Why I Like Dwight Yoakam

Today’s country music just doesn’t do it for me.  I like the older guys [and some dead guys] – Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, George Strait, and Dwight Yoakam.  Dwight Yoakam is today’s topic.  He was born in Kentucky, raised in Ohio, and grew up in California.  He attended Ohio State for his freshman year, dropped out and went to Nashville to make a living as a country singer.  There he met Pete Anderson, a guitar player from Detroit who had a similar attitude toward music.  The trouble was Nashville didn’t want to hear what DY was playing.  DY favored a more stripped-down approach to country music, while Nashville was in its glossy, pop-oriented “urban cowboy” phase.  Since Nashville wasn’t interested, DY and Pete Anderson headed west to California.  Out west they played their stripped-down country music in the honky tonks of the San Fernando Valley.  They’d play with roots rock bands like The Blasters, Los Lobos, and X.  These bands drew their inspiration from some of the same sources as Dwight – 1950s rock and roll and old country.

The influences.  Dwight Yoakam is a disciple of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, the two biggest proponents of the “Bakersfield” sound.  The Bakersfield sound itself was a reaction to the Nashville sound.  The “Nashville sound” featured syrupy string arrangements rather than fiddles and steel guitars that aimed at a more “adult contemporary” audience [think of singers like Eddy Arnold, Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves].  The “Bakersfield sound” derives from Western swing, honky-tonk, rockabilly, and rock ‘n’ roll.  Electric instruments abound – Telecaster guitars with their distinctive twangy sound Merle Haggard once said that while Nashville country came from the churches, Bakersfield country came from the bars.  Indeed – you won’t hear orchestras in a bar unless they’re coming out of a jukebox.  Dwight Yoakam also claims Gram Parsons as a big influence on his career – he said as much on a DVD I have about the life of Gram Parsons.

The Voice.  Guitar players like Mark Knopfler and Carlos Santana are such that you can recognize their playing almost instantly.  The same goes for Dwight Yoakam’s voice.  He’s got that Kentucky twang, and sometimes he throws in a Buddy Holly hiccup for good measure.

One Foot in Country Tradition…How does one describe Dwight Yoakam’s music?  His early music is a cross-between of rockabilly and honky-tonk with lots of romantic trauma, Bakersfield-style. If you look up “honky tonk sound” on Wikipedia, it reads the music “tended to focus on working-class life, with frequently tragic themes of lost love, adultery, loneliness, alcoholism, and self-pity.”  Throw in the words bitterness, despair, heartbreak, and pain, then pick almost any Dwight Yoakam song and it will have one or more of those themes.  Dwight covers heartbreak in about a thousand different ways, enough to make one think “hey, there’s someone more miserable than me.” 

In 1999, George Strait got together with Alan Jackson and did a song called Murder on Music Row.  The song laments the “death” of country music - For the steel guitars no longer cry/And the fiddles barely play/But drums and rock 'n' roll guitars/Are mixed up in your face.  One can’t blame that state of affairs on Dwight Yoakam.  When Dwight Yoakam hit the big time, he was hailed as a “neo-traditionalist.”  Dwight Yoakam’s first three albums – Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. [1986], Hillbilly Deluxe [1987], and Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room [1988] – have the Bakersfield influence written all over them.  The instrumentation is stripped down and straight out of the Buck Owens playbook – acoustic and electric guitars, drums, bass [even though you can’t hear it on these records], steel guitars, and a fiddle here and there.  DY recorded a duet with Buck Owens – Streets of Bakersfield.  After Buck Owens died in 2006, DY recorded an entire album as a tribute to Buck simply titled Dwight Sings Buck [2007].  He also recorded a stark version of Merle Haggard’s Holding Things Together for the Tulare Dust tribute album [1994].

He’s done bluegrass, and he’s got the seal of approval from none other than the bluegrass deity Dr. Ralph Stanley.  He recorded three songs bluegrass-style with Dr. Ralph - Down Where the River Bends [it’s on Dwight’s Used Records – 2004], Miner’s Prayer, and Traveler’s Lantern [the last two of which are Dwight Yoakam originals].  If that is good enough for Dr. Ralph, it’s good enough for me.  His versions of Earl Scruggs’ Borrowed Love and Bill Monroe’s Rocky Road Blues can be heard on In Others’ Words [2003].  He recorded a bluegrass version of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ Wheels and the traditional Some Dark Holler for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken Volume III.  He’s got a knack for this – he should do a full album of bluegrass music.

Elvis.  The song that got me interested in Dwight Yoakam in the first place was not one of his songs, but a cover of an Elvis Presley song.  That song was Suspicious Minds, a #1 for Elvis in 1969.  Dwight recorded it in 1992 for the Honeymoon in Vegas movie.  I heard his version and I was hooked.  He’s done Little Sister [included on Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.], and his version of Mystery Train can be heard on In Others’ Words [2003].  Maybe there’s a Dwight Sings Elvis in his future.  Then again, probably not.

