Eat, Drink, Listen
On the same night that Julia Robert’s newest blockbuster hit the country’s movie screens, I was going in a different direction, out to see the man only known outside of a small corner of the music world as the former Mr. Julia Roberts.
As I mused over this weird juxtaposing, wondering if this portended some odd alignment of the heavens on a crescent moon night, no less a date than Friday the 13th, my music companion looked at me and said, “You know, we are probably among the few who wonder what he was doing marrying her.”
It was Lyle Lovett, in town for an outdoor show at the Lowell, MA Boardinghouse Park on a perfect summer evening, here to tell us that for tonight we were forgiven for not being Texans, and for a few hours he took us in, boots, belt buckle and Texas twang.
Lovett was back on the road, in support of his new record Natural Forces, halfway through a tour that started in July in Oklahoma and will wind up at the end of the month outside of Burlington, VT. He was accompanied by his band (“It’s not big, it’s large”), 14 members with not one but two lead guitars, four male back-up singers, cello, violin, grand piano, mandolin, percussion, pedal steel, and incomparable rhythm section of West Coast legends Leland Sklar, bass and Russ Kunkel, drums. Lovett was at ease and in control all evening, exchanging jokes and talking with both the audience and band members.
As advertised the sound was large, early in the set the band kicked into the Texas swing rocker “It’s Rock and Roll”, giving the two lead guitars, Mitch Watkins and Ray Herndon chances to swap extended solos from opposite sides of the stage.
Lovett plowed his way Texas Style through multiple genres, refusing to recognize any borders, blues, country, swing, a little jazz, gospel, and bluegrass , summoning here the spirit of Bob Will and His Texas Playboys and The Light Crust Doughboys, and there music right out of Southern Sunday Services of the last century.
Paying tribute throughout to Texan musicians who came before him, including Guy Clark and Robert Earl Keen, he performed Townes Van Zandt’s “White Freightliner” ‘ and another song done by Van Zandt, “Brazos River song”, certainly a compliment to those mentors, considering the number of great songs Lovett has written himself.
Trying to fit them into a 2 hour show was impossible, but the band brought many of the crowd’s favorites, “That’s Right, You’re Not From Texas, with Lovett observing wryly that he was in a part of the country where folks don’t take it as an insult to be called a Yankee. There was also “If I Had A Boat”, with the audience joining on the sing-along line, ” Kemosabe kiss my ass”, the swinging “My Baby Don’t Tolerate”, and the suggestive “Farmer Brown/Chicken Reel”, both from the new record.
In the musing title track, “Natural Forces” Lovett describes sitting on his sofa watching a beer commercial during a football game on a Sunday afternoon, “Now as I sit here safe at home/With a cold Coors Lite and the TV on/All the sacrifice and the death and woe/Lord I pray I’m worth fighting for”. Addressing the audience, he hoped we would honor those fighting by being the best we could be.
Towards the end of the set, band members left the stage save for Sklar on bass, Keith Sewell on mandolin, Luke Bulla on fiddle and Lovett on acoustic guitar gathered around one microphone center stage for some bluegrass influenced songs, including “Pantry”, and “Up In Indiana”. Following that, the rest of the band trickled back on stage picking up their instruments one by one, and ending the show with the rousing “Church” always a favorite , this time the part originally sung by favorite back-up singer Francine Reed handled ably by Sweet Pea Atkinson, and “White Freightliner”.
The show closed out with opener Kat Edmonson, who is from Austin, returning to join the full band for a stirring version of the Van Zandt song, “Brazos River Song." Kat Edmonson, from Austin, opened the show with a well chosen set of standards, accompanied only by a guitarist, later joining Lovett’s band for the encore.
