Review: Lyle Lovett and His Large Band kick off a four-night stand at the City Winery
Don’t miss an intimate opportunity to see Lovett and his dazzlingly versatile ensemble
Lyle Lovett’s engagement at the City Winery Philadelphia with His Large Band this week is something special.
The Texas songwriter with a dry sense of humor and a broad musical range is on the road in support of his new album, 12th of June. It’s his first in 10 years and first with the Large Band in 15.
At the City Winery, Lovett and his dazzlingly versatile ensemble have settled in for four nights in an intimate room much cozier than the theaters they’re playing in most other markets.
On Tuesday, they kicked off the run with a generous 2 ½ hour show that was relaxed, discursive, and precise, as impressive for its musicianship as it was for its haberdashery. (All 14 guys in the band, including their leader, wore suits and ties.)
The Large Band is many things. It’s a mutable organism that includes four horn players and three backup vocalists that adapts to all their front man can do.
Sure, Lovett is still identified as the country artist he emerged as in the 1980s, albeit one with a head of hair that reached toward the heavens and a taste for the quirky and absurd in songs like “If I Had A Boat,” which was a crowd-pleaser on Tuesday.
But the 64-year-old songwriter — who is the father of 5-year-old twins whose birth inspired much of 12th of June, including its title — works in many idioms.
At City Winery, Lovett opened with “Are We Dancing,” a gorgeous, understated waltz about cradling his children. Then he let the Large Band breathe on a robust version of jazz pianist Horace Silver’s “Cookin’ At The Continental.”
That was followed by Lovett bringing out the vocal trio of Willie Greene Jr., Lamont Van Hook, and Jason Eskridge to crowd onto the stage for “Pants is Overrated,” a droll tune that reflected his kids’ preference for going bottomless delivered in the full-on gospel style familiar to fans of Lovett’s “Church,” from 1992′s Joshua Judges Ruth, which was the rousing foot-stomping show closer on Tuesday.
Throughout the night, the band shape-shifted. Bassist Leland Sklar and drummer Russ Kunkel — the A-list rhythm section for Los Angeles acts like Linda Ronstadt and Warren Zevon in the 1970s and 1980s — anchored the group on songs like the swaggering blues “My Baby Don’t Tolerate” and country swing “Cowboy Man.”
But along with the horn section and singers and steel guitarist Buck Reid and pianist Jim Cox — whose impeccable playing moved Lovett to ask “Do you really only have 10 fingers?” — players came and went on stage all night.
Fiddle player Luke Bulla displayed his virtuosity, playing and singing solo on his own “Temperance Reel.” The story of how he wrote the song at late Texas songwriter Guy Clark’s house then inspired Lovett to sing Clark’s “Anyhow, I Love You,” the high point of a stunning acoustic interlude.
Earlier in the pandemic, Lovett put on monthly virtual get-togethers, pairing off with a songwriter like Elvis Costello or Shawn Colvin. Those shows, like everything Lovett does, delivered a standard of professionalism hard to come by in those barren livestream-only days.
He’s clearly delighted to be back on stage, however, and he was a courtly presence on Tuesday, frequently expressing thanks to the audience and musicians for granting him the privilege to play with them. No mention was made of Francine Reed, his longtime duet partner who sings on 12th of June but was absent on Tuesday.
An underrated vocalist, Lovett shone throughout the evening, on playful songs like “She’s No Lady” and “Pig Meat Man” (about his son’s love of bacon) or tender ones such as “Her Loving Man.”
Lovett is so good at being clever that it can occasionally be frustrating. Sometimes you wish he would lose the semi-ironic detachment and, as he and the band put it in a Nat King Cole cover “Straighten Up and Fly Right.”
Because when he does, he can be profoundly moving. Case in point on Tuesday was 12th of June’s title song, which he prefaced with a story about the Lovett family cemetery in the Big Thicket region of east Texas.
He told of family picnics over generations, and watching his kids play in the creek where he once frolicked. As an older dad, the lines about loving his family forever “though I fly beyond this life” were particularly heartrending. The song is a small masterpiece.
Lyle Lovett and His Large Band’s show at the City Winery Philadelphia on Friday is sold out. Tickets remain for Wednesday and Thursday. $75-$175, 8 p.m., 8/3-8/4, 990 Filbert St., citywinery.com/philadelphia.