“I think dramatically,” declares Meat Loaf. “My albums are big, complicated stories.” Indeed, nearly every project Meat Loaf undertakes is bigger than life, starting with 1977’s smash rock opera Bat Out of Hell. Produced by Todd Rundgren and composed by classically trained songwriter Jim Steinman, the album has sold more than 14 million copies in the U.S. alone.

Meat Loaf’s career has at times sputtered since that rip-roaring early success, but lately he’s been on a creative tear. For his latest album, Hell in a Handbasket, the Dallas native born Marvin Lee Aday (although he changed his first name to Michael in the 1980s) worked with a variety of songwriters and covered favorites like the Mamas & the Papas’ “California Dreamin’.” Guests include Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath, country star John Rich and hip-hop luminary Lil Jon, all of whom he worked with on the NBC-TV reality show The Celebrity Apprentice 4. Public Enemy’s Chuck D also adds a rap to the mid-album medley “Blue Sky/Mad Mad World/The Good God Is a Woman and She Don’t Like Ugly.” Now 64, Meat Loaf first caught the public’s imagination with his appearance in the 1975 movie classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He continues to balance music with acting, having recently wrapped next year’s A White Trash Christmas. Meat Loaf spoke with us from his home in L.A. about the new album, the madness of today’s world and a nagging problem he still has with Bat Out of Hell.

Did any one song dictate the new album’s direction? 

“Mad Mad World.” I’ve wanted to do that song ever since Tom Cochrane wrote it 20 years ago. I played our version for Tom and he liked it, so I decided I would build an album around that. I watch a lot of cable news—MSNBC and Fox News and CNN—and the things people say on those channels make me want to reach out and strangle them. The commentators twist everything out of context. The story I wanted to tell kept shifting around, but everything had to do with the world going to hell in a handbasket.

How does “California Dreamin’” fit?

People think it’s a nice little pop ditty, but it’s not. That first line—“All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray”—should be enough to make you say, “Wait a second, this is not a happy song.” I knew [co-writer] John Phillips, and he wasn’t necessarily a happy guy. In the video for “California Dreamin’,” the Mamas & the Papas are all snapping their fingers, smiling. I feel certain John must have hated that. If he were alive today I believe he would say to me, “You got it right.” It’s not really about California dreaming. John was approaching things metaphorically, writing about people who are afraid to follow their dreams.

Have you ever had that fear?

I went out to California in 1967 and put my money where my mouth was. I was willing to live in a car. And when I no longer had a car, I lived in people’s garages. I knew a lot of guys in the ’60s and ’70s who were in bar bands who were terrific songwriters. I would ask them, “Why don’t you do your own songs instead of Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Blood, Sweat & Tears covers?” They would say, “Well, the band is taking home $2,500 a week doing covers. I can’t see risking that.” You could tell they wanted more, but they weren’t willing to do what it took.

Does acting affect your music?

I started out as an actor and I still think like an actor. I don’t think like a musician. I think theatrically, in terms of scenes and pictures. I do things on a grand scale. I also try to be metaphorical, although there’s obviously a lot of political stuff on the new album. I’m not like Midnight Oil. I don’t hit you over the head with a hammer.

Do you write much?

People think I don’t write, and that’s partly true. Songwriters often ask me to write with them. My response is, “You don’t want me in the room with you when you start writing. If I am, the song will never make the album.” I can cite several examples of that. In most instances a song is about three-quarters finished before I get involved. Take “All of Me,” from the new album [penned by Dave Berg]—I changed the lyrics on that one here and there, but I’m not interested in getting a writer’s credit for something I had little to do with. I don’t play that game.

What drew you to rap?

It wasn’t a matter of trying to be hip or cool. Meeting Lil Jon on Celebrity Apprentice caused me to examine that art form. When I found that song, “Stand in the Storm,” I knew immediately that I wanted him to do it. In the case of “Mad Mad World,” my original intent was to mash it with a song by Johnny Cash. The guitar and piano players were trying to find the right key for my voice, and it suddenly occurred to me that someone else should sing it. I said, “Guys, we need a rap artist to make this moment happen.”

