Dwight Yoakam (17 page)

I usually avoid anything backstage or off stage, unless in the line of duty (i.e., an interview). But I liked Dwight, hadn't seen him for a few years, and he'd apparently appreciated my review in
Rolling Stone
. At the concert, my wife and I went where the publicist had told me we should at the appointed time and discovered that there was a bunch of folks there to be shuttled in smaller groups to Dwight's bus for the standard industry “meet and greet.”

I figured I had my out, and that Dwight would never miss me. Heck, it had probably been the publicist's idea for us to get together. So we went back to our seats, and I thought that was the end of it. Until I went to the office the next morning, checked my voice mail, and discovered I had five messages.

They were all from Dwight, and each ran the generous length that the voice mail system permitted. After which, interrupted, he had immediately called back and picked up where he'd left off, rambling about the review, our earlier encounter in Chicago, how he was hoping his people hadn't screwed up since we hadn't gotten together the previous night . . . It made me sorry that I hadn't made more of an effort to stick it out. But mostly it amazed me with Dwight's stamina and perseverance as a monologist.

It was like we were having a conversation, picking up where we'd left off at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago, so many years earlier. Only he was the only one talking, for twenty minutes or so, refusing to let a phone system cut him off for good. When I arranged to get together with Dwight for this book, I mentioned this incident to his assistant, who nodded in recognition. “Dwight,” she said, “is the king of voice mail messages.”

14

Gone, Real Gone

HOW FAR IS TOO FAR? Released after another interval of two and a half years—much of it spent in powerhouse concert performance, as documented in the May 1995 release of
Dwight Live
—Yoakam's next studio album plainly found the artist and his producer encouraged by the reception for
This Time
, which had easily been the most eclectic, ambitious, and conceptually creative album of Yoakam's career. And the best received as well.

So they returned with the aptly titled
Gone
, which pushed the envelope farther in every possible direction, and which confounded all expectations except the one that insisted that, where Yoakam was concerned, you should expect the unexpected. You could call
Gone
the most polarizing album of Yoakam's career, the turning point of his commercial downturn. You could consider it one of his best, certainly his bravest. Or you could simply label it Dwight's
WTF???
album.

“That album had this splitting up of our musical atom, so to speak,” says Yoakam with a laugh. “With Pete controlling the engineering, and then me throwing paint over my shoulder at times. Like when Lennon walked in with [he starts singing], ‘Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to . . .' That's what we had the freedom to do.”

Says Anderson, “I think
Gone
was the best possible record to follow
This Time
. I was aware of that pressure, and I'm extremely proud of that record. And I may get flack from outside the immediate circle, but I think everybody [at the label] dropped the ball on that record. The reviews on that record are incredible. Just read the press kit! It's a beautiful, beautiful record.”

Again, a less daring artist might have chosen not to exercise that freedom, preferring to solidify his gains with “Another Thousand Miles From Nowhere” and “Still Ain't That Lonely Yet.” Instead Dwight responded with an album that reflects the extent of his creative ambition better than anything else he has ever recorded. After more than a year of immersing myself in the music of Dwight Yoakam, I'm still not sure I'm ready to pronounce it the best album of his career. But it has become my favorite.

“
Gone
was totally like, ‘Let's go crazy,' and I knew that going in,” says Dusty Wakeman of the last Yoakam album where he would be credited as associate producer. “It's an overlooked gem, but it came at a time when his relationship with Warner Bros. had soured a little bit. It got no airplay. Killer record.”

How is it different? Let us count the ways, starting with what seem to be minor matters of packaging and personnel. The coloring of the cover is such that the largest and brightest of the capital letters simply blare “DWIGHT,” in a turquoise that is almost neon. Much smaller letters have “GONE” in comparatively subtle white, while the darker blue of “YOAKAM” is almost invisible, until you look really hard in the right light.