One Foot in Rock ‘N Roll… Dwight Yoakam strides the line between country and rock ‘n roll, but sometimes he crosses the line and rocks out.  In addition to those times where DY channels Elvis, DY will record songs done by roots rockers, laid back California musicians, and even music from England.  He recorded a cover of The Blasters’ Long White Cadillac that rocks as hard [if not harder] than most rock bands could do.  The same goes for his cover of the Grateful Dead’s Truckin’.  His latest release [3 Pears – 2012] shows us DY in full cowpunk mode with Take Hold Of My Hand and A Heart Like Mine.  These two DY originals would make the heads of George Strait and Alan Jackson explode – they’re LOUD!

Genre-bending sound.  I can’t pick any single favorite Dwight Yoakam album because there are so many that I like.  When I’m in the mood to hear his music, there are four albums which get the call – This Time [1993], A Long Way Home [1998], Population Me [2003], and his newest – 3 Pears [2012].  Others may like the earlier records [Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc, Etc. (1986) or Hillbilly Deluxe (1987)], but these sound more like demos to me rather than full-fledged studio productions.  I can’t hear the bottom end.  But starting with If There Was a Way [1990], not only can you hear and feel the bass, you can also hear another instrument creep into the mix – a Hammond B3 organ, courtesy of Skip Edwards.  Mandolins creep into the mix as well.  The title song has precious little to do with country – it’s a straight blues.  The album This Time [1993] features a wide variety of sounds – a Floyd Cramer-like piano, electric piano, acoustic and electric guitars, dobros, steel guitars, fiddles, a Hammond B-3, and even some strings on a song or two.  Sorry You Asked [Gone – 1995] features Mexican trumpets similar to Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire.  The title song from Population Me features a mixture of Dixieland jazz muted trumpets with a banjo and a dobro.

The Weepers.  Hard, loud and fast is not Dwight Yoakam’s only stock in trade.  He can write and sing a tender ballad with the best of them.  Hell, I think he IS one of the best of them.  Home For Sale [1993] is written as an ad in the classifieds for a home that “two people outgrew.”  There’s no electric guitars here – just an acoustic guitar, drums, bass, a dobro and a Hammond B-3 organ.  I’ll Just Take These [1998] refers to the memories of a relationship that he thinks his mind can handle.  Aside from the electric piano, the instrumentation here is classic county – a fiddle, a steel guitar, acoustic guitar, some quiet drums and even some strings that don’t get in the way.  The Back of Your Hand [2003] strips it down even further – just an acoustic guitar and some strings.   Dwight Yoakam does what one might think is unthinkable – he makes heartbreak sound pretty.

Tony’s Favorite Dwight Yoakam song:  A Thousand Miles From Nowhere.  I won’t explain it – I’ll let Dwight’s music do the talking here.

His Songs Sound Good Unplugged.  In 2000, Dwight Yoakam released Dwightyoakamacoustic.Net., a collection of 25 of his songs unplugged.   It’s just his voice and an acoustic guitar [except for Little Sister].  It doesn’t come any more stripped-down that that.  The emotive power of Dwight’s voice gives such songs as Johnson’s Love and Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room even more impact than their electric counterparts. This collection is simply spellbinding and well worth having.

Pete Anderson.  Not only was Pete Anderson Dwight Yoakam’s guitar player, he was also Dwight Yoakam’s producer from the debut Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc [1986] to Population Me [2003].  Dwight had the songs, but Pete had a very hard-edged guitar sound that attracted me, someone who wouldn’t ordinarily listen to country music.  Pete Anderson’s guitar was the hook, but Dwight’s songs reeled me in.  As a producer, Pete Anderson was most sympathetic to what Dwight Yoakam wanted to capture on tape.  Here’s how Pete explained it to Guitar World:

“Dwight got better at arranging as it went along. I would interpret his ideas and had my ideas as far as how to arrange the material. He’d write the songs and come in with an acoustic guitar and sometimes he had a little motif. I would come up with a guitar riff or some sort of motif for the riffs or licks for the songs.

Dwight and I sort of blazed our own trail and did what we wanted because he had an extraordinary amount of talent. He had great songs, and songs rule the roost no matter what. Dwight could have been the biggest country star possibly of all time if he’d had the marketing skills of Garth Brooks to go with his talent. In that, we lived in California, people didn’t like us too much, but more of it was out of sight, out of mind.”

After completion of Population Me in 2003, Pete Anderson and Dwight Yoakam parted ways. Dwight produces his own records now, and with three albums now under his belt [Blame the Vain (2005), Dwight Sings Buck (2007), and 3 Pears (2012)], it appears Dwight learned a lot from Pete Anderson.

So with that, you have my favorite living country artist, Dwight Yoakam.  He is a unique performer who has never let him get trapped in anybody’s box.  He does what he wants his way, and does it when he wants.  Pete Anderson is right – he could have been as big as Garth Brooks.  But he went for himself instead of the big bucks, and I think herein lies a lot of his charm.