How did Chuck D get involved?

Turns out my son-in-law, Scott Ian of Anthrax, is one of Chuck D’s best friends. I rang up Scott and 10 minutes later he sent an email to both of us, saying, “Chuck, meet Meat. Meat, meet Chuck.” I phoned Chuck and sent him the “Mad Mad World” track, along with the Johnny Cash song “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.” But instead of doing the Cash song, he sent back “The Good God Is a Woman and She Don’t Like Ugly.” It was so perfect, I wasn’t about to change a thing. It was as if Chuck had read my mind and seen what I wanted the album to be.

How do you maintain your voice?

I do a multitude of voice exercises at my house two or three times a week. When I’m out on the road, I warm up and cool down. I try not to talk much. As long as I’m properly rested, my vocals feel great. Early last year we were going out on weekends, and that was perfect. Then I went to Australia and made the mistake of doing 90 interviews in eight days before we started the tour. That’s really stupid when you’re my age. Sometimes I start to think I’m like Justin Bieber, that I can do what I did 30 years ago. But I can’t. I developed a swollen vocal cord and it started bleeding when we were in New Zealand. It was a mess.

Is Bat Out of Hell ever an albatross?

I could never say that about an album that’s the third-best-selling album in the world. The only problem I ever had with Bat Out of Hell was that it was sped up so that it would fit onto vinyl. It was 52 minutes long, and that was too much for two sides. From day one, people have told me that onstage I don’t sound like I do on the album. Well of course I don’t—I’m not Alvin from the Chipmunks!

–Russell Hall

For its fourth album, the English group Kaiser Chiefs posted 22 new songs on its website and let fans assemble and purchase their own 10-track “bespoke” versions. The band, best known for the songs “I Predict a Riot” and “Ruby,” assembled its own iteration last year for release overseas under the title The Future Is Medieval. Yet another version is out now in the U.S., titled Start the Revolution Without Me (with a new track, “On the Run”) and boasting production by hallowed names like Tony Visconti and Ethan Johns. Bass player Simon Rix took the time to explain it all for us.

Why all the track listings?

We didn’t want to be a group of moaning musicians complaining about how record sales are down, and this idea was totally different. It separated us from everyone else. One thing that we really hated was that the third album [Off With Their Heads, 2008] leaked a month before the release date, so you have people talking about it before it was even out. An album can be dismissed before it’s out. That annoyed us. The way we did this meant that couldn’t happen, because we kept it secret. We just released the tracks all in one day.

What did you learn?

To some extent, we learned there’s a big group of people who like to just have the album. There were people who were panicked by the choice, which is not what we were expecting at all. I think next time we would do the CD at the same time as the “bespoke” thing. We gave everyone a minute of each clip, because we thought it was too much to give them whole tracks. But by giving them just a minute, we made it so that the most instant songs were the ones that got chosen.

Why add a song for the U.S.?

As soon as we got told that we were going to do the CD in America differently, we thought it would be great to have an extra song. We had “On the Run,” which we had been thinking of releasing as a stand-alone single. It’s about how everybody wants to know everything about everything, with Twitter and Facebook and all these other things—which I think is good, but it does mean everybody knows what everybody’s doing 24 hours a day. “On the Run” is about getting away from all that. The “bespoke” album was heavily dependent on people talking about it on social media, so it seemed quite funny that the next song would be anti-social media.

How was recording with Visconti?

In the buildup to working with Tony, we rehearsed and wrote a lot so that when we went in there he’d say, “These guys are a great band.” We were so ready that it went really quick. He had a few ideas about sound, which is why we wanted to work with him in the first place. He has his sound, and he knows how to create it. But we had three weeks in the studio and we finished in about a week.

How about Ethan Johns?

Ethan got the bum job, in that the last thing we did was record with him. Some of the songs we had nailed and some we needed to finish off, which he helped us with. But there were a couple of songs that we had from the beginning of the record that we couldn’t quite get right. We knew there was something in them, and we had been trying to work out exactly how they should be recorded. So Ethan got the difficult tunes we’d been struggling with for a year. But he did it, and we were very pleased with the results.

