Entertainment, Music - Navy Times

Lyle Lovett isn’t worried about being the next big thing

Lyle Lovett is driving west on Route 290 in central Texas, talking on a cell phone and making his way to a recording session with Charlie Sexton.

“I’m honestly not sure if I’m breaking the law or not, which is also sort of a Texas thing,” he admits.

If there’s anyone who knows a “Texas thing,” it’s Lovett: He lives on the family ranch near Houston in an area founded by and named for his maternal great-great-grandfather.

Lovett’s song “That’s Right (You’re Not From Texas),” from the Grammy-winning “The Road To Ensenada” album, was part of a Texas ad campaign, and he’s paid homage to such Texas songwriters as Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt by recording their music.

That doesn’t mean he’s above leaving home. Lovett and his Large Band are on a 44-city North American tour that will wrap up in October in Greenville, S.C.

This marks the Large Band’s first official tour since the September release of “It’s Not Big It’s Large.” Lovett isn’t prone to hopping onto the annual album-tour carousel; the CD was his first full-length release of original material in four years.

“More now than ever before, it’s so important to not try to anticipate the market,” says Lovett, 50, a singer-songwriter known for his sly sense of humor and eclectic musical taste. “I’ve always just tried to be myself and have a life and write about that and the world as I see it and not be influenced by trends in either music or marketing ... certainly marketing.”

The official Lyle Lovett Web site came late to the digital party; it’s been up and running for less than a year.

Lovett’s sound has defied easy categorization — embracing gospel, country, jazz and bluegrass, among other genres — in more than two decades as a recording artist.

“The delivery of what you do is such a different thing from trying to think of something worth saying and singing about,” he says. “I just prefer to concentrate my energy there and hope the rest takes care of itself. ... I wouldn’t have a broad enough appeal to hold up to an intensive marketing campaign. My stuff is better-suited to people finding out about it from their friends and through less obvious ways.

“I’m not sure I want to keep up with all the possibilities at this point,” Lovett adds. “I’d rather just think about what makes me want to write a song or what makes me want to pick up my guitar and play it.”

It’s not as if Lovett is burning CDs in his cellar, taking cover far from the madding crowd and the stench of commerce: “It’s Not Big It’s Large” was sold in Starbucks, and last year, he was featured in a whimsical Annie Leibovitz Disney ad campaign with Beyonce and Oliver Platt. He played the March Hare to Beyonce’s Alice in Wonderland. What, you were expecting Tinkerbell?

But Lovett has always been like that, surfacing in unexpected places, taking smallish parts in movies such as “Short Cuts” and “Cookie’s Fortune,” cultivating a collaboration with the late filmmaker Robert Altman, composing movie music. His recording session this afternoon with Charlie Sexton concerns the upcoming Jeff Bridges-Justin Timberlake film “The Open Road,” in which Lovett also appears.

“I certainly want my records to sell well enough to do my job,” Lovett says, but he seems to understand that he’s not going to do it in the same style as, say, Beyonce or Timberlake.

Lovett quotes producer Tony Brown, who signed him to MCA Records in 1985: “He used to tease me. He’d say: ‘You’re not gonna cross over; you’re gonna cross under.”’