Episode 1597 - Dwight Yoakam

Summary

WTF with Marc Maron Podcast: Episode 1597 - Dwight Yoakam

Release Date: December 5, 2024

In Episode 1597 of the renowned WTF with Marc Maron Podcast, host Marc Maron engages in an in-depth and heartfelt conversation with the legendary country music icon, Dwight Yoakam. This episode delves into Yoakam's illustrious career, his new album Brighter Days, and his personal reflections on music, life, and legacy.

---

1. Introduction and Career Overview

Marc Maron sets the stage by expressing his admiration for Dwight Yoakam's enduring presence in the music industry. He highlights Yoakam's multifaceted career as a singer, songwriter, and actor, noting his appearances in notable films such as Sling Blade, Panic Room, and Logan Lucky. Maron enthusiastically shares his excitement about Yoakam's latest album, stating:

"Every song on there is a banger... just really fully realized. Songwriting is good, the guitar sound is great, the band is great."
[00:10:15] Marc Maron

2. Early Life and Musical Influences

The conversation shifts to Yoakam's early years, with Maron inquiring about his upbringing. Yoakam reveals his roots in New Mexico and briefly mentions his time in Alaska due to his father's Air Force career:

"I moved there. I was about third grade through high school."
[14:32] Dwight Yoakam

Yoakam discusses the profound impact of his early environment, describing Alaska's vast landscapes and significant events like earthquakes, which left lasting impressions on him.

---

3. Musical Beginnings and Move to California

Yoakam recounts his initial foray into music, starting at a young age. He shares a poignant story about his father sacrificing a shotgun to purchase his first guitar:

"He pawned a shotgun ... bought me a guitar because he ran a Texaco station at that point."
[29:25] Dwight Yoakam

This gesture marked the beginning of Yoakam's deep-seated passion for music, leading him to perform in high school and eventually pursue a career in the vibrant California music scene.

---

4. Formation of His Band and Early Performances

Detailing his journey in California, Yoakam describes the challenges of establishing himself in the competitive Los Angeles music landscape. He formed his band with talented musicians like Pete Anderson and Richard Coffey, playing at venues such as the Palomino Club:

"We started playing the bars. We started hiring, and we would work... I played hardcore country music."
[72:45] Dwight Yoakam

Yoakam emphasizes his commitment to authentic country music, often performing traditional songs that resonated deeply with his audience despite the prevailing trends of the time.

---

5. Musical Style and Influences

Yoakam delves into his musical inspirations, citing legends like Merle Haggard, George Jones, and Johnny Horton. He discusses the influence of bluegrass and traditional hillbilly music on his songwriting:

"George Jones wrote, I've got a sad, sad story, friends ... the only verse in the song is about loss and longing."
[33:57] Dwight Yoakam

He also touches upon the Bakersfield sound and the blending of rock and country, highlighting his collaborations and the evolution of his musical style over the decades.

---

6. New Album: Brighter Days

A significant portion of the discussion centers around Yoakam's latest work, Brighter Days. He shares the personal inspirations behind the album, including the birth of his son during the COVID-19 pandemic:

"He was born in 2020... 'Brighter Days' is an outgrowth of that day."
[39:56] Dwight Yoakam

Yoakam describes how his son became a muse for his songwriting, leading to heartfelt tracks that blend optimism with the struggles he's faced. Maron praises the album's cohesiveness and emotional depth:

"Every fucking song lands. And the sound... the whole record has a fucking drive."
[82:00] Marc Maron

---

7. Personal Reflections and Legacy

Yoakam opens up about his fears and aspirations, particularly concerning fatherhood and the responsibilities it entails. He reflects on the emotional challenges of raising a child and the profound impact it has had on his perspective:

"I've never been as frightened in my life as when my son was being hurt."
[43:56] Dwight Yoakam

He also contemplates his legacy in the music industry, aspiring to create works that resonate universally and highlight the shared human experience through art.

---

8. Closing Remarks

As the conversation winds down, Maron commends Yoakam for his musical contributions and the authenticity he brings to his craft. Yoakam expresses gratitude for the opportunity to share his story and emphasizes the unifying power of music:

"Music is the only thing... it can make us all understand how much we have in common."
[96:24] Dwight Yoakam

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Marc Maron on Yoakam’s New Album:

  "Every song on there is a banger... just really fully realized."
  [00:10:15]

• Dwight Yoakam on His First Guitar:

  "He pawned a shotgun ... bought me a guitar because he ran a Texaco station at that point."
  [29:25]

• Dwight Yoakam on Songwriting Influences:

  "George Jones wrote, I've got a sad, sad story, friends ... the only verse in the song is about loss and longing."
  [33:57]

• Marc Maron on the Album's Sound:

  "Every fucking song lands. And the sound... the whole record has a fucking drive."
  [82:00]

• Dwight Yoakam on the Power of Music:

  "Music is the only thing... it can make us all understand how much we have in common."
  [96:24]

---

Conclusion

This episode of WTF with Marc Maron offers listeners a comprehensive look into Dwight Yoakam's life, his unwavering dedication to genuine country music, and the personal experiences that shape his artistry. Through candid dialogue and insightful reflections, Maron and Yoakam explore the intersections of music, personal growth, and legacy, making for a compelling and inspiring listen.