–Eric R. Danton

The sky’s the limit for this sunny California quartet’s brand of uplifting reggae rock 

 From age 4, Jessica Gore was a piano prodigy who spent much of her childhood playing in classical competitions. But her musical direction changed entirely a few years ago, when she got her hands on a four-track digital recorder. “It totally blew my mind that more than one instrument or voice could play and sing at the same time,” she recalls. “I would sit in my room for hours upon hours just layering sounds.” She began writing songs, and became fascinated with the process of music-making rather than the pretty faces that drew the attention of her peers. “I stopped caring so much about the actual artists on the cover and more about the names in the credits,” she says. “My dream was to see my name in those credits, not on the front cover.”Gore adopted a new moniker to go along with her one-woman-band electropop aesthetic, borrowing and modifying the name of the NN-XT sampler in the Reason digital music software program. Her first single, “Shut Your Trapper Keeper,” became a local radio favorite in her hometown of Atlanta. An album of the same name was released in April 2011, but NNXT has since signed with DigSin—a label built on a singles-only subscription model. Her latest is “Love Superhero”—written, performed and recorded, like all her songs, by Gore alone in her home studio.No matter how it reaches fans, what’s most important for Gore is that she has found her niche in the music world. “My brainchild, NNXT, was created through my fascination with pop songwriting and the natural marriage of electronic elements that I had in my possession,” she says. “I knew when I landed in NNXT-world, I was finally home. I see it as the perfect marriage of my two greatest passions: pop songwriting and electronic music.”

HOMETOWN: Nashville
MEMBERS: Trent Dabbs (guitar, vocals), Amy Stroup (vocals)
ALBUM: Sugar + the Hi-Lows, out now
WEBSITE: sugarandthehilows.com

The old-school sound of Sugar + the Hi-Lows was born three years ago, when Trent Dabbs and Amy Stroup got together to write songs in Nashville. Dabbs brought along a vintage amplifier, which turned the conversation toward their favorite music from the 1950s and ’60s. Before long they’d written several throwback tunes that set the scene for their retro duo. “We weren’t really trying to treat it like a band,” Stroup says. “We just wrote this series of songs, but they didn’t feel like an Amy Stroup song or an Amy-and-Trent duet. It really felt like its own thing.” They see their mission as putting a little pep into the step of fans coping with an increasingly complex and challenging environment. “With the climate of everything right now, with the economy, you could write the most depressing songs ever,” Dabbs says. “But I really feel like the world needs light.”

Neither Hendrix nor his heritage keeps this guitar hero from reaching beyond the blues    

The members of Wilson Phillips first drew worldwide attention for their quintuple-platinum 1990 self-titled debut—and for their status as rock royalty. Sisters Wendy and Carnie Wilson were the daughters of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, while Chynna Phillips’ parents were John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas. The group has always avoided leaning too much on its famous lineage—which may be why the three have only now recorded Dedicated, an album of songs associated with their famous forebears. “At first it seemed a bit too obvious,” says Wendy Wilson. “In retrospect, now that we’ve recorded it, it was a brilliant idea.”

Dedicated is even more of a family affair than its pedigree would at first indicate. The trio invited friend Owen Elliot, daughter of “Mama” Cass Elliot and an early member of the group that became Wilson Phillips, to sing her late mother’s part on the Mamas & the Papas’ “Dedicated to the One I Love.” “Nobody can sound like Cass Elliot but Cass Elliot’s daughter,” Wendy says. “We thought, what a beautiful thing to have Owen sing with us, because we worked with Owen early on. It didn’t work out but we’re still very close to her, and it was such a healing experience to sing with her again. We were honored to have her on the record.”

The album was produced by Carnie Wilson’s husband, Rob Bonfiglio, who also did the arranging—including a complex a cappella version of the Beach Boys’ daunting epic “Good Vibrations.” “First we were scared,” admits Carnie, a California native like her bandmates. “We were like, ‘How are we going to do that?’ But it was just layer by layer, vocal by vocal, sound by sound. And after 101 tracks and probably two weeks’ worth of recording, I think it’s the best vocal work that we’ve ever done.”

