After six years of relative silence, country singer Lee Ann Womack, best known for the huge 2000 single “I Hope You Dance,” returned last year with “The Way I’m Livin’,” a solid collection of songs that earned a Grammy nomination (Best Country Album) while cracking the Billboard Top 100.
Across 13 tracks, most recorded live, Womack sings about Jesus and the Devil, alcohol and redemption, dreams and squandered promises. She covers Neil Young’s “Out on the Weekend,” a song Womack’s been keeping in her back pocket for over a decade. And next week, to celebrate Record Store Day, she’ll release “Trouble In Mind,” a three-song, limited edition 12-inch record produced by her husband, Frank Liddell, featuring guitarist Richard Bennett.
Womack performs at the Ridgefield Playhouse on Saturday, April 18, with Amanda Shires opening. We spoke with Womack about “The Way I’m Livin’,” the upcoming 12-inch, and what record stores meant to her as a child in Texas.
CTNow: When you were picking songs to record for “The Way I’m Livin’,” was there anything thematic you were looking for?
Lee Ann Womack: Not thematically. I had been given the opportunity to make a record of exactly what I loved and what I wanted. I just picked songs that I loved.
CTNow: You’ve talked about wanting to strip the music back to its basics, and there’s some evidence of that on the new album. What attracts you to that aesthetic?
LAW: I love when music feels as though you can sit right there in your room and play it, or when the listener can put the music on and feel like they’re right in the room with the musicians, like it’s all happening live, not layered, or “come back next week, we’ll fly out to L.A. and put this on it.” I just wanted it to feel like you could be in my living room.
CTNow: I love the string arrangement on “The Way I’m Livin’.” How did that come about?
LAW: The way I hear that: it’s a string arrangement, but it’s not slick. It reminded me of the “Ode to Billy Joe” record. It’s dark rather than being lilting and all that. It adds another dark layer to it, I think. I just thought it was brilliant.
CTNow: “Out on the Weekend” is a great Neil Young song. What drew you to record that one?
LAW: I was in the car with Frank one night on a road trip. This was years ago. I had grown up listening to strictly country music, so I wasn’t familiar with anything outside country really. When I met [husband and producer] Frank [Liddell], he was into a lot of folk music and rock music and stuff that I had not previously been exposed to. So one night we were in the car and he put the “Harvest” record on, and I didn’t know it. He was blown away that I didn’t know it. It was one of the major records in his life. When “Out on the Weekend” came on, I just made a mental note. I thought, “That’s a country song. I could do that. I’m going to work it out and surprise him sometime.” I was playing in Austin with some of my friends, and I got them to work it up. We did it that night. That was probably 12 years ago or so. Frank showed up after the show and said, “You’re going to cut that one someday.” It’s funny, because sometimes I’ll hear a song and I can’t wait to work it up and sing it. I definitely connected to the lyrics and how the song just felt. I immediately knew how I would do it, if and when I worked it up.
CTNow: You prepared a three-song release for Record Store Day. Do you think record stores are important?
LAW: I do think they’re important. It’s not so much that I feel I’m making a statement or leading the charge, or that I’m joining up with anything. I just love record stores. It’s something I want to be a part of because it’s something that I love. It wasn’t so much that it just worked out easily. I had to make it happen. I insisted on being a part of it, because every year I feel like, “Why am I not doing this?” Record stores are nostalgic for me. One night, maybe a couple of years ago, Chuck Ainlay, who’s a producer and engineer, he and his wife came over, and I had just gotten this new Telefunken console and record player. They brought this huge stack of records over. We just sat and ate and drank and listened to vinyl all night. He was explaining to me sonically why it sounded so much better and why your ears and mind don’t get as tired, all this stuff. I never understood any of that or even thought about it. I just thought it sounded warm and familiar to me, because that’s what I listened to as a kid. At that point, I became even more insistent about getting some more stuff on vinyl.
CTNow: What are some of the albums you remember buying when you were growing up?
LAW: The first records I remember having were my dad’s. He worked at radio stations when I was little. We had a lot of Bob Wills, Ray Price, Willie Nelson. We had a lot of Texas music. Those were the only records we had around the house, so I would get those out and listen to them by default. That kind of music became part of the fabric of my musical background. We also had a lot of Disney records, which sounds weird, but we were kids and family, Jimmy Durante singing “When You Wish Upon a Star,” all those lush arrangements and things like that. It was all real music though, real instruments. Later on, when I could get records or my parents would buy them for me, if I was really good and kept my room clean and all of that, I’d get to go to Discount City, which was the name of the store, and pick out a record. I remember getting a lot of 45s. I remember getting a Chuck Berry 45. It wasn’t new at the time, but I got it. I remember having an Elton John record. The first record I bought with my own money was a Steve Wariner record [“Midnight Fire,” from 1983] that Tony Brown produced on RCA. It had the single “Lonely Women Make Good Lovers,” the old Bob Lumen song. Those were some of the records that I remember from my childhood.
CTNow: What can you tell us about the live show and tour?
LAW: I have some great musicians assembled that were chosen specifically for this music. We just did three sold-out nights at City Winery in Nashville and had a ball. It’s music for music lovers. I do all the hits and stuff I’ve done before, but we have a lot of pickin’ parties at our house, and it’s very much like if you were in our living room. It’s a lot of fun. The audience feels very connected. We’re playing rooms that were meant to play music in, and there’s not a disconnect. I’ve played a lot of arenas, where we’re on stage and we are way away, with a big wall of sound. This is just more musical. That’s how I feel about it.
LEE ANN WOMACK performs at the Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield on Saturday, April 18, with Amanda Shires opening. Showtime is 8 p.m. Tickets are $45. Information: ridgefieldplayhouse.org.
