Lyle Lovett
b. 1 November 1957, Houston, Texas, USA. Singer/songwriter Lovett grew up 25 miles north of Houston in the rural Klein community (an area largely populated by farmers of German extraction) which was named after his grandfather, Adam Klein. During his teenage years, as Houston's borders expanded, Lovett was exposed to more urban influences, and attended Texas A&M University where he studied journalism and then German. During this period (late '70s), he began writing songs, his early heroes included Guy Clark (who later wrote a dedication on the sleeve of Lovett's first album), Jerry Jeff Walker and Townes Van Zandt. Having visited Europe (to improve his German) in the late '70s, he met a local country musician named Buffalo Wayne (who apparently took his name from his favourite western heroes), and remained in touch after returning to Texas—when Wayne was organizing an event in Luxembourg in 1983, he booked Lovett, and also on the bill was an American band from Phoenix whose members included Matt Rollings (keyboards) and Ray Herndon (guitar) who were later involved with Lovett's albums. 
Lovett worked the same Texas music circuit as Nanci Griffith, singing on two of her early albums, ONCE IN A VERY BLUE MOON (1984, which included one of his songs, If I Were The Woman You Wanted) and LAST OF THE TRUE BELIEVERS (1985), on which he is pictured on the front of the sleeve. When Guy Clark heard a demo tape by Lovett in 1984, he passed it onto Tony Brown of MCA Records, and by 1986, Lovett had signed to MCA/Curb. His self-titled debut album was idiosyncratic, to say the least, including both the song covered by Griffith and Closing Time, which was covered by Lacy J. Dalton, as well as a fine song he co-wrote with fellow singer/songwriter Robert Earl Keen, Jr., This Old Porch. However, his acceptance was slow in US country music circles, and Lovett first received substantial critical acclaim when the album was eventually released in Europe. 1987 brought a follow-up, PONTIAC, after Lovett had successfully toured Europe backed only by ‘cellist John Hagen. The album made it clear that Lovett was rather more than a folk or country artist, with such songs as the surreal If I Had A Boat and She's Hot To Go, while guests on the album included Emmylou Harris. By this time, Lovett was talking about both recording and touring with what he called His Large Band, with several saxophone players and a female backing singer, Francine Reed, as well as a regular rhythm section, and his third album, released in 1989, was indeed titled LYLE AND HIS LARGE BAND. Including an insidiously straight cover of the Tammy Wynette standard Stand By Your Man, and a version of the R&B oldie, The Glory Of Love, this again delighted critics by its very humour and eclecticism, but further confused record buyers, especially in the USA, who were unsure whether this was a country record or jazz or something quite different. 
At this point Lovett moved away from Nashville, where he was regarded as too weird, and as a result, his fourth album, produced by Los Angeles heavyweight George Massenburg, was not released until early 1992. Its title JOSHUA JUDGES RUTH (three consecutive books in the Old Testament, but meaning something very difference if read as a phrase) was symptomatic of Lovett's intelligence, but perhaps equally so of his idiosyncratic approach. As usual, critics loved it, although it included hardly any traces of country music, and seemed to portray him as a Tom Waits-like figure—ultra sophisticated, but somewhat off the wall. In 1992, Lovett was chosen as the opening act for many of the dates on the first world tour during the '90s by Dire Straits. This exposed him to a huge international audience, but seems to have done little to extend his cult following. In the same year, Lovett met the Hollywood actress, Julia Roberts, on the set of The Player, a high-grossing film, in which Lovett played the role of a detective. They married in June 1993.