Buoyed by a renewed wave of attention that included a scene-stealing turn in the blockbuster movie Bridesmaids, Wilson Phillips’ next step could be recording its first album of new songs since 1992’s Shadows and Light. “The weird thing about original material—I don’t know about Wendy and Chynna—but I get very anxious about it because you’re like, ‘Will people like it?’” says Carnie. “The three of us have to connect as writers, find the right collaborators and producer and go into the cocoon of creativity. Just forget everything else and go with what we feel is right. I’m hoping we get that chance.”

–Amanda Farah

Jason “J. Spaceman” Pierce, frontman and guiding light of English rock band Spiritualized, adamantly disagrees with those who think music must follow rules. After all, he’s been swirling rock, R&B, pop and more into richly textured sonic landscapes throughout his career. But there’s one rule in which he believes fiercely: There’s a delicate but real division between good music and bad music. “The difference between Patsy Cline and god-awful barroom music is very, very slight,” he says.

That’s one reason he slaved for so long over Spiritualized’s seventh and latest album, Sweet Heart Sweet Light—he wanted to make sure his band “comes down on the right side” of that divide. A self-confessed obsessive, Pierce spent more than two years traveling around Wales, Los Angeles and Reykjavik to record with various players. Then he took another year to mix the record, all in anticipation of taking his show on the road again. “I love touring,” he says. “I love the spirit nature of music when you play live. Night to night it changes. When you can tour no longer, you get the next album out.” That’s where the obsessiveness comes in. “Every time you do, it’s like going into battle,” he says. “I forget it is a horror, blasted at you, just a nightmare at times.”

But the drive to create an album that encompasses “some of what I get from the music I love” overcame his resistance to ride back into battle. When he did head into the studio, Pierce modeled his ethic on musical heroes of the past who harbored lofty ambitions. “Some of my favorite records are far-reaching, because people were reaching for the stars,” says Pierce, 46. “The list goes on and on.”

Perhaps it was a near-fatal bout of pneumonia he endured several years ago—a topic he prefers not to discuss—that prodded him to look backward for inspiration. To help prepare for making the new album, Pierce and company performed the entirety of Spiritualized’s 1997 classic Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space on the band’s most recent tour. The experience reconnected him with the inspirations of his youth. “I wanted to make one of those albums that embrace pop music and embrace melodies,” says Pierce. “It was a way of saying ‘thank you’ for that music.”

–Nancy Dunham

“Three days before I was to start recording this album, the label cut my budget in half,” says Jessie Baylin. “Then the next day, they cut it another quarter.” The Nashville-based singer-songwriter took the hint. “They listened to the demos and didn’t think I had the songs,” she recalls with a sigh. “They wanted to put me with hit writers, or use someone else’s songs. But I had the songs I loved—and I knew this album had the potential to be what it is. I thought, ‘You can’t stop me from making it.’”

So she parted ways with her record company—then got an unexpected budgetary boost in the form of an inheritance from her late grandmother. Baylin, 28, took that as a sign that going indie was the thing to do, and promptly started her own Blonde Rat label. “My grandma’s childhood nickname was ‘The Blonde Rat,’” the New Jersey native says with a smile. “She was really sassy—and my best friend. When she passed, she left me a nice sum of money. Along with some of my own savings, I was able to finance this record. It was risky, but I had to do it.”

Baylin viewed her decision to “invest in myself for the first time” as an opportunity to bring in a variety of collaborators. Producer Kevin Augunas introduced Baylin to multi-instrumentalist

Richard Swift, who she calls “the man behind the curtain.” “He’s a genius,” Baylin says. “It was like I’d waited my entire life to meet him. He arranged the songs, played a lot of the instruments and got the whole ball rolling.” Soon L.A. session legends like drummer Jim Keltner, guitarist Waddy Wachtel and string arranger Jimmie Haskell were on board. Baylin’s longtime friend, actress Scarlett Johansson, directed the video for Little Spark’s first single, “Hurry Hurry.”

