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Lyle Lovett rocketed his multi-city City Winery tour to New York City for the semiquincentennial Fourth of July weekend. Foregoing pre-planned set lists, Lovett (acoustic guitar and vocals), James Harrah (electric guitar), and Jeff White (acoustic guitar and occasional mandolin) ambled through a warm-hearted Friday night set mostly drawn from Lovett’s eclectic catalogue.
With his trademark down-home suavity and languid rubbery phrasing, Lovett alternated songs funny and sincere, soulful and jazzy, bluesy and country (and novelty). In a number of songs and stories he focused on his family – more than I would have imagined, not having followed his career in recent years. But now 68, he’s the doting father of nine-year-old twins, who not only appreciate songs but compose their own – and pass considered judgment on others’, per one of his anecdotes.
Fat Babies and Murder Ballads
The trio performed sinewy if sometimes somewhat loose acoustic renditions of songs fans may know in larger formats. Lovett stirred the soul with the more serious songs, and whipped up laughs and delighted smiles with the humorous ones.
They launched the set with the soulful breakup song “She’s Already Made Up Her Mind” and a wry, swinging “Once Is Enough.” “North Dakota” was another intense highlight. Quirky humor surfaced broadly in “Here I Am” and genially in the goofy “Pants Is Overrated,” not to mention the just-plain-weird singalong “Fat Babies.”
The family theme threaded through “It’s a Naked Party” (which Lovett said he wrote with his kids), a heartfelt “Last of the Family Reserve,” and the title track from his most recent album, 2022’s “12th of June.”
They sprinkled in a couple of murder ballads. Lovett indulged some requests toward the end. He gave bluegrass specialist White the spotlight for one of White’s own songs. Harrah delivered several smoking solos, as in the hard-blues closer “My Baby Don’t Tolerate.” And they encored with the superb, elemental character study “The Waltzing Fool.”
We could have done without the inferior two-song guitar-and-vocal performance by Lovett’s friend, the legendary music/portrait photographer Mark Seliger. But Lyle and Co. certainly deserved the break in the midst of a set that lasted more than two hours and sent us out into a steaming July night by the Hudson River, up which the Tall Ships would sail the next day. Who knows, maybe one of them would be carrying a man on a pony.
