The Lost Highway office in Nashville’s vibrant Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood is a work in progress. The kitchen area, which dominates the center of the ground floor space, is up and running, but many of the cubicles in the open area are still covered with unpacked boxes, and the internet only operates on one side of the large communal room.
But the impediments aren’t stopping anyone from getting their jobs done. On this day in early March, the workspace, which the label moved into in January, is humming with staffers occupying smaller offices and conference rooms, the lounge and kitchen bar stools. After all, there’s work to be done, including setting up Grammy-winning superstar Kacey Musgraves’ new album, Middle of Nowhere, which comes out May 1.
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Robert Knotts, who runs Lost Highway with fellow co-head/executive vp Jake Gear, calls Musgraves “a North Star for what we’re trying to do. I think this job would become a lot more difficult without somebody like her leading the way,” he says in the pair’s first interview since Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA) announced the revival of the imprint last April. “Why she is so perfect with what we’re doing is because of her unwavering commitment to her creative output,” Knotts continues. “There is no compromise in the best way possible. If we can work with artists like that, then we’re doing our job.”
Musgraves was the first artist signed to the reinvigorated label, which was fitting since she was the last act inked to its original incarnation, a culture-moving imprint started in 2000 by then Universal Music Group Nashville chairman Luke Lewis that shut down in 2012 following Lewis’ retirement.
Almost immediately upon its bow, the label, which took its name from the Leon Payne-penned song made famous by Hank Williams in 1949, became a commercial and critical touchstone by releasing music from legends like Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello and revered acts including Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Lucinda Williams, Drive-By Truckers, Hayes Carll and Mary Gauthier, many of whom were outside of the mainstream commercial country mold. The label also signed a young Musgraves in 2011, but it was absorbed into Mercury Nashville before her debut, Same Trailer, Different Park, came out in 2013.
Musgraves celebrated her return to the label by releasing a cover of Williams’ “Lost Highway” last April. (Since the first Lost Highway went away, she had released her music through Mercury Nashville and then Interscope.)
“We have been working with Kacey for almost five years. Lost Highway was important to her when signing her first record deal because of what the company stood for,” John Janick, chairman & CEO of Interscope Capitol and IGA, tells Billboard. “She loved the idea of being the first artist signed to the new Lost Highway. She’s exactly the type of artist that we want to be on Lost Highway.”
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Reinvigorating Lost Highway gives IGA another imprint that aligns with its aesthetic and provides it with a Nashville outpost at a time when most of the coastal labels have established a presence in Music City.
“Culturally, Lost Highway was a home to creative artists who paved their own path, regardless of what everyone else was doing. The roster was filled with great artists who marched to the beat of their own drum. That’s exactly what Interscope has been about for the last 30 years. So, the Lost Highway [and] Interscope connection starts there,” Janick says. “Beyond that, Lost Highway plugs into Interscope in a super seamless way. It’s a model we’ve had some great success with. Interscope Capitol Miami, our Latin division, operates the same way. We have specialists who work on Lost Highway projects every day, but they can tap into the larger team for resources and expertise — creative, marketing, publicity and more.”
Gear was most recently vp of A&R at UMG Nashville (now MCA), where he signed and developed Tucker Wetmore and worked with such artists as Vincent Mason, Parker McCollum, Jordan Davis and Dierks Bentley. He also spent more than a dozen years as a music publishing executive, including partnering with Grammy-winning songwriter Hillary Lindsey and Concord Music to launch Hang Your Hat Music, which he remains a partner in, but does not actively participate in on a day-to-day basis.
Knotts moved to Nashville in 2013 from Georgia, starting at Thirty Tigers as an intern. There, he rose to senior vp of artist and label services, working with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Sturgill Simpson and Turnpike Troubadours, as well as some acts who had been on Lost Highway, including Lucinda Williams.
Knotts met Gear through a college friend of Gear’s who also worked at Thirty Tigers. They became such close friends that Knotts officiated Gear’s wedding to country artist Hailey Whitters in 2022. However, Janick picked them separately and then paired them to run Lost Highway.
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“I knew Jake from working with him on Vincent Mason as well as his work with Hillary Lindsey. He is a highly creative person and a great A&R, who also has great relationships,” Janick says. “I was introduced to Robert as someone that could be great to be a part of running the company. I was very impressed with Robert and built a strong relationship quickly. I thought the two of them running the company together was a good pairing and the two of them being close friends was an added benefit because of their strong relationship.”
After they accepted the jobs, one of the initial moves Gear and Knotts made was to visit Lewis in Charleston, S.C., where he now lives. “One of the first things we wanted to check off the to-do list was go spend time with Luke,” Gear says. “And understand his point of view in starting this.”
