"Not so much a replication, but more of a study in reclamation." - Kurt Wagner INVARIABLE HEARTACHE is an album inspired by a shared love for Nashville andits musical traditions. Lambchop"s Kurt Wagner - a long time champion of the city"s history and charms - and Cortney Tidwell - whose family have, for decades, played a significant part in the city"s (country) musical life - are both fervent admirers of the music that has emerged from the city. It was an early collaboration on Cortney"s Don"t Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up album that led to the two of them performing together at Nashville club The Basement in the summer of 2008. Such was the crowd"s overwhelming response that evening that the idea of a duets album was born, and though work didnʼt begin for well over a year the concept was never forgotten. It was discussion about Cortney"s family history, however, that led them to the Chart Records catalogue, a label run by Cortney"s grandfather Slim Williamson, A&Red later by her father Cliff Williamson, and for which her mother Connie Eaton also recorded. The result of their subsequent fascination with what they discovered on dusty forgotten vinyl is an album that pays tribute to art of the duet and the classic songwriting that lay behind many of the albums and singles released by the label, a tribute on a grander scale to the forgotten sounds of "Music City USA". Keeping it in the family, INVARIABLE HEARTACHE was produced by Kurt Wagner, recorded by Cortney"s husband Todd Tidwell at Music Row"s Starstruck Studios and by Roger Moutenot (who produced much of Lambchop"s last album) at Hap Town, and mixed by Mark Nevers, whose association with Lambchop goes back to its earliest days and who has since become one of Nashville"s go-to guys. With 11 songs taken from the Chart Records catalogue, and one more recorded by Cortney"s mother for ABC Dunhill, this is a project that, from start to end, comes right from the heart.