Just days before his St. Louis tour stop, Lyle Lovett finds himself grappling with heartbreak back home in Texas.
“We have neighbors who lost their 8-year-old granddaughter,” Lovett tells St. Louis Magazine from a recent tour stop in Utah. “It’s just devastating. There were three girls at the camp. Her two older sisters were rescued, but she was in one of those cabins that washed away. They were all hopeful because of the stories of rescue, but they found her body yesterday.”
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The news is still fresh, shocking, and difficult to comprehend for Lovett—even though he lives hundreds of miles from the devastation and confirms his family is safe. Still, the emotional impact of the July 4 Texas flood cuts deep for the longtime empath.
“There’s no silver lining,” Lovett says. “There’s no story of resiliency that can ever be as important as the loss of life. Whether it’s your mother or your father or your child, there’s no getting over that. It never gets better. It never goes away. That loss becomes part of a person.”
The stories emerging from the July 4 floods in Texas are almost too painful to comprehend for the Texan expected to set aside his grief, climb back on the tour bus, and bring music to fans across the country.
“You can’t help but feel it, and you can’t shake the feeling, but also you have an obligation,” says the Houston-born storyteller, 4x Grammy winner, singer, composer and actor. “The only thing you can do is compartmentalize it and go out there and do your show. You can’t impose. I feel like it would be unfair to the audience to ask them to pull me out of my feelings. The people who are coming to the shows aren’t coming to help me. I’m supposed to be there for them.”
And Lovett will most certainly show up for St. Louis during his stop at The Factory on July 18. His love affair with St. Louis fans stretches back to the 1980s, when the singer-songwriter with the wild hair first took the stage here. Since then, he’s built a career spanning 14 albums, filled with music that blends country, swing, jazz, folk, gospel, and blues with effortless ease. He’s released more than 20 radio singles, including fan favorites like “Why I Don’t Know,” “Give Back My Heart,” and “She’s No Lady.”
Needless to say, Lovett has no shortage of material to pull from when it comes to crafting a setlist.
“When I’m working on the setlist for any given show, I try to think of songs that the audience might expect to hear or want to hear,” says Lovett, who’s currently on a 39-date run with his Large Band. “But in reality, how I put the set together is about the people I’m on stage with. And when I do a show with a large band, I do my best to select material that will feature the entire band. My objective is by the end of the show, I want the audience to feel as if they have gotten to know everyone. That’s what drives the material.”
Lovett often leaves room in the setlist to change things up based on the night, the crowd, or the city. “There are variable spots within the set that not only allow for requests but also allow for just how I’m feeling on a given day,” Lovett laughs. “I might want to play a song that I haven’t played in a while.”
And yes, Lovett adores The Factory. “It’s a state-of-the-art listening room,” he says of the Chesterfield venue, which opened in 2021 and has quickly become a favorite among touring acts for its warm acoustics and intimate feel. “The local crew there did a great job of taking care of us [during our last visit], and people in the audience didn’t seem to mind driving to Chesterfield to come to the show.”
While his family was able to join him on the first few weeks of the current tour, Lovett doubts they will be able to join him in July in St. Louis. “They’ve got some summer camps and planned day camps,” he says of his twins’ summer plans. “They’re just 8. We haven’t done a sleepaway camp yet.”
Lovett goes silent.
“If it were up to me, I would keep them with me all the time,” he says quietly. “But I tell you, when they can be here and I step off the stage and get on the bus after saying hello to folks after a show and I can kiss them goodnight and they’re in their bunks sleeping? Well, I just feel at home wherever I am.”
