Lee Ann Womack Is ‘Crazy’ Like a Fox

Lee Ann Womack is sitting outside her daughter's school, waiting to take in a form while she talks to The Boot about her new album, 'Call Me Crazy.' For the last three years, since winning the CMA Album of the Year award for 'There's More Where That Came From,' she's been spending more time being a mom to daughters Aubrey, 17, and Anna, 9, and settling into a new house. But she's also been squirreled away writing songs -- four co-writes on 'Call Me Crazy' (the most of any of her albums), and a passel of material for left-field projects.

'Call Me Crazy,' produced by Tony Brown, finds Womack in a lonely state of mind, from the deep-dish despair of 'Last Call,' to the George-and-Tammy tension of 'If These Walls Could Talk,' to the melancholy, afraid-to-trust-any-happiness vibe of 'The Bees,' which features Keith Urban on harmony vocals. Throughout, the album finds her at her most pensive -- about the spirit of renewal, about the push-and-pull of domestic strife, and the siren song of a smoky bar. She talked about much of that -- and the thrill of George Strait's voice -- in this candid chat.

It seems no other mainstream female artist is doing as much traditional music as you are these days. Can you think of anyone?

No, and that's important to me. It's mostly important for selfish reasons. I do hope that through my collection of music over the years that I'm able to retain some of what makes country music so great. The lyrics are, of course, very, very important, and the musicality, too, as far as the fiddles and steel guitars and just the sound of what I have always known to be country music. I'm always trying to do what I love most, which is very traditional country music, and still fit in with whatever is going on in today's market. I hope I accomplished that.

How do you see yourself fitting in with what Nashville's doing today, particularly since you've been gone for three years?

I'm not sure. And I don't want to over-think it and try too hard, either. Tony Brown told me I think too much, and he's absolutely right. He told me that over a couple of glasses of wine and a couple of arguments. [laughs] We've been good friends for a long time. One of the great things about working with Tony is that he's really good about keeping artists focused and on track. That's a great asset to me at this time of my career.

'Last Call' has such deep ache and longing and conflicting emotions all wrapped up together. How did you choose the song?

I loved that melody for the very reasons you just described. And when I heard the demo, melodically and lyrically, I thought it could be classic Lee Ann Womack, meaning what people expect from me. I thought when people heard it they would know immediately it was me singing. And then with all that wrapped up with a really good country lyric, it was a perfect way for me to come back again.

The video is in black and white, which gives it a deeper melancholy. Making it in New York also gave it an unexpected twist.

I love New York, and I love taking country music to places where it's not heard a lot. I preach the gospel of George Jones and Bob Wills and Ray Price to my friends who are artists and producers in other genres. So it was my idea to do this real traditional record and put it against the backdrop of New York.

Then there's 'Solitary Thinkin',' which is almost a flip of 'Last Call.' You love the image of a smoky bar, drinking, and honky tonk angst. Not many women cop to that these days.

[Laughs] I don't know what's wrong with me. I kept thinking I'd grow out of it, and I just never have. If I didn't have kids, I'd probably have a bar in my house with neon signs and beer in the cooler. I love listening to Mark Chesnutt or George Jones or Gene Watson in those settings. It's hard for me to go out here in town and listen to music and enjoy it with my friends, so sometimes I'll sit at home either when the kids are spending the night away or after everybody's gone to bed, and I'll dim the lights and listen to Jones as if he were on the jukebox, but he's coming from my iPod. I always learn something, and I reconnect with that person who sits on the barstool after a hard day's work and listens to that music. I think that's good for me.

What's your drink of choice?

It depends on the mood I'm in, but it would be either a beer or quite possibly vodka and cranberry.

But you don't smoke, do you?

