Lee Ann Womack photo courtesy of MCA Nashville
"Some people take voice lessons to learn how to sing, but I just sat and listened to country records, like George Jones, Dolly Parton and stuff like that. What's so familiar to me can be so foreign to other people, and I don't realize that sometimes. But that's how I learned how to sing."
Somewhere between the blush of a new love and the bruises of a broken heart lies real life and real country music. Lee Ann Womack is a lifelong student of this reality, majoring in Jones and Wynette and graduating with honors, with the tender yet tough spirit of teachers including Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn.
There's More Where That Came From the follow-up to her 2004 Greatest Hits Collection is for everyone who's ever loved, lost, and learned hard-earned lessons and lived to tell about it, including the singer herself.
"These are songs that aren't afraid to tell the truth," says Womack. "It is definitely honest music as far as the lyrics go. They're a slice of life—the good, bad and the ugly."
It's not an accident that the album's first single, "I May Hate Myself in the Morning," sounds simultaneously like a classic country cheatin' song and a contemporary breath of fresh air. "This is the kind of stuff I grew up listening to," says the daughter of an east Texas country deejay, who practically wore out her father's vinyl records, soaking up every vocal lick and turn of a phrase like a sponge. "How true is this song?" exclaims Womack. "Even if you haven't been in that situation, we all know somebody who has. It's just honest."
"You know, the sad thing is, I always felt like I was born too late," Womack admits. "Even when I was younger, I had an old soul. I chose these kinds of songs early on in my career, but if anything, I'm more able to relate to these kind of lyrics more now than before," says the woman whose 2000 single, "I Hope You Dance," made her worldly known.
"You can't be married twice, have two kids and go through all I've gone through in the last few years without learning a few things, you know? I think I even sound a little wiser sometimes."
And that she certainly does on "Twenty Years and Two Husbands Ago," a song Womack wrote with veteran country writers Dean Dillon and Dale Dodson. The song's opening line—"Looking in the bathroom mirror, putting my makeup on / Maybelline can't hide the lines of time that's gone"—is the kind of humble honesty that any woman can relate to. "I feel like that was kind of my 'Tammy' song," says Womack. "I wanted a song or two that was classic and classy female country. Tammy and Dolly would sing in those sequined dresses, almost an evening gown kind of thing. And they'd sing songs of heartbreak. You don't see females doing that anymore, but I knew I'd have fun doing it, and that was what I wanted to do with this record—just have fun and make music that I love."
This time around Womack worked with hit-making producer Byron Gallimore, who's best known for working with pop-flavored artists Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. "I can't tell you how many people have stopped me and said, 'You're making a record with Byron Gallimore?'" laughs Womack. "Now people are calling me saying, 'I can't believe Byron did this record! It's outstanding!'"
"Byron's very talented and quite versatile. And anyone who's really sat and listened to the records he's made knows he's one of the few who are capable of going the direction an artist wants to go," she adds. "We just had fun. I hope that's what it sounds like when people hear the record. If they know anything about me and the kind of music I love, they will know I had a blast making it."
Womack estimates she personally listened to over a thousand songs to find the baker's dozen on There's More Where That Came From. "Then you have to add on how many Frank (Liddell, Womack's husband and publisher/producer) listened to," she says, "and how many Missy (Gallimore, music publishing exec and Byron's wife) heard, too."
The songs that made the cut examine everything from the wistful regret of "The Last Time" and playful sexiness of "What I Miss About Heaven," to the numbing moment of a diminishing relationship, as sung in "Painless." And the record's introspective crown jewel just might be the Don Schlitz/Brett James-penned stunner "Stubborn (Psalm 151)."
"It's hard for me to pass up any song that has a lot of ache in it," explains the CMA Female Vocalist and Grammy award winner. "I don't know why that is—I've been like that since I was little. Frank has taught me a lot of things about songs. He doesn't like things that are cliché or trite, and he's pointed that out to me. That's not to say that there aren't some lines sometimes that can be cliché, but I do think about those things now more than I used to. More than anything, I look for a song that makes me feel something. If I believe it, and if it makes me feel sad, or feel like laughing, or feel like dancing, it's my kind of song."
One day in the studio Lee Ann and Byron found they had an extra hour left at the end of a session. "Byron said, 'We have time to cut something that you love, just anything from the past.' I had been listening to The Essential Porter and Dolly, so I said, 'I'd love to cut "Just Someone I Used To Know." The guys didn't even ask which one that was, everybody just stood up, went to their instruments and started playing. We got a key and cut it."
Womack laughs when she recalls another day in the studio when the engineer was exposed to—and amazed by—her "country soul" way of singing. "I remember I was in the vocal booth and I could see Byron just dying laughing and talking to the engineer, Eric. I asked him what was so funny, and he got on the talkback and said, 'Eric said, 'I love her singing, but how does she do that? And where did she learn to do that?' Byron thought it was so funny because I was just singing country. We went into this big thing about how some people take voice lessons to learn how to sing, but I just sat and listened to real country records, like George Jones, Dolly Parton, and stuff like that. What's so familiar to me can be so foreign to other people, and I don't realize that sometimes. But that's how I learned to sing."
One listen to There's More Where That Came From is proof of that. And like the heroes who bared their souls through her father's turntable, Womack has perfected the art of combining vulnerability with strength. "I hope people will enjoy it," says Womack. "You can always pull out your old Tammy records or your old George or Dolly records – and I do it consistently, but I think it's fun to have new recordings of things like that. I hope those people who have been missing out on classic country albums, find that this one fills the void. I hope they hear the honesty in the players, production and the singing. And I hope they have as much fun listening to it as we did making it.
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