Published: September 04, 2008 09:25 am            

Loveless rebounds with ‘Sleepless Nights’ CD

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Starting in 2005, life took a hairpin turn for Patty Loveless.

She lost her mother-in-law, her brother had a stroke and, when it seemed things couldn’t get much worse, her mom died.

She wound up taking a three-year break from music. “I was trying to heal,” Loveless says softly from the back of a dim, empty theater at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “And I have to say that I thought maybe my time had come to put myself out in the pasture.”

But at home in Cartersville, Ga., she began listening to lots of old records, stuff she’d heard growing up with her family in Pikeville.

The music gave her comfort and it gave her spark, and before long, Loveless and her husband, producer Emory Gordy Jr., were working on an album of country standards.

The disc, “Sleepless Nights,” comes out Tuesday featuring Loveless’ crystalline voice on classics by George Jones, Ray Price, Webb Pierce, Hank Locklin, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, the Everly Brothers, Hank Williams, Conway Twitty, Skeeter Davis and Jack Greene.

“Us sitting here at this museum, at the Country Music Hall of Fame ... it’s our heritage, and to pass that on, to be able to do music that is appreciated ... I want them to appreciate it and have respect for those that have passed on or who are still here who we may lose, because you never know when they may be taken out of our lives,” the 51-year-old singer said.

She and Gordy culled the 14 cuts from a list of 500 songs. It wasn’t easy.

“We have a guesthouse, like a cabin, to get away from the phones. There’s no TV or nothing at this place. We’d go up there and listen,” she said. “We’d each give the songs numbers and rate them and compare, and little by little we whittled away.”

In the studio they used microphones from the ’30s and ’40s and hired veteran musicians like Harold Bradley and Hargus “Pig” Robbins, who’d played on some of the original recording sessions.

At one point, when she couldn’t remember specifics about a particular microphone, she promised to get the information. A few days later, an e-mail from Gordy arrived filled with technical and historical background. But at the end, Gordy concluded: “PS....I really don’t think the sound of Patty’s ‘Sleepless Nights’ had anything to do with the equipment....I think it was mostly ’attitude.”’

The vintage material fits Loveless well. While she’s had contemporary hits, her bedrock is traditional country. She’s sung with Wagoner, Jones, Parton, Ralph Stanley, Loretta Lynn and many more during her career.

Loveless was the sixth of seven children. Her father, a coal miner, suffered from black lung disease and died in 1979.

        

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