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Cheat Sheet: Lost Highway Turns 10

by Linda Ryan

Ten years ago, Luke Lewis, chairman of Universal Nashville, made his dream of a nurturing, singer-songwriter-oriented label into reality with the launch of Lost Highway. The aim was to create a label that, as he says, "might be a haven for artists that make enduring music not driven by hits on the radio," and Lost Highway put that dream to the test with their first release, the soundtrack to the quirky movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou? Five Grammy Awards and 7 million sales later, Lost Highway was up and running in the fast lane. Since then, the label has released gems from pioneers such as Willie Nelson, Elvis Costello and Johnny Cash as well as groundbreakers including Whiskeytown and the Jayhawks. Not to put too much emphasis on the numbers, but since its inception, the label has released 80 albums, sold 18 million units, and earned 53 Grammy nominations resulting in 15 wins.

With its emphasis on quality songwriting (as opposed to radio hits), Lost Highway has emerged as a true testament to artist development in an era when artist development has gone the way of the cassette. The label will celebrate its rich contribution to music by releasing 20 titles from its diverse catalog in limited-edition clear vinyl throughout 2011. And you thought Johnny Cash's American VI: Ain't No Grave couldn't get any cooler.

Stranger's Almanac

Whiskeytown

When buzz hovered over Ryan Adams' former band, it delivered the goods and landed a legion of fans thirsty for distorted twang and high lonesome harmonies. Stranger's Almanac pulls more Gram Parsons influences than any other contemporary album, all while retaining the signature tone that resulted from Whiskeytown's uncanny chemistry. A reunion must happen.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Various Artists

Is this the album that launched an Americana revival? In a word, yes. Hungry for music that wasn't made by focus groups, consumers made this soundtrack a surprise hit in 2000. Record execs were left scratching their heads, but everybody else was thrilling to Ralph Stanley's raw rendering of "O Death" and Alison Krauss's luminous "Down to the River to Pray."

Bramble Rose

Tift Merritt

With a voice as soulful as Emmylou Harris', songs catchier than Ryan Adams' and heavenly good looks, Tift Merritt could very well prove a huge crossover success. Her debut CD drips honeyed Americana musings of a particularly high caliber, with intimate lyrical backdrops that evoke romantic visions of heartland living.

Momofuku

Elvis Costello

Although his catalog swelled with a series of compilations and the horn-punctuated Allen Toussaint collaboration, the last time Costello bristled with as much energy was 2004's The Delivery Man. Like that LP, Momofuku opens with guns a-blazing, blowing off steam with a trio of rockers before settling down. The back half of the LP recalls everything from the repose of his late-career jazz influence to the organ-driven scream of the Attractions. It doesn't have the continuity of his greatest records, but taken individually the songs are crafted with his expected precision.

Natural Forces

Lyle Lovett

Lyle Lovett is considered a country music outsider, yet he's always been grounded in the great American outdoors while excelling at lovelorn breakup songs and humorous rave-ups. This artful mix of originals, collaborations and covers paints portraits of individuals toughing it out in town, in the country and in the kitchen (food songs have always been a Lovett staple). How many artists can break your heart one minute ("Whooping Crane") and then crack up a squad of eighth graders the next ("Farmer Brown/Chicken Reel")? Lyle Lovett isn't an outsider -- he's at the top of his class.

American VI: Ain't No Grave

Johnny Cash

This is the final set Johnny Cash recorded with Rick Rubin, right before Cash passed away. Most numbers openly discuss the Great Beyond (including a stark cover of Sheryl Crow's "Redemption Day"), though Mahalia Jackson's "Satisfied Mind" could be used as a guide for living. Johnny then floats away in the streams of an old Hawaiian melody and you get the feeling the Man in Black is now dressed in Robes of White.

Thirteen years after Williams' masterwork Car Wheels On A Gravel Road blew everybody's mind in 1998, the shambling rock and mush-mouthed vocals of "Drunken Angel" are still very much part of Williams' craft, as evidenced by the sluggishly awesome opener "Buttercup." From there, Williams delivers her characteristically solid songs that threaten to break your poor heart amid a seamless blend of country, folk and rock. Highlights include the title cut and "Kiss Like Your Kiss," which has been used on the HBO phenomenon True Blood and earned Williams a Grammy nomination in 2011.

Lost Highway

Willie Nelson

By the numbers: 17 songs in 67 minutes, culled mostly from nine albums Willie released within six years at Lost Highway Records, demonstrating irrefutably that no musician over 75 years old -- maybe nobody over 50 -- had a more productive '00s. He interprets Hank, Bob Wills, Jimmy Cliff; collaborates with Shania, Lucinda, Toby Keith, Elvis Costello, Rob Thomas, Ryan Adams, Lee Ann Womack (on Bernie Taupin's bittersweet divorce duet "Mendocino County Line") and Ray Price. Then he tops it off with two never-on-disc goofs about closeted cowboys, shrewdly tied into Brokeback Mountain.