“I’m more than proud that Lost Highway’s legacy was strong enough to warrant a rebirth, spawned by John Janick,” Lewis tells Billboard of the label’s revival, which released Brandi Carlile’s Returning to Myself in October as its first official release. “Twenty-five years after the initial launch the times have obviously changed. Guitar-driven singer/songwriters have found a revived marketplace for their work, and many are thriving, so the timing of a relaunch of the label seems fitting right now. Brandi Carlile and Kacey are perfect artists to lead the new venture, and hopefully more quality like that will follow. I wish the new venture well.”
For Gear, Lost Highway held almost a mythical place in his mind. Growing up in Iowa, “Lost Highway was a gateway for me through the alternative backdoor of country music,” he says. After moving to Nashville, as a publisher he’d visit Universal Music Group Nashville’s offices to plug songs. “I remember sitting in [A&R executive] Stephanie [Wright’s] office [around] 2017 and she had a vinyl of [revered 2001 Lost Highway release] Whiskey Town’s Pneumonia on the floor,” he says. “I’d [ask], ‘How come you guys aren’t relaunching Lost Highway?’ It’s a body of work and a brand that represented something. Almost 10 years before I even knew this was in my cards, it was something I cared about and hoped somebody would bring back.”
To now be at the helm is not a position Gear or Knotts takes lightly, and they see the throughline between the past and present. “The songwriting has always been the focus,” Gear says, but he hesitates to brand Lost Highway a singer/songwriter label because of the connotation of a stripped-down production. Instead, it’s more of the renegade creative spirit they hope to replicate from the first iteration. “That’s what the beauty of the original home of Lost Highway was,” Knotts says. “Every single one of those artists were wholly themselves and they had something to say. It’s not about genre or format.”
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Following the label’s release of multiple Grammy winner Carlile’s Returning to Myself, the album scored some notable chart wins, debuting at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 and at the top of Billboard’s Americana/Folk Albums and Top Rock & Alternative Albums charts.
“We hit the ground running, learning how our team would work best with the Interscope team in L.A.,” Knotts says. Key among Lost Highway’s dozen staffers are vp of marketing Casey Thomas and vp of promotion Luke Jensen.
The label then focused on the 25th anniversary of one of the original Lost Highway’s first releases, the T Bone Burnett-produced, Grammy-winning soundtrack for O Brother Where Art Thou, which went on to sell more than 8 million copies. As part of a year-long celebration, Lost Highway released a special gold vinyl gatefold edition on Feb. 20. On Feb. 28, a celebration at the Grand Ole Opry curated by Burnett recreated the album from start to finish with artists who appeared on the original recording, among them Alison Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Emmylou Harris and Chris Thomas King, as well as a new generation including Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle. “This was a pretty massive moment for us to shine a light on everything that Lost Highway had been built around,” Knotts says. (The new Lost Highway controls the original Lost Highway catalog, which Gear estimates is between 150 and 200 titles).
Like Lewis, Burnett serves as a spiritual forefather. While he has no official title, Burnett is expected to collaborate on a number of Lost Highway projects and Knotts stresses Burnett can “absolutely” bring acts to the label: “He’s been amazing to just get to learn from and hear from.”
In addition to Musgraves and Carlile, the label is also home to Americana outfit Flatland Calvary, who released Work of Heart on March 27 and whose single, “Never Comin’ Back,” is climbing Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart. Also on the roster are Cigarettes@Sunset, who recently released an EP, Possum Rock, and Meels, a rootsy artist from Mill Valley, Calif., who put out her Across the Raccoon Strait EP in January and has toured with Margo Price and Carter Faith. Rounding out the growing roster is 2019 American Idol finalist, smoky-voiced Laci Kaye Booth.
One way the new iteration of Lost Highway differs from the old is that streaming is now the dominant form of consumption, but Gear says the label will still take projects to terrestrial radio when appropriate, since it “can be a massive amplifier of something that should already be in motion.” Also, given the wide musical spectrum of its artists, Lost Highway will work acts not just at mainstream country, but commercial Triple A, Americana and other appropriate formats. “It’s up to us to work with [the artists] on what their vision is and then find the right format,” Knotts adds.
With country music and its offshoots surging around the world, Lost Highway has IGA’s global teams at its disposal. “Those international teams are on every call that we’re on,” Knotts says. “They’re part of the planning, the strategy. It’s very seamless.”
Though their tenure at Lost Highway has just begun, Gear already has a goal in mind: creating a new chapter for the label with a stable of artists so creatively impactful that “20 years later, somebody wants to call me when I’m retired and come talk to me like we talked to Luke and T Bone.”
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