Was Dwight becoming a one-name artist (as
Dwight Live
perhaps anticipated)—the Madonna or Cher of contemporary country? Many of the package's photos, which obscure the artist's eyes behind sunglasses or in the shadow of his white hat's brim, look like stills from an update of
Midnight Cowboy
. There's also a piece of art in the booklet, an abstract oil by Hans Burkhardt, an expressionist well known in art circles but not exactly a household name among the honky-tonk crowd.

Are you sure Garth done it this a-way?

The album also marked the replacement of drummer Jeff Donavan, the last of the original Babylonian Cowboys recruited by Anderson, with Jim Christie, who had played with the band on the extended tour for
This Time
. (Donavan has continued to work with Anderson, drumming on the guitarist's 2011 album,
Even Things Up
.) Another surprise found background vocals on two cuts supplied by the Rembrandts, pop-rock lightweights whose “I'll Be There for You” remains in power rotation in TV reruns as the theme song for
Friends
.

But the music itself relegates such credit changes to the margins of ephemera. Whatever strictures of tradition Yoakam's music had followed throughout his career, he spent most of
Gone
subverting them, exploding them, transcending them. He served notice with the mariachi-laced “Sorry You Asked?” opener that this would be a different Dwight, one whose deadpan sense of the absurd was in full force, one who refused to be limited either by audience expectations or by the artistic identity he'd established through his previous success.

The song is a glorious goof, a Marty Robbins ballad set to a Johnny Cash rhythm, fueled by the alcohol that Yoakam never drank. Imagine settling down on a barstool, ordering a beer, and asking the guy next to you how he's doing. And then listening as he responds by going on . . . and on . . . and on . . . until it's apparent that the story will continue even after you've left. Maybe even after the bar has closed. (As the song fades, the singer and his narrative are still going strong, picking up steam.)

It's like the Oprah version of an Old West gunfighter ballad, in which the singer who has learned that he must get in touch with his feelings rambles, “I mighta, shoulda seen that we were drifting apart, but I was in what I guess you'd call denial.” Or, a verse later, “Okay, we both have the tendency to overreact, so I can't really tell you who's at fault. But there were certain third parties, well her sister for one, who helped bring our reconciling to a drop-dead halt.”

It's plain that this episode is building to a Warren Zevon climax (one involving some combination of lawyers, guns, and money), but that won't happen until long after he has exhausted the listener's patience (and Anderson has run out of tape).

From here it was obvious that with
Gone
, anything goes. The album shows Yoakam lightening up and loosening up. The next cut has Dwight turning to the lilt of Buddy Holly for the last thing one would have ever anticipated from Yoakam, a pure love song—in fact a ringing tribute to “the power of love.” Listen closely, and you might hear something a little creepy hovering (like the stalker in the Police's “Every Breath You Take”), but by Yoakam's standards this song is lollipops and roses.

If Yoakam sounds uncharacteristically chipper on “Near You,” and positively loopy on “Sorry You Asked?” and “Baby Why Not” (another nod toward Texas, with the Sir Douglas Quintet joining Buddy Holly as a source of inspiration), the dark nights of the album's soul are darker and deeper than ever. The titles alone suggest the spiritual abyss of “Nothing” and “Heart of Stone” (the two co-writes with Kostas on an album otherwise composed by Yoakam alone).

“Nothing” shares something of its spirit of reverie with “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere,” but this is a much bleaker vision. With its full-bodied organ and call-and-response backing chorus, the arrangement owes more to Memphis (and, in particular, Willie Mitchell's work with Al Green) than it does to Nashville, while the taut lyric conveys the pain of loss without a hint of redemption. “Nothing but sorrow, nothing but pain, nothing but memories that whisper your name,” sings Yoakam in one of his most chilling vocal performances. “Nothing but sadness, nothing but fear, nothing but silence is heard around here.”

“Heart of Stone” sounds more like classic country (to which, as Yoakam insisted around the release of
This Time
, he'd always return), closing the album with a cowboy lope and a Jordanaires-style backing vocal, with an indelible lyric set to a memorable melody. There's an irony in the perspective, as the singer makes plain that he isn't as stone-hearted as he might pretend to be, that “This heart of stone sure is missing you, sure is wishing you were back where love belongs.”