The singer says many of her best songs originate from the personal musings in her diary. “I journal every day,” says Baylin, who wed Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill in 2009. “I like that the ideas come out of my life. It’s nice to lift lyrics from a journal, because who else are you writing it for? You’re being really honest. There are always many different truths laced in the songs. It feels very natural.” As does her decision to free herself of major-label control and take the reins of her destiny. “I feel lighter,” she says. “I can hear it when I listen to the record. And I enjoy being part of all the little things that I didn’t even know existed last time around. Even stuffing envelopes to send out CDs is incredibly rewarding.”

–Bill DeMain

After releasing 2009’s Hold Time, Portland-based singer and songwriter M. Ward largely put his solo career on hold. He toured and made albums with Monsters of Folk—an indie-rock supergroup also featuring My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis—and She & Him, the duo Ward founded with actress and singer Zooey Deschanel. “I’m one of those strange people who’s just as happy in the driver’s seat as I am in the passenger’s seat,” Ward says.

Still, Ward slowly and surely made his way back to the steering wheel. Over the last three years, whenever he found himself with moments of free time, he whiled away at A Wasteland Companion, his seventh solo album. “I wanted to make a new kind of record,” he says. “One that combined live records with studio records.” So Ward (first name: Matthew) hit the road to record in Los Angeles, Austin, Omaha and New York, among other U.S. cities, teaming with regular collaborators like Deschanel and Mogis as well as new partners like Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley. When his travels took him to England, Ward recorded the ’60s-style piano-pop tune “Primitive Girl” with John Parish, best known for his work with PJ Harvey.

“One of the nice things about listening to a live record is that you’re going to these different places in the world, and you’re getting a chance to listen to a musician think on his feet in a new situation, in a new room,” explains Ward, 38. “I wanted that element, but also wanted to have the advantages you get when you record in a studio—like making guitars and vocals sound how you want them to sound.” Wasteland benefits from the spontaneous instincts of Ward and his cohorts. “I’m lucky to have talented friends who enjoy thinking on their  feet and meeting me in strange rooms around the world and recording songs that they’ve never heard before—but that I’d been thinking about for months or years,” says Ward.

Despite the circuitous manner of its creation, Wasteland was never intended as a travel diary. With its wide range of styles—everything from sunny malt-shop pop and fuzzy rockabilly to somber acoustic ballads—the album remains representative of Ward in full. “I’m not someone who feels like a record has to be a picture of two weeks of songwriting,” he says. “I feel like a record should be a picture of a whole lifetime, if possible.”

–Kenneth Partridge

From the moment she lit into Sonny Boy Williamson II’s “Help Me” on her triple-platinum 1995 debut, Relish, it was clear that Kentucky-born Joan Osborne had a natural feel for gutbucket blues. She’s explored those roots regularly ever since, but never so directly as on her new album, the all-covers affair Bring It On Home. With the help from her co-producer and guitarist Jack Petruzzelli, Osborne tackles a set of gems from the classic blues and soul songbooks. She’s already working on her next album of originals, a song cycle called Love and Hate. “I’m keeping busy,” says Osborne, 49, speaking from her home in Brooklyn. “Life is good for me right now.”

What inspired this album? 

I’d like to take credit for it, but I really can’t. The guys from Saguaro Road Records approached me and said, “Would you want to do a record of nothing but blues and soul covers?” At the time I was more focused on working on original material, but the more I thought about it the more I came up with ideas. “I could do that song, wouldn’t that be cool?” “What about that tune?” I started to compile a list in my mind. It’s cool to just throw down and step right into those shoes.

Does this represent your roots?

My education in becoming a singer was in trying to sing this music. That’s why I wondered what it would sound like for me to sing these songs now, having been doing this as my career for 20 years. What would it be like to go back to the source and reach into this music? What different things could I bring to it? I felt like my voice has gotten deeper and richer as an instrument, and being older brings more life experience. That’s an important thing to have when you’re singing this kind of music, because it’s very raw and emotional. The more of yourself you bring to it, the better you’re going to be.

Is it tricky to produce yourself?

