Lee Ann Womack
Progressive traditionalist Lee Ann Womack has sung for four presidents, the concert for the Nobel Prize honoring Nelson Mandela and Maya Angelou’s Celebration of Joy Rising. More importantly, the Grammy winner built a career seeking songs that slice life wide open to let the pain, the emptiness, the rage and the desire pour out. A Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year, she’s also won the prestigious Album of the Year for “There’s More Where That Came From,” plus a pair of Single of the Year awards for “I May Hate Myself in the Morning” and “I Hope You Dance.” “I Hope You Dance” sold more than 6 million albums; the title track topped multiple charts in multiple formats around the globe. The East Texan is a duet partner of choice for Willie Nelson, Alan Jackson, Dr. John, Buddy Miller, George Strait, Jim Lauderdale and Willie Nelson. A featured vocalist on Miller’s Silver Strings project, Rodney Crowell and Mary Karr’s “Kin” and music supervisor Randall Poster’s “Divided & United,” Womack’s soprano has a purity that rivals Dolly Parton and an ache that suggests Emmylou Harris at her most haunted. Slated to co-host the International Bluegrass Music Awards with Jerry Douglas, Womack is as versatile as she is exceptional. Among her hits are “The Fool,” “A Little Past Little Rock,” “Ashes By Now,” “Last Call,” “Twenty Years & Two Husbands Ago,” “Never Again Again” and “Does My Rung Burn Your Finger.” “The Way I’m Livin’,” produced by Frank Liddell (Miranda Lambert, Chris Knight, Pistol Annies), is an unvarnished distillation of Womack’s clear-eyed take on the real world. Drawing on songs from Julie Miller, Hayes Carll, Chris Knight, Mindy Smith and Neil Young, USA Today has called it “irresistibly teasing” and The Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “she digs in as if she were making up for lost time.”
