Telling stories comes naturally to singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett, no matter the size of the venue.
Whether it’s auditoriums, theaters or clubs, offering insight into the songs and his life is just something the “Cowboy Man” and “She’s No Lady” singer has always done.
“When I started playing out almost 50 years ago now, I would talk about the songs I was singing,” Lovett said in a recent phone call. “It’s coming from the folk tradition, explaining your songs or dropping breadcrumbs so that when people hear the song go by, they’ll sort of pick up on elements of a song that you hope they will. So that’s something I’ve always done, even in bigger venues, but in a small venue, it can be even more conversational, less presentational and more conversational.”
It might not get any more intimate than when Lovett brings his Songs & Stories tour to City Winery Pittsburgh in the Strip District for three shows May 27-29.
“Every time I’ve been in one of (City Winery’s) venues, the proximity to the audience is so great. People that are there come on purpose,” said Lovett, a four-time Grammy winner. “The people who come there come there because of the intimate nature of the venues and the proximity to the stage. That relationship goes both ways, so it was appealing to me. Even though I’ve never been to the City Winery in Pittsburgh, I’m looking forward to being there just because of the consistency of their venues and just being able to be close to the people.”
In a recent Zoom call from Austin, Texas, Lovett spoke with TribLive about how his young children have affected him, setlists, making new music and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.
What’s a typical day like if you’re not out on the road?
Getting up, getting the children ready for school with my wife April’s help — and really I’m more of the assistant in that deal – and then taking them to school myself, which is always one of the highlights of my day, and then picking them up in the afternoon. Thursday afternoons are piano lesson days. So we’ll go to piano lessons after school, which always culminates in a trip across the parking lot to ThunderCloud Subs, a locally owned Austin sandwich shop. That is really the incentive, I think, that gets us to go to piano lessons, is getting to go to ThunderCloud afterwards.
So the kids aren’t too interested in piano lessons right now?
No, they enjoy it, but I think the sandwich experience is a big part of it, too. (laughs) You can never underestimate the importance of a good sandwich.
You’re going to be heading to Pittsburgh soon, so do you have any memories from the city? Any connections to the city?
I remember that the first time I ever went to Pittsburgh was in 1986, with radio and retail promotion folks from MCA Records Nashville. I flew into Pittsburgh and we drove through the tunnel from the airport that opens up into the city. What I thought of as Pittsburgh or what I knew of Pittsburgh before that trip was watching the Houston Oilers and the Steelers play football in those playoff games and just the stereotypic sort of pictures of the steel mills and smoke in the sky, and coming out of that tunnel into that beautiful view of the city was a revelation to me. It was clean and beautiful and reminded me of a city, it could have been in Germany from that point of view, very orderly and just beautiful to look at as we drove into the valley.
Does it feel almost like a conversation with the audience when they’re that close with you?
It feels that way to me in every venue, but it’s really underscored when you’re in a place small enough to be able to hear what someone from the back of the room has to say, if someone happens to speak up.
This is going to be three nights in Pittsburgh, so how do you make sure every show is different?
I’m sure there’ll be some songs that I play all three nights, but I’ll just let the audience take me where it wants me to go really. Being able to play different songs from night to night is really more of a fun variable than a restriction of any kind. Having that flexibility and freedom to just play whatever occurs to me on the spot will be fun for me. I won’t be completely solo – Stuart Duncan will join me. Stuart is such a master of improvisation that he’ll be able to play along with anything I decide to play, whether he’s heard it or not. I’m curious and excited to see what he’ll bring to the songs as well. It’s a freeing feeling, the idea of not having to play as much of a set show each time.
Do you come up with setlists or do you look at them sort of as a starting point?
Yeah, I do setlists when I play with the band, which are also just sort of starting points. It’s rare that we ever play what’s exactly written down on the setlist from night to night. When I play with the band, the guys in the band are so good and we don’t play to click tracks or we don’t have augmented tracks playing along with us. There’s no computer program that we’re implementing at any point in our shows. We’re just playing music. So that allows for a great deal of flexibility in my live shows with the band, and the guys in the band are just so good. They can just play whatever I might decide to do.
Sometimes we do songs that we haven’t played in years, and they’re always just right there. That’s a great feeling. But I do write a setlist for those shows every day, which is just, to not be mean, give the guys in the band an idea of what’s coming up, but playing in this way with just Stuart, I probably won’t write a setlist. I might say let’s start with such and such just to give Stuart an idea of what we’re gonna start with, but that’s all I’ll have to do. I probably won’t write a setlist, and I’ll just kind of feel the audience and play what occurs to me next.
So he’s really got to be on his toes then.
Well, Stuart Duncan is just so good. Across the board, the musicians that I’ve gotten to work with over the course of my career are all heroes of mine, are all people that I have admired long before I ever got to meet them or work with them. It is such a privilege. I think truly one of the things that’s kept me going all these years is the people that I’ve gotten to work with, these heroic icons in the music business who have become friends and family to me over the years, helping to keep us all together and keep us all moving in the same direction. Having the opportunity to play with the people I’ve gotten to work with and play with is one of the things that interests me most about playing music.
Does it feel like it’s easier on you to do multiple shows per city, and does that give you a better chance to explore the towns that you’re in?
I can’t ever remember spending two days in a row in Pittsburgh, so I’m excited about that. I’m excited. I’ll be able to eat at more than one sandwich shop. Our production manager Matt Pribisco lives in Pittsburgh, so I’m excited that he’ll be able to show me around. So many times we get to a city in the middle of the night and leave after the show the next day and you really don’t get to see much of it. So I’m excited about that.
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What type of places draw you in when you’re on the road, when you get these opportunities like this?
Well, food. It’s always fun to find a restaurant that is unique to a city, not part of a chain or something, and fun to find a good local restaurant, owned locally, and it requires a little guidance. It requires knowing somebody in the city. (Drummer) Russ Kunkel is originally from Pittsburgh, knows a lot about Pittsburgh, so I’ve enjoyed Russ’ guidance as we’ve been there in the past too, but our production manager, Matt Pribisco, has worked in restaurants when he hasn’t been on the road, and he’s worked in restaurants in Pittsburgh and knows his way around the kitchens there, so I’m excited about that.
So it’s safe to say that you’re going to eat well when you’re here.
I indeed always eat well. (laughs)
How does it feel to be out touring when you don’t have anything to promote in particular? Is that a weight off your shoulders that you don’t have to do that?
I’ve never stopped playing live. My live performances have never been dependent on having a new product. As I’ve gotten older and then there’s more time between my releases, it’s more a matter of trying to figure out what I’m going to record. I’ve always really, and this is true of most recording musicians, who make their living playing live. It’s the rare exception when people make enough money from, even in the old days, their record sales that touring felt like an obligation. I’ve always enjoyed playing live and that’s what the music business is to me: going out and playing and performing in front of people, and that’s how I’ve always supported myself.
So in that way, it becomes a challenge to think about, OK, when am I going to take enough time off to make a new recording? It’s kind of the inverse of the traditional model where, in the old days, you’d make a recording and then go out and support it. Of course, I would do that too, but it was really more a matter of stopping to record and then taking a break from touring. I do that, I’ve just always been out there.
Is making new albums not a huge priority nowadays just because of the way the business is?
I wouldn’t say that. No, I think it’s always important to get your new work out there. I remember early on being eager for the next Guy Clark album. And back in 1985, when I first met Guy, I was having lunch with him and I said, well, Guy, I asked him the obvious question, when are you going to make another record? And he looked at me and said, well, when I get 10 songs that I like. (laughs) I thought, well, that’s fair enough. So that’s always the challenge. Writing is the hardest part of the whole thing for me. Having 10 new songs that I think are worthy of demanding someone’s attention is the challenge. But I think it’s important to get your work out there, to release work that you really feel is part of your life and supports what you want to say to the world is always important. To invent work to further your ambition is never important.
Your most recent album came out in about 2022, so did that feel like it was written through maybe a different lens, with the younger kids in your life now?
Oh, for sure. I recorded some standards that I’d been playing live and had never documented the way we played them live. So I wanted to do that and show off the large band through those songs. But the original songs on that record were mainly inspired by my children. So absolutely, that record is important to me because it documents for me that period of my life and the importance of it. I’m sure every dad in the world feels the same way, but in a big way, I just feel like everything up to the day they were born was just not very important. Everything since has been the most important part of my life. And before that, I just think, what in the heck was I doing before?
Yeah, it’s a good question.
Well, it is true. Nothing is better than the conversation you have on the way to school with your children. There’s just nothing better than that. Just walking along the crushed gravel walkway through the wildlife center yesterday on my son’s field trip, and having him come walk up by me and grab my hand after playing with some of his classmates, there’s just not a better feeling than that in the world.
It sounds like you’re embracing that, which is great because it goes by way too quickly.
Golly, it does. Ours will be 9 in June and that doesn’t seem possible. Everybody tells you that. When you’re not sleeping at all, you think this is never going to end, but then all of a sudden, it’s just gone. It’s way behind you, and it’s a real mind-bender how the passage of time works. I’m not having to embrace it. I just love every second of it. It’s not an effort to embrace it I guess is what I’m saying. It’s not an effort. I would rather do anything with my children than anything without them. I’m just grateful at this point in my life. I was 59 years old when they were born and I’m just grateful that I’ve had the chance to experience being a dad and being their dad. They ask me sometimes, why did you wait so long to have us? Why didn’t you have us earlier? So I think about that a lot, but I always tell them, well, if I’d have had children earlier, they wouldn’t have been you, so I was just waiting for you. That’s what I always tell them, but I’m lucky.
My parents both worked and they’d leave home between 5:30 and 6 in the morning to commute from suburban Houston into downtown Houston and they get home between 6 and 6:30 every evening. After school I’d go to my grandparents or my aunts and uncles, play with my cousins. I’ve always been close with my extended family because of that. I’m gone when I’m gone, but I’m home more than I’m gone, so when I get to be home and this year in particular I’m playing fewer dates than I did in previous years so I’ve really been home a lot more than I’ve been gone. When I’m home, I’m really able to be with them, to devote my attention to them and do things with them. Nothing makes me happier. … I enjoy taking pictures. I’ve always taken pictures, and they’ve been my favorite subjects, but it’s really, for a long time, as photos would fly past on our digital screen, I was taking pictures of the children that we were seeing in front of us, but now that they’re 8, the screen is putting up pictures of these children that I think, where did they go? Where are they now? It all gives you a lot to think about, makes you realize how important every single day is.
If you go
Who: Lyle Lovett
When: 7:30 p.m. May 27-29
Where: City Winery Pittsburgh, Strip District
Tickets: Starting at $115, citywinery.com