It’s difficult to be objective about yourself to a certain extent. But then when you listen to a playback, it becomes easier to step out of that mindset and compare one thing to another. I think I’ve gotten much better at getting beyond that nervousness and being more matter-of-fact about it: “All right, this is working and obviously that is not. That thing I did right there? It clearly sucks.” Just being able to say that about yourself and not be too precious about it. It’s easier when you’re working with friends, because they’ll tell you what sucks. The people I work with have that level of comfort with me.

What mics do you use?

I usually end up with a Neumann U87 on my voice. They can get all the different nuances and not get completely blown out when I start to sing really strongly. I will sometimes use other mics, but I do tend to go back to those Neumanns.

Do you have a goal now? 

There are many, many things I still want to achieve. There are other recording projects on my wish list. There are dozens and dozens of different records that I’d like to do. I want to continue to grow as a writer and a singer. It’s very satisfying to have the feeling that I’m still getting better at what I do. This is a business that doesn’t always allow people to have lengthy careers, so I feel grateful that I’ve had a career this long. It’s a big life, you know?

–Chris Neal

A talk about the meaning of music, finding the right sound and his favorite four-letter word.

Nearly two decades have passed since Counting Crows exploded onto the scene with their multiplatinum debut August and Everything After and its smash single, “Mr. Jones.” Even as the band has built on that foundation with one critically acclaimed album of originals after another, it has carved out a reputation for interpreting others’ material—from filling in for an absent Van Morrison by performing “Caravan” at the 1993 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony to scoring a surprise hit with a 2003 cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.” The group—which has sold more than 20 million albums worldwide—marked its 2009 departure from longtime label Geffen by releasing a live version of Madonna’s “Borderline” through its website.

So it’s no surprise that Counting Crows has long considered making a full album of other artists’ songs—an ambition finally fulfilled with the new Underwater Sunshine (or What We Did on Our Summer Vacation), released on the group’s own Collective Sounds label. Wildly eclectic, the covers disc ranges from vintage power-pop (Big Star’s “The Ballad of El Goodo”) to ’70s country-rock (Pure Prairie League’s “Amie”) to a clutch of tunes by lesser-known indie artists (Dawes’ “All My Failures,” Coby Brown’s “Hospital”). “This is probably the most obscure covers album ever made,” says frontman Adam Duritz. “It’s a testament to the fact that great music is coming from all sorts of places.” Duritz spoke with us from San Francisco about the new album, his uneasy relationship with fame and why 2012 is an especially good time to be making music.

How was it recording covers?

I didn’t anticipate how great it would feel. You put in all the effort you normally would with arrangements and everything else, but you’re not ripping it out of your own gut. You want to be as emotional as you can be and reveal just as much feeling, but the stakes aren’t as big in the sense that you’re not opening up about your life. It’s great to put aside all the turmoil that goes along with scraping out your insides and just play music because you like it.

How did you choose the songs?

We picked songs we loved without regard to genre or time period. They span about 50 years. These are all great songs, but we didn’t concern ourselves with what other people would think about them. It’s different from when you’re writing. When you’re writing, you want to express how you feel. Judging whether a song you’ve written is good or bad is up to someone else. If you express what you’re trying to express, then you’ve accomplished what you’re trying to do. It’s different when you’re looking at someone else’s songs, determining what you want to sing and what you want to play. You’re looking more for what gets you fired up.

Did you record live in the studio?

We’ve always recorded that way. That idea came from Robbie Robertson. We hung out and talked with him before we started recording our first album. I told him I was worried that the band would get uptight in a big recording studio. I was concerned that our songs would become sterile because the guys would feel pressured to play them “right.” He said, “Why don’t you just rent a house? That’s what the Band always did.” So we’ve always rented a big, empty house and set up a home recording studio with our own equipment. It was only when we made our last album, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings [2008], that we made a complete album in an actual studio.

Do you still like “Mr. Jones”?