---

Show Notes:

• Album Discussed: Brighter Days by Dwight Yoakam
• Listen to the podcast: WTF with Marc Maron
• Subscribe for more episodes and bonus content: WTF+

Transcript

[Mark Marin]

Folks, I'm going to be in a lot of places around the holidays. New Mexico, New York City, New Jersey. And I'm sure a lot of you are traveling too. While you're away, it's easier than ever to host on Airbnb because a co host can do all the hosting for you. Get a high quality local co host to take care of your home and your guests. They'll create the listing for you, manage your reservations and take care of sending messages so someone else takes care of everything and you'll still make some cash while you're away. Find a co [e-mail] host lock the gate. All right, let's do this. How are you? What the fuckers. What the Buddies. What the fuck? Nicks, what's happening? I'm Mark Marin. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. Looks like I don't know what happens every year. I guess it's an end of the year thing, but I get these little sort of message requests and DM sort of things from random people, fans showing me the listings of their ranked favorite podcasts. And we're still up there, at least for some people, which is nice. It's a long time. We've been doing this a long time. I don't even know how many. I just know it's a lot. And we keep churning them out for you for your enjoyment. Every Monday and Thursday, a new show for you. And we're doing even more stuff for bonus stuff on the acast there. It's. It's a lot of talking for a lot of years to a lot of different people and just out of my own brain. And today on the show, I talked to Dwight Yoakum. Now, most people know who Dwight Yoakum is. He's a singer, songwriter and actor. But he also turns out to be quite the music historian and raconteur. He's had multiple number one albums and number one singles, multiple Grammy wins. He's also an actor who's been in movies like Sling Blade, Panic Room, Logan, Lucky we talked about none of those. But he's got a new album out called Brighter Days. And I never know, you know, sometimes, you know, people come around and I have opportunities to talk to them and if I have interest, I'll talk to them and. But you know, when you're dealing with a musician, a lot of times guys have been around a long time and maybe they were part of other, you know, musical outfits, musical bands, whatever, you know, they're still working away. All this to say that Dwight's New record. I listened to it and right out of the gate I was like, holy fuck. Every song on there is a banger, as they say. Just really fully realized. Songwriting is good, the guitar sound is great, the band is great. It's called Brighter Days. And I was so excited to just turn that record on or listen to it on my phone and just be like, holy fuck, he's really still doing it. So it was a pleasure to talk to him and it wasn't. You know, usually I can sort of find a way in through the new work, but with Dwight, this dude likes to talk. This is one of those rare episodes where I had to interject just to make sure I was still in the fucking room. Because it was very engaging. There was a lot of stuff, kind of a lot of things I didn't know. He was very sort of involved in sort of really kind of exploring and validating the California country scene and sound. It was a great conversation. Then later in the conversation, we got to talking about Credence. And actually after the talk, we sat on my couch in my house and listened to a Cosmos Factory on my fancy system. I don't know what I'm thinking. I mean, he's Dwight Yoakum. He spends his life in a studio and in music. And I'm like, oh, you gotta hear my speakers. You gotta hear my speakers, man. And we listened to up around the Bend. Great guy, Good conversation. Also, Brian Jones, the mug maker, the Potter still has some cat mugs for sale that you can get at WTF Mugs Co. These are the mugs I give to my guests. Handmade by Brian Jones. Get them as gifts for WTF fans in your life or as a treat for yourself. Again, that's at WTF Mugs Co. Let's run down some dates. I'm back at Largo in LA on Friday, December 13 for a comedy and music show. Me and The Band, Sacramento, California Crest Theater Friday, January 10th Napa, California at the Uptown Theater on Saturday, January 11th. I'm in Fort Collins, Colorado at Lincoln Center Performance hall on Friday, January 17th. Then Boulder, Colorado at Boulder Theater on Saturday, January 18th. I'll be in Santa Barbara, California at the Libero Theater on Thursday, January 30th. Then San Luis Obispo, California at the Fremont center on Friday, January 31st. Monterey, California at the Golden State Theater on Saturday, February 1st. You can go to wtfpod.com for all my dates and tickets. And there's a lot of other stuff coming up. I mean, I'm going to be. Yeah, I mean, I'm going out there to some interesting markets that I didn't do with this hour yet. I mean, I'm going to like Iowa City, Des Moines, Kansas City, Asheville, North Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, Louisville, Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Durham, Charlotte, Charleston, Skokie, Joliet. I'll be in Grand Rapids. I'll be at the Traverse City Comedy Festival, I believe in April. And this is all moving towards a special taping that it looks like we're going to do in May here in New York City. I won't announce exactly. We're still working out the details on that, but I did go check out a venue, so that's