For a man who’s spent four decades outsmarting genre labels, Lyle Lovett still seems surprised anyone lets him keep doing it. “If getting to do something you love every day is what you do when you retire,” he says, “then I’ve always been retired.” At 64, he’s laughing but also sort of right. Lovett’s career—equal parts western swing, jazz bandleader, crooner, and occasional actor—has always sounded like semi-retirement done right. His 2022 album 12th of June, his first in a decade, sounds like an artist who’s traded ambition for appreciation and still made one of his best records.
The title track, written for his twins’ birthday, is Lovett’s way of processing what it means to become a first-time father in his sixties. “I never considered my age until I knew they were going to be born,” he says. “Then I started doing the math—will I see them graduate? Will I get to be part of that?” The song is equal parts lullaby and eulogy: “I will love you three forever though I fly beyond this life.” It’s tender, but with the kind of clear-eyed grace that’s always defined Lovett’s writing. “It’s just about being grateful for all of it,” he says. “If nobody listens to this record again, I’ll still be happy with my life because of them.”
He laughs about the lighter side of dad life, too. “Pants Is Overrated came from trying to get a two-year-old dressed,” he says. “You finally give up and think, maybe they’re right.” His son’s bacon obsession inspired another track, Pig Meat Man. “So far he’s vegetarian except for bacon,” Lovett says. “He’s right about that, too.”
That sense of humor bleeds into his reflections on the last few years—the pandemic, the touring pause, the changes in his band and crew. “Francine [Reed], who I’ve sung with for decades, decided she didn’t want to tour anymore,” he says. “She’s 75 now and she earned that choice. Same with my sound engineer—he mixed every show I’ve done since 1988. Pandemic made everyone re-evaluate. You can’t blame ‘em.”
Lovett didn’t waste the downtime. He streamed 20 ticketed live shows from home with different guests, including Chris Isaak. “Chris texted me the day before to send his setlist and even a picture of what he was wearing,” Lovett laughs. “That’s the kind of thoughtful he is.” The two are now touring together. “We’ll definitely talk on stage. We can’t not. It’ll be like our own variety show.”
Talk is something Lovett’s good at—too good, maybe. He tells me about his first trip to Nashville in 1984, when he was still playing bars in Texas. “Nancy Griffith invited me to sing harmony on her record,” he says. “I thought, ‘as long as I’m going, I might as well find out how the business works.’” Within months, he had a publishing deal, a record contract, and an album out alongside Steve Earle and Dwight Yoakam. “It was good timing,” he says. “Nashville was looking for something new, and I just happened to be in the right line for once.”
He still marvels at the details that shape a life—an engineer’s coffee recommendation, for example. “Chuck Ainlay poured me a cup of Sumatra in 1987,” he says. “I’ve never gone back. They ship it to my hotel on tour now. That’s thanks to Chuck.”
The same gratitude shows up in 12th of June’s mixture of standards and originals. He revisits Nat King Cole’s “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” a song he first recorded for a Gary Marshall film in the ‘90s. “Gary gave me permission to approach it,” he says. “Otherwise, I never would’ve. It’s sacred ground.” The result is a loose, swinging track that mirrors Lovett’s bandleader instincts. “There’s nothing better than singing a great song and feeling like you have a right to sing it.”
Lovett still plays marathon shows—five hours split between early and late sets at New York’s City Winery—and still records with the same attention to tone and personnel he’s always had. “Working with Chuck again after 30 years felt like coming home,” he says. “You build this shorthand over time. You can look across the room and not have to say a word.”
For a guy who keeps claiming he’s “not an actor,” Lovett’s film résumé says otherwise—Altman’s Short Cuts, Don Roos’s The Opposite of Sex, multiple stints on Blue Bloods. “I’m not an actor, but occasionally I get to play one on TV,” he jokes. “It’s given me a real respect for the craft. Watching someone like Donnie Wahlberg work—he just knows what he’s doing.”
That humility is why Lovett’s music still lands without pretense. He’s a storyteller who happens to sing like a gentleman, a poet who’d rather tell you a joke about Sumatra beans than explain his metaphors. And at this point, he seems more content than ever to let the work speak for itself. “I’d never have dreamed in 1976 that I’d still be doing this,” he says. “I’m just grateful.”
Asked how he’d like to be remembered, Lovett laughs. “I want them to say he was really old,” he says. “That’s it. Just really old.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