In retrospect, it sounds like it could have been, should have been, another one of Yoakam's signature hit singles. Yet it was never released to country radio as a single, and those cuts that were—the soulful “Nothing” and the up-tempo title cut—didn't enjoy nearly the success that Yoakam routinely had for the previous decade.

The strains between the Los Angeles–based artist and the Nashville-based country industry didn't seem so significant as long as both sides were benefitting commercially. But with
Gone
, the tensions would intensify, with the contention over whether Yoakam had refused to give his Nashville label something it could sell, or whether the label hadn't been able to successfully promote music that radio resisted from an artist that the country industry considered increasingly difficult.

“Truthfully, I think a combination of things happened behind the scenes,” says Anderson. “Not in a conspiratorial way, it's just the nature of the business. And we just didn't get the hammer that we needed. It's a great, great record, and it's a shame what happened to it. Not to cast aspersions on Jim Ed Norman (then head of Warner Bros. Nashville), because he was a big, big guy for me, but I don't know how anybody could not put the hammer down. Like, ‘I'm not taking no for an answer from radio. Forget it.' And if we'd had that one on top of
This Time
, who knows what would have happened?”

If Jim Ed knows, he isn't telling. Never have I encountered someone who declined to be interviewed as graciously, eloquently, warmly, humorously—or at such length—as Jim Ed Norman. When I called him for comment, he provided so much context on the music industry, the essence of radio, the relationship between art and commerce, that he convinced me that his inclusion would require a chapter or more all its own. Or maybe Norman should write his own book, a project he has been threatening through thirty-five years of dealing with the media (with the working title of
Yeah, That's What I Said, But It's Not What I Meant!
)

So he made a convincing case that any response he made, stripped of context, would be perceived as a sound bite rebuttal to Pete—ancient history that would benefit no one at this point. “Dwight is an amazing creator, performer, and artist,” says the record exec whom both artist and producer credit with giving them creative autonomy and crucial support. “And Pete is an amazing producer—the sound he created is extraordinary, and the work they did together was extraordinary. This book isn't about Warner Bros. or the vagaries of the music business at the time, and you've got a great subject whether Jim Ed participates or not.”

Fair enough. But I asked Norman if I could quote him on artists and labels in general, on the contention that label commitment determines the commercial fate of the music. Here's a very small part of what he explained: “Some of the things you do as an artist resonate with the public. And, I'm sorry, but some of the things that you do, don't. And you know what? It's no different for the biggest successes in the history of the industry.

“Radio is in the advertising business. We go through periods where radio plays the music no one hates, rather than the music people love. Their approach is don't play music that has a high tune-out quotient, because they need to keep people listening to their station. If they don't, it affects how much they can charge for advertising. And there's never been an artist who has escaped radio being less enthusiastic today than they were yesterday for their efforts.” (He also made a very funny reference to “Maxwell's Silver Hammer.”)

Wherever the fault lies, in the product or with the label, the airwaves or the gods—and this isn't an either/or proposition—
Gone
marked the end of Dwight's days as a consistent country hitmaker. Yet Yoakam benefitted in the wider world from more publicity than he had previously received, in-depth feature profiles in particular. If
This Time
had taken some by surprise—showing the full dimensions of an artist caricatured as a honky-tonk throwback or a latter-day Buckaroo—the press was ready for him with
Gone
. And Dwight, never reluctant to talk, confirmed that he was an artist quite unlike any that country music had previously seen.

As he explained in an eight-page cover spread for
New Country
(“A Thousand Miles from Nowhere,” November 1995), “History repeats itself, but at an accelerated pace, and that's why we miss a lot of it—we're a microcosm now of this past empire or republic. So the only thing certain in the universe is movement. That's all we're referring to when we talk about time, the calibration of movement. Earth around the sun, moon around the Earth, the sun through its galaxy and on out through the universe.