Lost Highway’s Own Route

Veteran record executive Luke Lewis couldn’t have picked a more fitting name for his new Nashville-based label than Lost Highway, the title of one of Hank Williams’ signature laments.

The lost highway in this case is the one traveled by musicians whose payoffs tend to be four-star reviews rather than seven-figure sales.

They’re the ones Lewis, chairman of the Mercury Nashville label, is after for Lost Highway, whose burgeoning roster includes such critical favorites as singer-songwriters Lucinda Williams and Robert Earl Keen, former Whiskeytown frontman Ryan Adams, folk-country singer-songwriter Kim Richey, British soul rocker William Topley and iconoclastic actor-musician Billy Bob Thornton.

Lewis’ aim is simply to provide a home for astute performers who were shut out by Nashville labels that were hungry for hits, not artistry.

His expectations were modest when he launched the label in January. “At this point, we’re just looking to break even,” he says. But as a joint venture between Mercury Nashville and the Island/Def Jam Music Group, Lost Highway can tap major-label resources, should a hit materialize.

“My hope is that because we’re making relatively inexpensive records, we can make more with each of these artists,” Lewis says. “At some point, if the market moves toward them, or one of them accidentally writes a hit song, at that point we stand to make some money.”

Putting quality first makes Lewis a hero to musicians such as Williams, who has called Lost Highway “the coolest record label in existence right now.”

For Adams, the difference between Lost Highway and other labels is as simple--and fundamental--as that between art and commerce.

“I wasn’t going to commit to any labels that weren’t going to guarantee me the ability to make at least two albums a year,” he says. “I write and record a lot faster than most contemporary musicians, and I don’t want to spend two years trying to break one record.... I’m really interested in making albums and playing music, as opposed to making advertisements that are just vehicles for me to become famous.”

First Release Was a Huge Seller

To others in Music Row, however, Lewis may have looked more like a musical Don Quixote--until Lost Highway stunned the industry with its first release, the bluegrass-and folk-drenched soundtrack from the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

It has sold nearly 2 million copies and logged 16 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s country album chart. It’s also been in the Top 20 on the pop album list for months.

“To be honest,” Lewis says, “I felt we had a gold record potentially, but it has exceeded every expectation. When you’re a record man and you find an audience out there that wasn’t tapped into, it sure gives you a lot of hope.”

Lewis, 53, developed his love of emotionally and intellectually stimulating music in high school in Florida in the early ‘60s, when he became friends with future country-rock innovator Gram Parsons.

“When we heard the Ray Charles ‘Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music’ album when we were 16 years old, it changed both of our lives,” he says.

His admiration for singer-songwriters bloomed in the ‘70s, when he was Southeast correspondent for the music trade magazine Record World, and it continued through his stints with MCA and CBS Records and on to his rise to the top at Mercury Nashville.

He was at MCA in Los Angeles at the time Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle and Nanci Griffith had defected from Nashville and were turned over to MCA’s pop division.

“I still wanted to come back to Nashville,” he says. “I thought, ‘Why can’t a label deal with that kind of music from here?’ ”

Smaller companies such as Lost Highway may, in fact, represent “the labels of the future,” Billboard country music editor Phyllis Stark says, because the major-label system has become cumbersome and expensive.

“I’ve heard figures tossed around that it costs half a million to $1 million just to set up and launch a new act, whether or not that act is successful,” Stark says.

“One of the interesting things about this label is that ... the point is to make records that cost significantly less money than most records made by the major labels. So obviously you don’t have to sell as many to recoup that.”

Island/Def Jam President Lyor Cohen, however, thinks Lost Highway won’t have to sacrifice quantity in the search for quality.

“I happen to think that they collide here,” says Cohen, a partner in Lost Highway along with Lewis and Island/Def Jam Chairman Jim Capparo. “I think I’m going to make a ton of money, and I think I’m gonna break some really important, long-term career artists, artists that are incredibly necessary.”

Lewis may have shepherded Shania Twain’s sales into the stratosphere at Mercury, but he’s happy not to make through-the-roof numbers the primary goal at Lost Highway.

A Tribute Album to Hank Williams

More evidence that Lost Highway is a labor of love for Lewis is the label’s tribute to Hank Williams, titled “Timeless” and due Sept. 25.

Among those covering Williams songs are Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Beck, Keith Richards and Hank Williams III.

“I think you can run a nice, financially stable record label without having multi-platinum hits, as long as you don’t get carried away trying to have them all the time,” he says.

“One of my biggest heroes is [Island Records founder] Chris Blackwell. He certainly wasn’t thinking about radio when he was peddling reggae records. I don’t think he was thinking about radio when he signed U2 either.

“He went out there and struggled with world music--talk about a tough sell,” Lewis says.

“But I’ve never been afraid to pick up an Island record and have to worry about it being [no good].”