Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 14, 1994 TAG: 9406170145
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Mark Morrison staff writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A strange start for sure, sandwiched between two of punk rock's more abrasive bands, but in a way it was fitting for the country cool of Yoakam, who will play the Salem Civic Center tonight.
As a country artist, he has never adhered to the conventional.
For starters, he didn't pledge his allegiance to the country establishment in Nashville. Instead, he launched his musical career where he continues to operate today in Los Angeles, as an outsider.
In L.A. in the early 1980s, Yoakam was part of the city's so-called "cowpunk" scene when rock bands were experimenting with country music, and country bands with rock, and all of it influenced his own developing style.
It wasn't always easy, either. Clubs fired him regularly for refusing to include the latest Alabama song or some other country dribble of the day on his playlist.
Yoakam also pulled influence from his rural Kentucky and Ohio upbringing, and a certain well-read intellect that comes through particularly when he talks.
"Our generation was exposed to an enormous multiplicity of cross-pollinated musical styles," Yoakam said in an interview with Us magazine. "I remember riding down a country road in the back seat of a convertible with some cousins of mine listening to Manfred Mann yell 'Do Wah Diddy.' And simultaneously, with my parents on Route 23 going into southeast Kentucky, driving along a two-land highway that was as treacherous in 1964 as it was in 1948, listening to Jimmy Martin scream and yodel and bellow those mournful bluegrass laments, and Bill Monroe seize your ears without regard for compromise."
Yoakam is 37. When he was 6, he started playing guitar in various in high school and college before moving to L.A. to pursue music at 20.
He hooked up with Detroit guitarist Pete Anderson, who has co-produced or produced all of Yoakam's albums since.
Early on, the pair began to hone their root-oriented style, harkening back to legendary singers like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Yoakam calls it "juke joint" music.
But their sound flew in the face of the first big country craze that followed the 1980 movie, "Urban Cowboy," a dark period for country music when it seemed to forfeit its past for an easy taste of crossover success.
"I wrote a song," he told the Chicago Tribune. "It was a hillbilly waltz called 'New Boots,' about people dancing the Texas two-step while knowing nothing about Ernest Tubb, about people who claimed to be country while their new boots said it wasn't so.
"In L.A., they looked at me like I was a Martian, man, when I'd play something like `Down the Road' by Flatt & Scruggs. I realized that real country music had been not only abandoned but shunned as something less than respectable."
On the cowpunk scene, Yoakam found himself playing on the same shows with the likes of non-country bands such as Los Lobos, the Blasters and Husku Du.
He created an ultra cool image for himself as the brooding country rebel with the tight jeans, low-slung cowboy hat and movie star pretty face.
For the relatively small sum of $5,000, he recorded his first EP of six songs in 1984, which eventually became the bulk of his first album, "Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.," in 1986. Other records followed: "Hillbilly Deluxe" in 1987, "Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room" in 1988, "Just Lookin' For a Hit" in 1989, "If There Was a Way" in 1990, and last year's "This Time."
On all of them, Yoakam has consistently received critical raves as one of the few original talents in country's current crop of younger artists.
In his personal life, Yoakam made headlines for his short-lived relationship with actress Sharon Stone last year.
"I think it's unfortunate that one aspect of dating between two people who are both known to the public is that more attention is paid to it than if they were just two average people going out," he told Us. "I think that puts a pressure on the individuals as well as on the relationship, and it's a very uncomfortable time and place for pressure to be applied to something like a romantic involvement."
As for acting himself, Yoakam would like to become more involved in movie making. Already, he has appeared in a television series, "P.S. I Luv U," a Showtime movie for cable, an art house film, "Red Rock West," with Dennis Hopper and Nicholas Cage, and he starred in an L.A. play, "Southern Rapture," directed by Peter Fonda.
So, the obvious question is: Has Yoakam gone Hollywood?
Among the music establishment in Nashville, the answer is easy. He was Hollywood to begin with.
Dwight Yoakam in concert tonight at 8 at the Salem Civic Center. Blackhawk opens. Tickets, $22.50, on sale at the box office (375-3004) and TicketMaster location.
by CNB