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DWIGHT YOAKAM "GONE" BIOGRAPHY |
On rare occasions, a sense of the past is mated with a fierce, intransigent vision of the future, and something new is born. Something new like the music of DWIGHT YOAKAM. In all his recorded work and stage performances, DWIGHT YOAKAM’s music has been marked by an abiding affection for the purity of traditional country’s precedent, but never has it been straitjacketed by a mindless fidelity that creates a vacuum in which a song withers and dies. DWIGHT’s understanding of country’s past is one of the great virtues of his music; his will to go the past one better--to up the ante emotionally, to jump the energy level up several notches--is an equally important virtue in the YOAKAM canon. And his vision as a songwriter continues to set him apart. That vision--tellingly dubbed "country noir" by Richard Cromelin of the Los Angeles Times--is captured in full measure on DWIGHT’s new Reprise album GONE. Eight of the album’s 10 songs were authored by DWIGHT, who co-wrote the remaining two with Kostas. GONE--which was produced, like all of DWIGHT’s other albums, by guitarist-arranger Pete Anderson--alternates between caustic neo-honky tonk tales of love on the rocks and balladry cracking with heart-bursting longing. As ever, DWIGHT pushes the outside of country’s stylistic envelope on GONE: hear the startling mariachi trumpet solo on "Sorry You Asked?," the pounding drums straight out of a Buddy Holly rocker on "Gone (That’ll Be Me)," the adept melding of strings and deep-soul vocals on "Nothing" and the wholly unexpected mating of pedal steel guitar and electric sitar on "One More Night." DWIGHT’s choices of vocal accompanists on the album also serve as indicators of his daring eclecticism: Bright young country talents Jim Lauderdale and Joy Lynn White go head-to-head with pop hit-makers the Rembrandts. Initially, the Kentucky native burst onto the scene in the early ‘80s by driving an alternate route of his own invention. Hailed as a "Renaissance Man" by Time magazine, DWIGHT creates music that, according to the Los Angeles Times, is "rooted in the rawest of country traditions (Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, et al), but it’s aggressively contemporary without pandering to fleeting pop trends." Vanity Fair has also noted: YOAKAM strides the divide between rock’s lust and country’s lament." DWIGHT realized in the early days of his career that he might need to find an alternate highway for his music. So he brought his music to an unlikely audience--the roots rock fans of Los Angeles, who were becoming conversant with a new breed of traditionalist through the work of such local bands as Los Lobos, the Blasters and Lone Justice, all of whom shared stages with DWIGHT. It was strange chemistry, certainly, but DWIGHT stuck by his guns and achieved a new audience for his heady combination of gutsy country emotion and rock ‘n’ roll electricity. That combination was also on view in his six-song 1984 debut EP Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.--a record that attracted the attention of devotees of rock’s most progressive sounds. Guitars, Cadillacs, issued independently by a small Hollywood label, was re-released in 1986, augmented by four new songs, on Reprise Records. That album, and the six studio sets that followed it, encapsulate DWIGHT’s uncompromising approach to modern country. They are: Hillbilly Deluxe (1987), Buenas Noches From A Lonely Room (1988), Just Lookin’ For A Hit (1989), If There Was A Way (1990)--all of which have sold more than 1 million units--plus This Time (1993), DWIGHT’s double-platinum bestseller, and his new album GONE (1995). Writing about the milestone This Time in a four-star Rolling Stone lead review, Don McLeese noted that the album "suggests that he has no contemporary peer, that his emotional precision and command of nuance have attained a kind of perfection." Listeners within the music industry concurred: "Ain’t That Lonely Yet," the #1 top-selling single drawn from that album, won a 1993 Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male, while the album’s "Pocket Of A Clown" received a Grammy nomination in the same category a year later. DWIGHT summed up his career to date with 1995’s Dwight Live, a smoking document of the last dates on his ‘94 "This Time Tour" recorded at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater. Like all its precursors, this energetic concert recording captured his dramatic melding of country roots and contemporary fervor. Undoubtedly, the classic sounds of hard country form the bedrock of the YOAKAM sound. The Bakersfield Sound of Buck Owens and his Buckaroos should be especially acknowledged; DWIGHT himself paid homage to the star and his city in his duet with Buck, "Streets Of Bakersfield," and he offered an additional bow to Owens in the introductory notes to Rhino Records’ boxed-set reissue of the country legend’s pathfinding work. The music of such other California talents as Wynn Stewart and Merle Haggard (who received a salute from DWIGHT in a version of "Holding Things Together" on the 1994 Haggard tribute album Tulare Dust) likewise reverberate in his sound. In DWIGHT’s music, one can also hear the echoes of Johnny Horton’s good-time honky-tonk; Hank Williams’ timeless melancholy; Johnny Cash’s Memphis moan; Hank Locklin’s country-pop sweetness; and the Louvin Brothers’ country gospel harmonizing, among many others. But DWIGHT’s music also contains other vital references, drawn from musicians who have, like DWIGHT himself, taken country to another plane: the king of the psychedelic cowpokes Gram Parsons, and even Elvis Presley (whose "Little Sister" and "Suspicious Minds" bookend Dwight Live). DWIGHT isn’t afraid to step outside the boundaries of country altogether: listen to his remakes of the stormy swamp rocker "I Hear You Knockin’"; Wilbert Harrison’s R&B exhortation "Let’s Get Together"; his cover of "Truckin’" on the Grateful Dead tribute album Deadicated; or the Warren Zevon-penned "Carmelita" on Flaco Jimenez’s solo album Partners. The eclectic, risk-taking nature of DWIGHT YOAKAM’s style may also be perceived in his choice of duet partners over the years. On one hand, he has recorded with such diverse country stars as Ralph Stanley and Patty Loveless; on the other, he has cut material with such ascendant alternative music performers as country-rock diva Maria McKee, songstress k.d. lang and the neo-folk-rock duo Indigo Girls. Blending the raw fabric of country’s deep, abiding roots with a profound understanding of a plethora of other sounds, from R&B to contemporary rock, DWIGHT YOAKAM has sculpted an unprecedented sound. He has also fashioned a persona that is fiercely vital, dangerous and independent. As Karen Schoemer noted in a 1994 Rolling Stone feature, "Neither safe nor tame, he has adapted Elvis’ devastating hip swagger, Hank Williams’ crazy-ass stare and Merle Haggard’s brooding solitude into one lethal package...YOAKAM is a cowgirl’s secret darkest dream." As a vibrant creative force and an indelible performing talent, DWIGHT YOAKAM remains a musical original who refuses to be reined in. |
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