Womack signed a publishing deal with Sony Tree in 1995, though she’s never been known principally as a songwriter. “They signed me as an artist/writer, knowing or hoping that they could get me a record deal,” she says. “And they got a little part of it. They got the publishing, and then they got a little part of the artist thing, too.”
Along the way, she married (and divorced) singer and songwriter Jason Sellers, with whom she has a daughter, nine-year-old Aubrie Lee. Her debut album went platinum and produced her first #1 country single, “The Fool”. A year later, the follow-up, Some Things I Know, yielded two #1 hits (“A Little Past Little Rock” and “I’ll Think Of A Reason Later”), and went gold.
And then the Decca imprint became a consolidation casualty. Last summer she had her second daughter, Anna Lise, and married Frank Liddell, the publishing executive who (among other things) brought Chris Knight to Decca during his tenure in A&R. And she finished a few more classes before returning to the studio.
“I never did a lot of writing,” Womack admits, though she has at least one co-write on each album. “I always kind of made up melodies, but never really had a lot to say when I was younger. Now I have some more to say, and I’ll probably start writing more.”
The first single from I Hope You Dance gave the album its title. “I Hope You Dance” is a kind of benediction that Womack sings to her daughters. At least one mainstream country critic has already suggested it might be a song-of-the-year contender. It’s a sweet song, just light enough for country radio.
But tonight Lee Ann Womack is playing a private party for a crowd whose opinion will also have much to do with the new album’s success, or failure. The upstairs room at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge is filled with the staff of an important rack jobber, the people who decide what records will and won’t be stocked in your neighborhood Wal-Mart, say.
Drinks are on somebody else’s credit card, and Womack — who is headlining, for what that’s worth — has the misfortune of following Eric Heatherly. Tootsie’s is Heatherly’s home turf; he played there once a week for years, even married one of the waitresses (Heather Heatherly; really). And his brand of rockabilly/boogie is absolutely calculated to delight a well-lubricated audience.
Make no mistake, Womack is the star of the evening, and the audience is excited to be this close to a celebrity. So excited they can’t quit talking about it. And about how much they’ve had to drink, what their co-workers looked like shakin’ it to Eric Heatherly, all kinds of stuff keeps them talking. It’s a gauntlet, perhaps the contemporary equivalent of the chicken-wire honky-tonk.
Womack, who specializes more in driving-in-the-rain-alone songs than whiskey river rave-ups, yields with seeming grace to the inevitable. It’s a short set, without encore, but she keeps on smilin’. Later, she shrugs. “It’s one of those deals where the label asked me to do it, so you’re screwed if you say no. But you’re screwed anyway, because if you show up, none of the stuff that was in the rider is there. It’s hard, and being a new artist, you want to have a great writer, and hits, and only play certain gigs. But when you’re on my level, you’ve got to do what you’re asked to do.”
You still think of yourself as a new artist?
“Well, a small artist, I guess.”
