Grammy Award-winning singer, composer, and actor Lyle Lovett has never spent four straight days in St. Louis.
“I’m looking forward to it” Lovett says. “I’ve gotten a couple of invitations from folks. Dr. Harrington, the president of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, invited me to come by. So, I’ll get to go see him and visit the church headquarters, which will be fun for me. I’m excited to be able to try more than one barbecue place, too.”
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Lovett laughs, but there is no denying that getting to kick off his Songs & Stories tour in St. Louis from May 13-15 marks a unique moment in his decades-long relationship with the city.
The multi-night run at City Winery also gives Lovett something rare—time to settle into the city and let the shows evolve night after night. These days, however, some of Lovett’s favorite stories aren’t the ones he tells onstage.
Instead, it’s the stories his kids tell him. “I’m more interested in listening to them than I am talking to them, because I just love them,” Lovett says. “I love what they love. I love the way they’re learning.” Lovett is a hands-on dad. Just a few days before sitting down with SLM, he was chaperoning the school field trip to the Austin Wildlife Center. Watching his twins change and come into their own has been one of the great joys of the 68-year-old’s life.
“They’ve continued to grow as individuals and personalities,” Lovett says. “To watch them interact with their friends and other grownups, you get to see the side of your children that they don’t always reveal to you when you’re alone with them at home—just to see how charming they can be to other people.”
It’s a beautiful piece in the life of the singer-songwriter, who will have a chance to tell his own stories across his three nights at City Winery.
“I’m sure there’ll be fun songs I’ll repeat, but playing without the band enables me to not have to structure it so much,” says Lovett, who has released more than 20 radio singles, including fan favorites like “Why I Don’t Know,” “Give Back My Heart,” and “She’s No Lady.” “I’ll be limited to the songs that I know and that I think I can play and not really have to organize a set for a group of musicians.”
Indeed, the Songs & Stories format will have Lovett stepping on that stage in a far more stripped-down setting—without the help of his legendary Large Band backing him up. “Playing almost solo is more analogous to the way I started playing, and kind of takes me back to my beginnings,” Lovett says. “Gosh, that was 50 years ago.”
He lets that number float into the stratosphere a bit before adding that he won’t be entirely alone onstage. Joining him will be Stuart Duncan, whom Lovett calls “one of the greatest players in the world.”
“Stuart is a master of improvisation,” Lovett says. “He’s a master at being in the moment and making stuff up, even if he’s never heard something. So, it’ll be flexible in that way, and it’ll enable me to just go wherever the audience takes me.”
Of course, smaller venues will mean smaller audiences—a feature Lovett says he’s greatly looking forward to for a number of reasons—one being the chance to actually converse with his fans not only through music, but in true face-to-face conversation.
“That kind of intimate atmosphere has an appeal,” says Lovett, who last visited St. Louis on July 18 with his Large Band. “I enjoy that even in bigger halls.”
Lovett has never been one to air grievances from the stage. He just needs people to listen to the music.
“Explaining something presumes interest on the part of the audience,” Lovett says. “I’m inclined to sort of shut down when I don’t think there is an interest from an audience, but there are times I find myself in front of people who do seem interested or at the very least curious, so I try to take advantage of that.”
Nevertheless, Lovett remains hesitant to share too much.
“Before people recorded everything you did, playing and saying something live went out in the air and it was gone…In a live setting, it just goes by your ears once. And so, I’ve always tried to drop enough breadcrumbs in talking about a song so that key elements in the song will resonate as they go by,” he laughs. “That’s sort of in the folk singer’s handbook.”
