighbor on one side, and his uncle on another, and he hosts annual family gatherings on the land. That land is where, in the past few years, he’s watched his children grow, and he’s seen changes in himself as well.
As he sings of his twins in 12th of June’s title track, “All I have I gladly give them / All I am they will exceed / And one thing I know for sure / Is they improve the likes of me / They make a better man of me.”
“You want to be the best example for them that you can be, that’s really all it means,” Lovett says. “Instead of just thinking about your own life and thinking about your own wants and needs, you think about theirs. Theirs feel more important.”
He continues: “It’s a great privilege to show somebody the world, and to help somebody learn how to be in the world.”
As 12th of June has its own entry into the world this Friday on Verve Records, Lovett is excited to share songs that reflect his newly expanded family life as well as the talents of his longtime musical family, The Large Band.
The album starts not with one of Lovett’s songs, but with an instrumental standard, “Cookin’ at the Continental.” It sounds like some particularly spirited entrance music, and that’s because it is. The Large Band — which includes a horn section, a full rhythm section, and powerful soul singers — has been opening shows with it since the late 1980s, Lovett says. Other standards, including Nat King Cole’s “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You,” and “Peel Me a Grape,” are nestled alongside Lovett’s originals and feel right at home there. After all, they’ve been part of the Large Band’s live sets for years. They’re collected here to signal a triumphant return, and as a thank you, too.
“I thought they would be a good vehicle to represent the Large Band,” Lovett says, “and what the Large Band has meant to me over the course of my career.”
Many of the contributors on 12th of June, including Sam Bush, Stuart Duncan, Russ Kunkel, Viktor Krauss, Luke Bulla, Francine Reed, Matt Rollings, and Keith Sewell, have been with Lovett on the road or in the studio for decades, and they’re in full force on 12th of June, adding a mighty blast but also astonishing musicality to the songs.
Packing perhaps the most punch on the album is Lovett original “Pants Is Overrated” — surprisingly, written before the pandemic. It’s a close cousin, sonically, to Lovett’s classic “Church,” from 1992’s Joshua Judges Ruth. After unfolding a story about losing his favorite pair of pants, he points out some famous figures who wisely have gone without, including men in Scotland, newborn babies, and Jesus. All hands are on deck on the chorus, punctuated by a horn section and full string quartet.
But Lovett doesn’t need all that sound to make a statement, not always. He strips it down to just his voice and guitar on the softly swaying “The Mocking Ones,” a meditation on the people who drift in and out of our lives, and “On a Winter’s Morning” is an aptly quiet reflection on simple pleasures of staying home.
Staying home wasn’t so great, however, for mixing 12th of June, which during the pandemic had to be done largely online, a tedious and frustrating method for someone who describes his typical involvement in the recording studio as “complete.” Luckily, he could trust his co-producer, longtime sonic collaborator Chuck Ainlay, and was able to spend two days with Ainlay putting final touches on the album last January.
“When you’re sort of working by yourself and in your own head, it’s not as much fun as sitting next to a brilliant recording engineer and producer and bouncing ideas back and forth,” Lovett says. “Working in that situation is like playing music on stage as well. You’re bouncing off talented people around you, and that’s always fun and inspiring and leads to ideas.”
Conversations and Collaborations
That spirit of collaboration followed Lovett into lockdown, where he partnered with friends and heroes for a series of dual livestreams. Each of the 16 streams featured Lovett in conversation and swapping songs with fellow musicians like Jason Isbell, John Hiatt, Shawn Colvin, Lisa Loeb, Chris Isaak, and Robert Earl Keen, an old friend from his days as a journalism major at Texas A&M.
Photo by Michael Wilson
“It’s not the same” as a live show, he likes to joke, “but it’s different.”
Turning serious, he explains that the shows, with tickets selling for $10, were both a financial and creative lifeline for him and the artists who joined him.
“It was different in that it allowed for conversation, it allowed for moments that wouldn’t happen on stage, it allowed for an atmosphere that doesn’t exist on stage,” he says. “So I was proud of that and I really enjoyed getting to do those, to the extent that I hope to continue doing them.”
In the near future, though, he’s returning to the road in support of 12th of June, with 60 dates between now and the end of August. And it’s an option he doesn’t take for granted.
“I feel, at the age of 64, privileged to have been able to spend my life doing things I enjoy,” he reflects. “When I was 18 and first started playing in clubs in 1976, I never would’ve dreamed that in 2022 I’d still be able to do it, that it would have become my life. I’m grateful. Grateful to the people I work with, grateful to the audience that supports us.”
There is, however, a notable break in his schedule around the 12th of June, an opportunity, no doubt, to head back home to celebrate his twins’ 5th birthday.
“Just being with my children is the most fun I’ve ever had,” he says. “Just being with them, sitting on the floor with my children, beats anything I’ve ever done in terms of enjoyment.”
