Dwight Yoakam (24 page)

“I was always curious about that period of time, '66–'72, the height of great recording technology, the sonics of records in that moment, the arrangers, the Wrecking Crew in L.A. Listen to the band on ‘Tambourine Man,' where they wouldn't let anybody [in the Byrds] but McGuinn play. You had great studio bands in New York and L.A. And you look at the band that Chips Moman put together to make Aretha Franklin records.

“And think of the stuff they did, from ‘I'm Your Puppet' all the way through to John Prine's first album, when [guitarist] Reggie Young said to John, ‘I've been watching you for the last four days, and I'm beginning to think you're either the worst singer-songwriter I've ever heard or the greatest. And I'm starting to think it's the latter.' You had ‘Paradise' and ‘Sam Stone.'

“And the same band recorded Danny O'Keefe, ‘Goodtime Charlie's Got the Blues.' And also, on an off night, when a hippie chick who had come with Mark Lindsey and Paul Revere, because they wanted something of what the Box Tops had, and recorded a little track as a throw off—Merrilee Rush, ‘Angel of the Morning.' ”

In other words, as the late Donny Hathaway once titled a soul classic, “Everything Is Everything.” At least within the mind of Dwight Yoakam, fluid as it is fertile, where Buck, the Beatles, the Byrds, and the Box Tops all share a cosmic connection in the studio, and Paul Revere and the Raiders commingle with John Prine, courtesy of a killer backing band.

“If I had the power, I'd turn back time,” he sings with reverence within the hymn-like transformation of the album's “Close Up the Honky-Tonks,” but there is no turning back the calendar here. Instead, Yoakam inhabits these songs, some very familiar, many not so (at least to the casual fan), making them his own. His main foil is now Eddie Perez, who had served a stint in the Mavericks, on lead guitar, harmony vocals, even electric sitar. Like Buck had, Dwight recorded the whole album pretty much with his stripped-down studio band, the ones with whom he'd been woodshedding this material at sound checks, finding its edge in live performance.

“Each song began to take on its own shape and expression,” writes Yoakam in the liner notes, “and the album became as unique a recording experience as any in my career. It's almost as if Buck was demanding that . . . and, when that happened, it really became our album.”

While there necessarily is no new original material on the album, Yoakam by no means sounds like an artist who has run out of creative gas. To the contrary, the labor of love stands as an essential work within Yoakam's recorded output—a milestone of sorts, even a capstone. It seems like it should, by putting an end to one chapter, spark anticipation for the next phase of Yoakam's career, the next great album of original material.

And maybe that will come, though it's now going on five years since Yoakam last released any sort of album, or even had a label affiliation. During the latter stages of recording
Dwight Sings Buck
, he brought in a friend named Laura McCorkindale, to serve as his latest manager. As someone whose résumé extends from entertainment journalist (she had first met Dwight while interviewing him for
Country Music
) to film producer and studio exec, she had no previous management or music industry experience.

But she had Dwight's trust and respect, having negotiated a complicated deal to sell his publishing for a lucrative return. And she had the strong suspicion that Dwight didn't belong on New West, that the indie route had become a commercial dead end for him.

“I very much respected his choice to do
Dwight Sings Buck
, because it was a love letter to a dear, dear friend,” says McCorkindale, who didn't officially become his manager until after the album was recorded (but before it was released). “It wasn't a strategically commercial move. It wasn't even an artistically driven choice. It was a choice of the heart, and there's nothing more important in life. But even before I was his manager, I said to him, ‘Shouldn't you be with a major label?' ”

Though New West still had Dwight under contract, Cameron Strang let him go after
Dwight Sings Buck
with no hard feelings: “An artist like Dwight should do whatever is right for him artistically,” he explains. “We never want to be holding somebody up. New West is capable of doing a lot of things, but it has to be a happy marriage. Not that there was any negativity with Dwight, but unless both parties are really committed to a way of doing something in the future, it's going to be really hard to succeed. I think Dwight was ready to try something else.”

McCorkindale certainly was. She continues, “New West had some of the most lovable people I've ever worked with, and for an Americana label they're as successful as anybody out there. But Dwight's never been an indie, underground, niche-y artist. So to be with a label like that didn't make a lot of sense to me.

“And after the cycle of
Dwight Sings Buck
ran its course, I suggested pretty damned strongly that it would be impossible for his career to be handled properly being on a label like that. Now some of this is dated, to some degree, because the music business has changed so much since that time. But at the time we were saying, ‘Let's be sure this gets nominated for a CMA award or an ACM award,' and no one at the label was even a member [of the leading country music associations]. The mainstream country music business—the Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Dwight Yoakam country music business—is a very particular business. And it's not New West Records.”

These days, it may not even be Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, or especially Dwight Yoakam. But the longer Dwight waits before releasing his next album, the stronger it will need to be in order to re-establish him as a mainstream country star, or to make the world of popular music at large take notice. Because even dating back to his tenure with Warner Bros., Yoakam hasn't been an artist of popular significance since the turn of the century, and hasn't conquered the country charts the way he once routinely did since 1993's
This Time
.

Though his stint with New West found Yoakam flying beneath the radar of mainstream country, both of the two studio albums he recorded there—the last he's released at the time of this writing—stand as career highlights. Whatever promotional support the indie label could or couldn't provide, its support of Yoakam's artistry remained unwavering and absolute.

“Our philosophy at the label was to encourage artists to make as artistic a record as they wanted to make,” says Strang. “And the
Dwight Sings Buck
record was an incredible project and so emotionally close to Dwight. He had the freedom to do whatever was in his heart and mind at the moment.