I don't smoke unless I've had one too many vodka and cranberries, and I'm trying to be funny. I kept saying, "I'm going to open my own bar, and it's going to have tons of great country music on the jukebox, and it's going to have a wooden floor, and I'm going to call it 'Losers.'" And my manager ended up opening up my dream bar in Nashville. It's a great bar, and I do hang out there occasionally, but it's always jammed packed now. Check it out. It's got all the things I wanted -- great music and a wooden floor. [Laughs]

Where does all this come from? I know your dad was a part-time DJ, and both your parents were teachers.

I don't know. I had a real normal family and childhood. There was just something about those voices and those songs that really spoke to me, even as a small child. Which is odd, but they did. So my voice lessons, you might say, were listening to Tammy Wynette and George Jones. I would sit there and play records -- this is back when we played records -- and drop the needle and pick it up and move it back, and think, "How did he do that?" And listen to it over and over again.

So the vulnerability in the voices got you as much as the technique.

Right. The loneliness, maybe. I always lived in small-town in East Texas, but it always bothered me that I had to live there, and I always wanted to move.

That leads us into 'Have You Seen That Girl,' one of your four co-writes on the album. That song is you through and through, right?

For better or worse, I guess it is, yes. You're really exposing yourself and throwing yourself out there when you put your own songs on there, especially when they're as raw as something as 'Have You Seen That Girl.' Nobody wants to look foolish.

Some of the most telling words are, "Where along the way did I lose me?"

Yeah, how many women do you know who have thought that? I think you reach a certain point where you feel that way. You may even be better off than you were before, but you feel like you've lost some of who you were before.

You say in your bio, "Some of the loneliest moments of my life were when I was supposedly the most successful."

You go out and play for thousands of people, and then you go back to your hotel room. And it seems like the bigger the crowd, the quieter it is when you're alone. I think you get to a point where you feel like nobody understands. And quite possibly, nobody does understand. It's just an odd position to be in, and when it happens to people who are very, very young, it's a terrible shame. I don't know how they can deal with it. Even at my age [42], there have been times when it was difficult, but at least I was old enough to recognize what was happening and why I felt the way I did.

Was the enormous success of 'I Hope You Dance' both a blessing and a curse?

So much so, mostly because people expected something of me that I wasn't able to give them. 'I Hope You Dance' is so healing and therapeutic, but I wasn't able to give the people the hope that they thought I could, because that's just not what I was put on this earth to do. Basically, I was the girl who wanted to sing 'Never Again, Again,' and 'Twenty Years and Two Husbands Ago.' And as much as I think our music can help heal people, it doesn't extend to my being a spiritual healer. And that made me sort of withdraw some, too. I would be in meet-and-greet before a show, and I would hear some of the most tragic, sad stories I had ever heard -- a mother losing a child, for example -- and then I'd have to turn around and walk right on stage and give a 90-minute show. Or I would be shopping for groceries or dropping my kid off for school, and it would happen again. This went on for years, a hundred times a day, every single day of my life.

'Everything But Quits,' another of your co-writes, is your second duet with George Strait. I know you have the same manager, Erv Woolsey, but do you know George well?

I don't know about very well, but as far as having friends in the business, I know him better than most. I remember when I first got my record deal, when the Academy of Country Music Awards were still out in L.A. We were at the label party afterwards, and it was Reba [McEntire], Vince [Gill], Strait, me, and Gary Allan, all just standing around a grand piano, and Tony [Brown] was playing. It was so nice. It was a moment I'll never forget. George launched into a Merle Haggard song, and I just remember the tone and the sound of his voice. Although I had gone to many concerts and listened to his records for years, my appreciation for his actual instrument just shot through the roof that
night. He was standing to my left, and his voice was coming off the wood of that piano, and it was the richest tone I'd ever heard. I thought, "I have got to sing with him!" And in terms of song selection, he's just brilliant at being able to pick what's going to work. Maybe I should have him A & R my next project. [Laughs]

Do you have a next project in mind?

Oh, I have all these records I want to do that are totally not commercial, and I'll do all of them sooner or later. I'm constantly writing bluegrass songs, or children's songs -- that sort of thing.

Are you touring behind this album?

I will be. Meanwhile, maybe I'll see you at Losers.