Loretta Lynn Still Loves What She Does~Interview, Phone Interview~

[Vicki]

EDITOR'S NOTE: The concert has been postponed. A new concert date should be announced soon, according to her publicist.

Loretta Lynn still loves what she does
By MICHELLE KINSEY • mkinsey@muncie.gannett.com • November 4, 2009


Lynn has been in the country music biz for nearly five decades
That's a lot of taffeta.
And a lot of time spent on stage.
So what keeps her coming back for more?
She laughed.
"I guess it's because I just like to do it," she said last week during a phone interview.
Lynn, 74, will perform -- in one of her trademark ball gowns -- Friday night at Emens Auditorium.
What will she perform? She has no idea.
"I never have a set show," she said with a down-homey twang you would expect from the Coal Miner's Daughter. "I just do what I feel and whatever happens in the show happens. I keep it very loose."
Much of the set list comes by way of requests shouted from the audience. "And if they holler out something I don't know, I tell them to get up here and sing it themselves," she said.
The same thing can be said for duets.
Take the show a few weeks back when a young man who stood all of 6-feet-10-inches tall hopped up on stage and performed Portland, Oregon, with Lynn. Lynn originally recorded the tune with White Stripes rocker Jack White, but said the young man -- "His name was Jake -- I'll never forget it" -- did a fine job.
It's no surprise to Lynn to see young fans like Jake in her audience.
"I look out and see kids who are five all the way up to people who are 90," she said.
They might be new to You Ain't Woman Enough (to Take My Man) or they might actually remember when the tune hit No. 2 on the charts in 1966. Either way, her appeal seems timeless. Why?
"You know what I think?" she began. "You got to be real. That's all you need to do. That's what I'm doing -- keeping it real."
Lynn said she is putting the finishing touches on a "religious album" and has another country album in the works that will include some special guests. (We tried to get names, but she wouldn't budge.)
Best bread ever
Collaborations are nothing new to Lynn. Lots of people want to sing with her. But the chemistry, she said, has to be right.
She felt it with Jack White. "He's a good kid," she said. "He's a rocker, but he has a country heart." And she recently wrote some songs with Elvis Costello and Todd Snider.
White not only admired her as a performer, but thought she was quite the cook. Yes, he fell in love with her bread.

"He swore it was the best bread he ever ate," she said. "So, you now what I did? I wrapped it up with a stick of butter and sent him home with it."
This might be a good time to mention that she has one successful cookbook under her apron already (You're Cookin' It Country) with plans to release a second helping in the coming months.
But back to her famous duets. When asked about a collaboration "to-do" list, she paused.
"Bill Monroe and I planned to do something," she said. "He told me one time 'Now honey, if we don't hurry, it will be too late.' And it was. It was too late." The bluegrass legend died in 1996.
To say that Lynn has led an interesting life would be an understatement. Which would explain why it became the focus of the 1980 Oscar-winning movie Coal Miner's Daughter.
Loretta Webb was born in impoverished Butcher Holler, Ky., was married to Oliver "Doolittle" Lynn at age 14 and was a mother of four by the time she began peddling her first single in 1961, I'm a Honky Tonk Girl.

Since then she has released more than 70 albums, has had more than a dozen No. 1 hits and earned countless awards (including four Grammy's).
Not half bad for this ol' Kentucky girl, one might say.
And she's raised more than a few eyebrows along the way. Her songs Rated X and The Pill were banned by several radio stations in the 1970s. But Lynn has never shied away from tough topics, penning tunes about divorce, domestic violence and cheatin' ways.
Which brings us back to "keeping it real." Perhaps, like she said, it is her realness that packs venue after venue.
Whatever it is, Lynn has no plans on stopping anytime soon.
"As long as I'm still selling them out, I'm going to keep on keepin' on," she said.
Contact Michelle Kinsey at 213-5822.

http://www.thestarpress.com/article/200911...STYLE/911040301

[Kenny]

Thank you Vicki

[GAIL]

LOVE IT, LOVE IT!!!!!!!! THANK YOU TOO VICKI!!!!