“And the previous record,
Blame the Vain
, was Dwight producing his own album and using his own vision. He makes records that come out of him creatively with so much passion and songwriting presence. So to hear him go from playing the songs on an acoustic guitar to his final production, and all the detail he focuses on, it's really an amazing process. If you love music and the process of making music, he does it right. He's just inspiring to be around.”

Yet, in country music, hit singles remain the coin of the realm, and Yoakam's stint at New West failed to produce any, with the music world at large pretty much turning a deaf ear to such inspired artistry as well. Thus, Yoakam now finds himself in almost in the same position as Buck Owens was, gone from the contemporary country scene, a blast from the past, a golden oldie.

Maybe a much younger whippersnapper will do for Dwight what Dwight did for Buck, propel him back into the limelight and onto the charts. Yet in the minds of Dwight, his manager, and those who have heard the music he's been writing, he remains an artist in peak artistic form. He never went away. It's the music business that has disappeared, or at least transformed itself beyond recognition.

22

“I Wanna Love Again, Feel Young Again”

SO, WHAT HAS TAKEN SO LONG?

“Well, have you read the papers?” responds Yoakam with a laugh, his tone suggesting that the very question reeks of cluelessness. “Have you seen
Billboard
magazine? Have you heard the news?
There's no good rockin' tonight
. There's no such thing as records selling. The top-selling album last year, I believe, in the entire record business, was three million units.

“The reason why it's been so long is because of the collapse of the music industry all around us,” he continues. “My manager was smart enough to be guarded about pulling the trigger. Believe me, in the last three years, we have begun and stopped several processes of recording an album. I've been writing a lot of material. Going in and recording, and having the budget to put an album together, that we can do. But how do we market music? Where do you sell it?”

The way manager Laura McCorkindale sees it, what seems like a long time—six years and counting since Yoakam's last release of original material, where his longest previous hiatus wasn't half that long—has actually been much shorter than it appears.

“There's no mystery about it,” she says. “Look, I've been managing him for four years. The
Dwight Sings Buck
cycle ran a year and a half. Then it took six or seven months for him stewing on the thought I had placed in front of him [to leave New West and return to a major], and another year getting off the label.

“So I came in during a time of a monumental shift in this industry, and this change that we were in the process of going forth with also fell into this weird moment, and then we had to decide what we were going to do,” she continues. “The music business world has shifted so much and has continued to shift on a daily or weekly basis. And there were several times when we had made choices about what we were going to do and with whom. And within a few weeks other things popped up that had to be explored. And there have also been a lot of thoughts about the direction of the new music on Dwight's part.”

The good news is that there is new music. And there is plenty of it, though Dwight's disappearance from the pipeline of newly recorded material might have led some fans to suspect he'd gone dry, decided to make acting his priority, or was playing out the string as an oldies act on the casino circuit. Increasingly, country music has become a young artist's game. And it's a rare artist in his mid-fifties who can compete against acts less than half that age, particularly when he remains best remembered for hits that are half a lifetime ago.

“I think Dwight's future will be whatever it's meant to be,” said Cameron Strang, who left New West in 2011 to become CEO of Warner/Chappell Music (the corporate publishing division) and who has championed Dwight's return to the major label. “And the great thing about Dwight is that he's so true to the art of songwriting and music making, and his knowledge and his roots and his ideas are so entwined and go so deep into the fabric of American music. Like nobody I've ever met.

“And I don't know when popular culture intersects with that sort of artistry to create hit records, but it happened for Dwight, when he was making the
Guitars, Cadillacs
EP, living in an apartment in Hollywood, selling them out of the trunk of his car. And his passion is no different now.”

So maybe the odds against Yoakam are no longer than they were for a guy who spent nine years in Los Angeles looking for a break and who somehow skyrocketed from opening act in the roots-punk clubs to the top of the mainstream country charts. And the artist feels younger, creatively at least, than he has in years.

“You know that song ‘I Wanna Love Again' on
Blame the Vain
?” he asks. “That was written about my relationship with music. And I wanted to feel like I was fifteen years old again. The song talks about actually having a band, performing live music, or cutting a record, or at sixteen waiting to have the opportunity. That elevated state of excitement about music. It was written like it's a love relationship, but it's really very specifically about that feeling I have for music.

“And it's not easy to get back to that place, that space, where it felt like I was caught up in the youthful exuberance of music. Wanting my musical expression to feel completely free and open, without the tedium of repetition, the familiarity of execution.”

Buried toward the end of
Blame the Vain
, the buoyant “I Wanna Love Again” provides a bridge to the material Dwight intends to record. Instead of the brooding, dark Dwight of familiar musical persona—a guy who had to turn to the songbooks of Queen and Cheap Trick if he wanted to sing anything positive about love—he has returned from his woodshedding a far sunnier singer-songwriter. And perhaps poppier as well, or at least harder to categorize, in his melodies and arrangements, as traditional country.

“The new music's different,” agrees McCorkindale. “It's a bit more universal, even more commercial, without compromising any of his artistry. And he's using his voice in a more open way. Before, a lot of his lyrics were driven by what seemed to be pain. And almost all of his new songs are the opposite. If you put the lyrics to these new songs up against his entire catalog, you would say, ‘What changed in his life? Did he get married, did he have kids?' No, no. But there's a hopefulness to this music. Now there is a plethora of love songs.”

Strang agrees: “He's played me some songs that he's written and things he's recorded that are as good as anything he's ever done. So there's no decline in Dwight's music. Whatever he does, he's gonna make another great record.

“As to what's popular at the moment, I think it's incredibly healthy for him to be a little bit unhinged from that. You don't want to see somebody chase something that is not who they are—like watching somebody chase after a girlfriend who you know is going to be bad for them.”