Lovett's band still looms Large

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Lyle Lovett, speaking from his tour bus, talks about the benefits of recording live, traveling without horns this summer and keeping his songs personal rather than political.Q: I'd heard you considered going out with a smaller band because of gas prices. Was that true?A: That must have been a rumor. In the summertime I always like to put some version of the Large Band together. It doesn't have anything to do with gas prices, but we don't have our horn section this summer. We decided for creative reasons to go a different direction.Q: I assume the configuration of the band dictates the set list to a point.A: Exactly. Not the size of the band, but the different components dictate the set list ... I always try to organize it so everybody gets a chance to play. This way we're able to play some songs that are not necessarily horn songs. It's more flexible, makes it a little more different than the last three times we've been out.Q: Reviews have called "It's Not Big It's Large" (2007) the best album of your career. You recorded it live in the studio, right?A: The more live we can record, the better I like it. I get to work with such wonderful musicians ... to constrain them by isolating them and saying, 'Play something,' would make you miss creative opportunities. I really like the way great players react to one another. ... you come up with a more natural feel, for sure.Q: Reviewers said this album was about mortality, but it seems to me that it's more about resilience.A: Good! (Laughs.) For me, getting older myself and losing my dad in the last eight years, you can't help but think about your own mortality and life. I guess you do throughout your life, but as you get older your perspective tends to shift. That's what's wonderful about life. There's never a point that you understand everything. No matter where you are in life there's the chance to learn something.Q: And your songwriting reflects the passage of time.A: I've just been fortunate ... (I've) never been constrained by the folks I'm in business with and I follow my natural inclinations. Writing for me is just a process of reacting to what's going on. There's no grand design. If you have a grand design, you're lucky if you can sort of apply that organization to your life. Writing is just a chance to react to it, really.Q: Your first album came out in '86, but you were making music for 10 years prior. What did that early work sound like?A: I've recorded a lot of my early songs ... my first gig for money was when I was 18 ... we played a lot of those songs from "Step Inside This House." We played "Bears" and "Texas Trilogy." We played "L.A. Freeway" ... those were the songs that I learned to perform first. I made up "Give Back My Heart" when I was 17. I made up "Closing Time" when I was 20.Q: You've spoken about your concerns with society, yet you've not made political statements. Why is that?A: I think there's a danger in affecting how your work might be perceived. My songs are about people. My songs are about trying to figure out what every day is like, what every day means. That's what my songs are about to me. If you start to engage in an agenda that's other than your personal dealings with the world ... there's nothing wrong with it if somebody wants to be political. But I think you run the risk of people perceiving you in a different way. ... I appreciate artists that can tell the truth ... whose art seems to be above the pettiness of politics.Q: Is Lost Highway still a good fit as a record label?A: They don't give you any trouble and they don't give you very much support either. They truly do leave you alone. Maybe it's the point where I am in my career ... and it's a symptom of the changing record business. More and more, it's incumbent on the artist to do the job record companies used to do ... Lost Highway is a fine place for me to be, but this record has sold fewer -- and I feel like it's one of my best records ever -- and it's sold fewer than any of my records to date. We really tried to do our part and talk about it and get the word out there. ... Not to say anything bad about Lost Highway or Universal. That's just the state of the business.(Rocky Mountain News pop music writer Mark Brown can be reached at brownm(at)RockyMountainNews.com.)