Blame the Hat
by Josef Woodard
WESTWARD HOME: Twenty years or so ago, a
Kentuckian headed west on a musical mission, with what some
considered a wayward compass. He proved ’em wrong — and still does.
Dwight Yoakam loaded up his guitars and big ol’ hats in his
proverbial Cadillac, dreaming of high-class hillbilly women and
chasing the heart of country music as he heard it. He had tried
Nashville, but it left him dry. For himself and guitarist/producer
pal Pete Anderson, it was Bakersfield or bust; or at least his
notion of the old sound outta’ Bakersfield — “Nashville West,” home
of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. Now, Owens has passed on (although
his Crystal Palace club remains there) and Yoakam has carved
himself a sweet piece of a pie of a career for himself over the
last two decades.
The chance to hear him live, to hear him twang and brood with
his fine band, is always a good reason to get out of the house. Of
late, Yoakam has been playing the Majestic Ventura Theatre, the
venue whose blend of swank and funk suits his music to a T. On
Friday, he shows up in Santa Barbara County, playing the Chumash
Casino.
We ain’t hearing Yoakam on the radio much lately, but he’s doing
fine work. Last year, he released his first original album in
years, the downright excellent Blame the Vain (New West). Stepping
away from Anderson for the moment, Yoakam penned every song and
lyric, and produced it, too. He’s still got that thing. But what is
it?
A likable but also mysterious outsider then and now, Yoakam was
an odd man out in the mid-’80s L.A. scene in which he landed,
playing alongside Los Lobos, X, and the Blasters, whose various
roots connections made them extended kinfolk. Don’t listen to
historical revisionists: Los Angeles has been a strong and surging
country music town for decades, even if it came in mutant flavors,
doctored up by Gram Parsons, the Eagles, and the Mavericks. Yoakam
has played his private role in SoCal’s C&W tradition, as well.
He even did the de rigeur L.A. turn by dabbling in the movies
(playing a great bad guy in Sling Blade and making his own
movie-nobody-wanted-to-see-or-talk-about, South of Heaven, West of
Hell).
His personalized drawl is half-real, half-borrowed, an equation
that also accounts for the charm of his sound and his persona. A
man out of time and scene, Yoakam is always at his best when mixing
up honky tonk and Bakersfield work, spiced with early Beatles
touches and maybe some Everly Brothers. He was here before
“alt-country” became a catchphrase and is essentially making the
same music he did when he first snuck onto radio with “Guitars,
Cadillacs.” Bring it on.
Who is this guy, and why is he still nabbing our earlobes and
exciting our dancing feet? Maybe his long-haul secret has to do
with the facts that real country stars are stubborn lone-wolf
individualists, and that good country music just plain feels good,
no matter the year or the zip code.
TO-DOINGS: A few years ago, Peter Ostroushko first played in the
Song Tree Concert Series, a semi-secret music series of note at the
Live Oak Unitarian Universalist church in Goleta. Ostroushko, best
known as a mandolinist who also fiddles and sings on Garrison
Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, had just stopped with Keillor
and company at the Bowl. He returns to Song Tree this Sunday
afternoon. Ian Bernard, the Santa Ynez-based jazz pianist whose
résumé includes playing with Chet Baker, Rosemary Clooney, Johnny
Mandel, and music directing for TV’s Laugh-In, plays at SOhO on
Sunday. Joining him in the group will be Téka — singing
standards — bassist Randy Tico and drummer Tom Lackner. (Got e?
fringebeat@aol.com.)
