THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 9, 1996 TAG: 9607090025
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CRAIG SHAPIRO, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 90 lines
AFTER A DOZEN years as producer, arranger and the muscular lead guitarist for Dwight Yoakam, you'd think that Pete Anderson would have the routine down.
If Pete Anderson did anything by routine.
He's collaborated with the king of the cowpunks on every project since ``Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.'' in 1984. His other credits, though, include The Meat Puppets, Michelle Shocked, Rosie Flores, Darden Smith, Steve Forbert, Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers, Jackson Browne and a k.d. lang-Roy Orbison duet.
Three years ago, fed up with the corporate playbook, Anderson and some buddies started Little Dog Records. He ran the gamut on ``Working Class,'' his fine '94 solo debut, goosing Jimi Hendrix's ``Fire'' and revamping ``Our Day Will Come'' as a wistful, sunset-on-the-beach instrumental.
Anderson's leisure listening is typically atypical, too.
For the last six or seven years, ``Let's Get Lost: The Best of Chet Baker Sings'' - performances from the mid-'50s by the late jazz trumpeter - has spent more time on the CD player than any other title.
``I listen to a lot of dead people,'' Anderson said recently. ``It's different for me to listen to new music.''
When he and Yoakam first met - a mutual friend did the honors - they soon learned they shared more than a predilection for playing by their own rules. Anderson had migrated to L.A. from Detroit, Yoakam from the Kentucky hills.
In those days, they were gigging around Orange County's hillbilly bars. Yoakam, even then the country outsider, was living in his car, or Anderson's laundry room, while trying to get a record cut. The ``Guitars, Cadillac'' EP, produced and distributed with a $5,000 credit card loan, was expanded to album length after Reprise signed him.
``With Dwight, as far as our country music influences go, they're identical - Buck (Owens), Merle (Haggard), Lefty (Frizzell), that kind of stuff,'' Anderson said. ``What we brought to the table musically, he was much more into bluegrass. I was into blues.
``He'd say, here's the Stanley Brothers or Bill Monroe. I, on the other hand, had gone from Robert Johnson to Bobby Bland. Growing up in Detroit, I'd made it a point to hear everyone who'd made a blues albums. Dwight allows me to interject that into his music.''
Take ``Nothing,'' the first single off last year's acclaimed ``Gone.'' Yoakam pretty much wrote it as an acoustic ballad, Anderson said. The finished version rings of Al Green. With its Tijuanna Brass horns, Tejano accordion, hefty Hammond organ and snaky electric sitar, ``Gone'' pushes all kinds of buttons.
The difference is that where Yoakam once twanged his way through covers of the Blasters' ``Long White Cadillac,'' Doc Pomus' ``Little Sister'' or Gram Parsons' ``Sin City,'' he now assimilates those styles.
And that makes each album a new challenge, Anderson said, adding:
``We have a completely free and open palette. `If There Was a Way' (1990) was a coming of age. When that was done, we thought we couldn't make a better record. Then `This Time' (1993) came around. Dwight had written a couple of tunes, `Fast as You' and `A Thousand Miles From Nowhere,' so we started off with that. We took the challenge in making a technically perfect record.
``By the time we were done, we'd done things beyond the curve. We asked for things that weren't technically available, things we had to create to make it work. It was almost experimental in some ways.''
In between, Anderson squeezed in time to work on ``Working Class,'' taking a more retro approach. He was in that frame of mind when Yoakam recorded ``Gone.''
``We made it like mine, very fast,'' he said. ``We just went in and kind of sailed on the material. If there was a problem, it was that it didn't have any obvious peaks, just 10 plateau songs. It sounded like a jukebox with a bunch of hits on it. Just punch them up - boom, boom, boom!''
They also have another album in the can, a tantalizing set of covers due this fall. Anderson named a few - the Beatles, Them and the Syndicate of Sound - but would only say the rest are ``pretty gigantic surprises.''
``The press has been great to us on `Gone,' '' Anderson said. ``Radio hasn't. I don't know whether we've outgrown the format or the format has shrunk. But if they had a hard time putting a finger on `Gone,' they'll really have a hard time with this one.
Accolades and awards make a difference at the bank, but they don't change a thing when the curtain goes up. As audiences will see tonight at the Virginia Beach Amphitheater, Yoakam still delivers plenty of bang.
It's a lesson they both learned back on the hillbilly bar circuit, Anderson said.
``We all cut our teeth playing honky-tonks. If you're not physically aggressive, you have to be sonically aggressive to get their attention,'' he said. ``I was determined as a young guitar player to be heard. Dwight picked up on that whole thing, too. He got less inhibited and more into having a good time.
``The music is kind of revved up, but we're still pretty much a bar band, whether we're playing for 100 or 10,000.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by Jeff Kravitz
[Peter Anderson, right, has worked with Dwight Yoakam...]
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB