Highway Once Was Lost, Has Now Been Found
• UMG Nashville’s Cindy Mabe has aligned with legendary songwriter/producer T Bone Burnett to revive iconic Lost Highway Records. The boutique, alt-Country label focused on artistry above mass appeal and was known for its culture-defining artists including Elvis Costello, Kacey Musgraves, Hayes Carll, Lucinda Williams, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Ryan Adams, Ryan Bingham, Tift Merritt, and Willie Nelson, among others, plus projects including the Grammy-winning Album of the Year, O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack produced by Burnett that started it all.
Lost Highway officially returned on Jan. 10 with its first new release since 2012 — Ringo Starr‘s new solo album, Look Up, which has garnered widespread critical acclaim from around the globe.
“I’ve been thinking about reopening Lost Highway for a long time,” Mabe told Billboard. “It just feels like something is missing from the marketplace.” When Burnett asked her to come to his studio to listen to the new Ringo Starr project he was working on, it all clicked. “It hit me that ‘O Brother’ was kind of where Lost Highway started, and that was T Bone. Here he was presenting this beautiful record and telling me all the reasons he was doing the record. It was exactly the mentality needed for Lost Highway. After that initial meeting, I brought the idea of partnering on Lost Highway to him, and Ringo felt like the first project that should come from Lost Highway.”
Mabe added, “I can’t think of a better project to relaunch Lost Highway, and I’m incredibly proud of this release and the opportunity to put something so special in the world right now.” [Burnett/Mabe Photo Credit: Chris Hollo]