I love that song. The label didn’t want “Mr. Jones” as the single. They wanted “A Murder of One,” because it had a Jesus Jones-style drum beat. They also wanted to edit it down, but I told them I wasn’t editing any songs. I felt “Mr. Jones” was better, so we agreed to disagree—and released nothing. Then we went on the road, and radio folks started asking about our album. We suggested they play “Mr. Jones.” But actually, the band really blew up big after we played “Round Here” on Saturday Night Live [in January 1994]. “Round Here” set the tone for what everyone was coming to our shows for. “Round Here” was a good song to launch us.

How did you handle success?

I flipped out. I had a hard time dealing with that first year. I didn’t change much at all, but it seemed everyone around me began acting weird. They’re looking at you all the time, and they don’t talk to you anymore. They talk at you. You become more like a souvenir than a person, a souvenir of yourself. I wasn’t ready for people to look at me in that way. It still makes me uncomfortable. Also, silly as it seems, I’ve always been camera shy, going back to when I was a kid. Suddenly I found myself in a situation where everyone wanted to take my picture. That alone nearly caused a nervous breakdown. Standing in front of a camera with a stupid grin on my face makes me sweat even now.

What’s your writing process?

For long stretches I don’t write much. Then I’ll start, and out pops an album. I don’t think it’s changed much—I try to write and sing what feel. I can’t play guitar or piano very well. I can’t play by ear, and that lack of ability makes writing more difficult. A lot of times I hear songs in my head, then write them on piano and teach them to the guys. They don’t really become songs until we all work on them. That’s when they get good. After that I let it go as soon as I can. I have no idea how to play “Mr. Jones,” for example. I taught that song to them a long time ago and I haven’t had much occasion to play it since. I can play “A Long December,” but that’s only because I play it on piano in our shows.

So it’s about vocal melody?

No. I hear the chords in my head and often hear arrangements as well. I can’t play it all, but I hear it and I tend to be good at arranging things. I just have to hum it to the other guys. I have my own names for chords, which the guys think is hysterical. And occasionally I’ll pick up the guitar, but we have three guitar players in the band—anytime I’ve tried to get serious about it, they make fun of me. (laughs) Their worst nightmare is a fourth guitar player. As much as we love one another, as much as we’re like brothers, they would die if I started playing in concert.

How do you see the music industry?

It’s a fantastic time to be a musician. In some ways it reminds me of the ’80s. There was a freedom about the way bands were making music. The popular bands weren’t necessarily on major labels. R.E.M. was huge, and they were on I.R.S. We came out of that college radio scene, as did a lot of the bands we toured with after that. The ’80s really was the heyday of college radio and independent music. There was a flood of great music then, and the same is true now.

–Russell Hall

One of America’s great singer-songwriters marks the end of an era

Twenty-six years into his recording career, Lyle Lovett is still amused by the attempts to categorize his music. “Even now, people who don’t really listen to country music still think of me as country, and people who listen to country don’t,” he says. “It’s an odd place to be.” Odd perhaps, but Lovett can thank his idiosyncratic nature for providing him with a singular edge that has allowed him to appeal to a broad cross-section of fans. Armed with perception, erudite lyrics and a sound that seamlessly integrated blues, swing, folk, classic singer-songwriter balladry and, yes, country, Lovett rocketed to fame in the late ’80s as a major new talent. Since then he has consistently broken boundaries, expanding and refining his distinctive approach.

Release Me, Lovett’s newest, is a milestone: his final album for Curb Records, the label that has been his home since 1986. If the title and cover art—Lovett bound in ropes—suggest a certain glee in moving on, the truth is more nuanced. “I’ve had a great relationship with the record company and feel proud of being with them for all these years,” says the Texas-born singer, songwriter and actor, 54. “But I’m excited about what might be next.” Filled with new songs, decades-old originals, covers (from Chuck Berry to Townes Van Zandt) and appearances from friends like singer k.d. lang and drummer Russ Kunkel, Lovett’s Curb swan song serves as a summation of where he’s been and an indication of where’s he headed. “I wanted to wrap up this part of my career creatively,” he says. “This record was to be as inclusive as possible of the people I’ve worked with and the people I love.” Lovett took time to talk with us about the new record, his storied career and his future as an independent artist.

By Jeff Tamarkin

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