Lovett or Leave It

Lyle Lovett returns to Florida

Words by Shelton Hull 

By the time Lyle Lovett and his Large Band return to the Florida Theatre on Thursday night, October 3, he will have been on the road for months, but you won’t know that from watching him on stage. When we spoke with him in late July, he was already a month into the tour. “I work about 100 dates a year,”  he said at the time. “This leg is 30 dates. We started on the 22nd of June.” After  taking August off, the second leg began on September 27.

“We started planning this at the end of last summer,” he says. “We’ve already got dates booked for summer 2025. In years past, we probably wouldn’t start booking next summer until the fall.” Part of the problem (and it’s a good one to have) is that the Large Band is comprised of elite musicians from his scene, folks in high demand as sidemen and/or solo acts in their own right. “We’re 15, including me,” he says. While Lovett has earned his pick of the litter, he has to pick them quickly, and lock them down early. With 28 dates already booked for next year, it’s nice work, if you can get it.

Thursday’s show will be his 14th appearance at the Florida Theatre, which surely puts him in the top tier among the countless legends to work that venue since it opened in 1927. The first time was back in 1993, just six years after the major renovations that restored its former glory in the 1980-86 period. He returns just over a year after the latest round of renovations, news of which he’s followed about as closely as some of us locals have.

Lyle Lovett is a Scorpio, born in Houston in November 1957. His work ethic was a defining feature almost from birth, earning a dual bachelor’s in German and Journalism from Texas A&M before jumping feet-first into a Texas music scene that was positively blowing up in the early ‘80s. He’d performed extensively throughout the southeast before releasing his self-titled debut on MCA Records in 1987. His most recent, 12th of June (2022), is his 12th. These efforts have won him four Grammys, with 17 nominations.

With his career now well into its fifth decade, Lyle Lovett has risen to meet countless challenges throughout his life, but he has discovered, much to his delight, that no challenge yet has proven nearly as formidable as fatherhood. Lovett, 66, became a first-time father just seven years ago, at 59, and that has caused major shifts in his pastimes, his proclivities, and his priorities. Whereas most men would be well shook by the profundity of change, especially at his age, Lovett clearly relishes the experience, which he calls the most challenging of his life. Bear in mind, this is the same guy who spent six months on the shelf after being nearly killed by a bull in 2002. Oh, did I mention that they are twins? The mere visual is surely amusing to his millions of fans from stage, screen and most recently television.. 

Speaking of TV, Lovett has corralled a whole new cadre of fans from his portrayal of Waylon Gates, the Texas Ranger who came to New York to avenge his partner’s murder by cartels, and he did just that across a three-episode arc. “They let me wear my own hat!”, he says, gleefully. The show found him partnered (reluctantly, at first) with NYPD Detective Danny Reagan, played by Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block. They bonded instantly, being both singers who kinda fell into acting by chance, but came to eventually thrive in that field, as well. In Lovett’s case, his debut cameo in Mickey Rooney’s infamous “Bill: On His Own” was followed by a chance encounter with the late great Robert Altman, who cast him in three classic films over consecutive years. That was 30 years and two dozen roles ago, in addition to over 30 films in his which his music appears, often sung by him on-camera.

At this point in his life, Lyle Lovett has accomplished basically everything a man like him could have ever dreamed of, with all material needs essentially locked-down for life before he was 40. He has never been the kind of man to waste his money, or his time, and he’s approaching his 70s at full speed, embracing each new day with the same energy he applied to the day before. There is no way of knowing yet exactly when he’ll be back to the Florida Theatre, but one can say, as reliably as one could say about almost anything, that he will absolutely be back, soon.