The distance between Houston’s theater district and Lyle Lovett’s ancestral home of Klein is about 30 miles as the crow flies, but that’s a deceptive way to think about it. In reality, it’s taken half a century and a path around the world to get there.
As the 68-year-old country and pop music legend prepares to take the stage at Jones Hall for a performance with the Houston Symphony, he recalls just how big and intimidating the building was on school trips there in his youth.
“When I was in grade school at Trinity Lutheran School in Klein, once a year we would go down to Jones Hall and see an operetta,” said Lovett in a phone interview. “Going to Houston was always a big deal. Everything was larger. After those performances everybody else would head back home, but I’d always stay and then walk down to the old Humble building on Bell, which is, you know, twelve blocks or so, and meet my parents. In those days you could do something like that as a 10-year-old, and I was proud I could do it.”…