CMT News

Lee Ann Womack will do some recording next week in Los Angeles with matchbox twenty producer Matt Serletic. Working title for her forthcoming album is Something Worth Leaving Behind.

Womack met Serletic, soon to become new chief of Virgin Records U.S., when she teamed with Willie Nelson on his just-released set, The Great Divide, produced by Serletic.

"We started talking," Womack says, "and even though Matt doesn't really do country records, per se, he wanted to do some stuff with us."

Among the songs she'll record in L.A. is a ballad, "Something Worth Leaving Behind," by songwriter Brett Beavers, frequent co-writing partner of Deryl Dodd.

Womack says the two-year gap between recording her last album, I Hope You Dance, and the new one has made her eager to be in the studio again. "We're listening to songs, hearing some amazing stuff," she says, "and the hardest part is going to be deciding which songs to cut, then which things are going to make the record."

Producers Mark Wright and Frank Liddell (Womack's husband) also are working with the singer on the album. Among the musicians enlisted so far are Leland Sklar, Kenny Aronoff, Paul Franklin, Jay Joyce, Randy Scruggs, Michael Rhodes and Greg Leisz.

Womack will appear Feb. 26 at the Houston Rodeo and is scheduled to play dates in the spring with Nelson. She hopes to have the new album out by late August.