Lee Ann Womack Inks Deal With Sugar Hill/Welk Music Group

Pictured (L-R): Cliff O’Sullivan – Sugar Hill General Manager and Senior Vice President, Frank Liddell – Producer, Lee Ann Womack, Kevin Welk – Welk Music Group President, Enzo DeVincenzo – Manager, Dan Sell – Welk Music Group General Manager

Lee Ann Womack has found a new label home with Sugar Hill Records/Welk Music Group. The Country chanteuse has a new project slated for release in September; the project will be helmed by Womack’s husband, Frank Liddell. A single will be released this summer.

Womack previously recorded for MCA Nashville.

“My wife is one of the greatest country singers ever, but she’s also a vocalist who bring things out of songs you never realized was there,” Liddell says. “It’s unusual for the musicians to not just want, but to shape their performances to the vocalist during tracking, but for this project… That’s just what some of the best players in the world did. To have a singer who can get on the floor with the players and function as an equal with the musicians, it was an amazing thing to see. Watching what happened during these sessions was one of those moments when you realize what music really can contain.”

Liddell is known for his work with Womack, Miranda Lambert and Pistol Annies, among other artists. Liddell produced tracks on Womack’s projects I Hope You Dance (2000), and Something Worth Leaving Behind (2002). For the upcoming project, Womack is working with drummer Matt Chamberlin, guitarist Duke Levine, guitarist/pianist Mac McAnally, steel player Paul Franklin and others. Among the writers on the project are Neil Young, Buddy Miller, Hayes Carll, Mindy Smith and Roger Miller.

“If there’s one thing about this record that really stands out,” adds Womack, “it’s that all the songs come from writers who are artists. Every song was written for the writer to sing, and as someone who loves and listens to music, it’s a very different reality to cut songs that were written with intention from an artist’s perspective, to try and invest in what they’ve lived so eloquently.”