all. That's what we're converging on. Like, as you remember, I was doing this new hour, and then I got kind of sidelined by the TV gigs and the movie gig, and now I'm back at it, picking up places that. That hasn't seen this work. And certainly it's different than what I was doing whenever I started doing it. But the. The point we're moving towards is another HBO special, and, you know, that'll be it. That'll be it. There comes a point in one's right. Well, that's what I think. You know, I don't know why I put this on myself, why I think that way. I mean, I am old. I've done all right. I'm happy about, you know, where I'm at and what I've achieved. And there's some part of me that thinks like, you know, what do I got to keep going for, you know, never been really a money guy. Turned out I did all right. I don't know why I'm talking in the past tense here, but I think about it a lot. You know, my audience is getting older with me, and I don't know what the future holds, but I know this is what is happening. Next year is going to be a busy year. There's a lot of things going on. A lot of changes are happening in the world and perhaps in myself. So we'll see. I don't know. I don't know why I bother thinking about this. Why can't I just be in the present, in this room, huh? Why do I choose my head and projections and my phone and speculation and distractions over just sitting with me, huh? Come on, what is it? I'm going to play it a show tonight in here in New York. It's a sort of a. I don't know how this works, but it's Going to be one of these music comedy shows that I do like the ones I do at Largo. And I just, you know, I, I should be thrilled, and I am to a degree, but I want to do a good job. It's going to be me and Fabino. Maddie Weiner is going to do a set and Namesh Patel is going to do a set and I'm going to do some comedy. We're going to do about, I guess, four songs, me and Jimmy and his guys, you know, Adam Menkoff on bass, who's a genius. Sean Pelton, the great drummer. And so we're going to do, I think we're going to do Stepping out and then we're going to do Going, Going Gone, the Dylan song that we're going to do, what goes on the Velvet Underground song. Then Jimmy wants to do Run Run Rudolph. And then Kingfish is coming out. He's going to do a couple the Thrill Is Gone and hey Joe. And then we're all going to play Killing for the Howlin Wolf song. And it's going to be in a room with like 150 people. It's like this small event space and it's mostly invitation only, but yeah, it's going to be pretty exciting. There was a point there where they were like, they showed me the lineup and they put Kingfish in the middle and I was like, why do, why would I even play after Kingfish? I'm trying to get by on the guitar here and do a little singing. You can put Kingfish in the middle of the show. What's the point of even picking up a guitar after that? So now he's going to close big. But I'm, I'm nervous, I'm excited. I want it to be a good time. I'd like my brain to be able to just think, hey, this will be a good time. Not, oh, fuck, man, I gotta. I hope I nail this. Jesus, I hope I. What's wrong with my brain? Well, good question. And this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's starting to get cold out there in parts of the country. And when it gets cold, I'm sure you have your go to ways to stay warm. Maybe it's a favorite blanket or you curl up on the couch with a pet, or you make yourself a nice mug of hot chocolate. You only have to do that stuff in the winter. But when you go to therapy, it's like keeping yourself warm and protected all year long, no matter what season it is. So if you're looking to get mentally comfy. Give BetterHelp a try. BetterHelp is online therapy that's designed to be flexible, convenient, and suited to your schedule. You take a brief questionnaire, then BetterHelp matches you with a licensed therapist. And you can switch therapists at any time. So no matter what the weather is like outside, make sure it feels like it's 72 degrees in your head all the time. Find comfort this December with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com wtf today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L P so podcasts, so filling your head. So what about reading? I guess if you're listening at the beginning here, I brought that up. I was talking, you know, I come to New York, not so much these days, and I went out last night with my buddy, the brilliant novelist Sam Lipsite. My dear friend Sam, and he was doing a part in a reading. He was part of a group that was reading pieces from a book, a collection by Marc Lehner. Now, Mark Lehner is one of the great satirists, one of the great envelope pushers of language and ideas. He's got this new book out, a shimmering serrated monster. It's like it's the Mark Lehner reader. My buddy Sam wrote the introduction, but Lehner's done some amazing books. My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist, Ed Tubabe is a great book. Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit Sugar, Frosted Nut Sack, which is a novel. I don't know, I just think that if you read him, you're gonna get a fucking kick out of him because he's just, you know, he's hardcore, raw, transgressive, envelope pushing satire both in ideas and language. And the thing was, is like we do this thing. And it was a nicely attended event. Friends, family, other writers read from the book and we all went out and I talked to Lehner a bit. I hadn't talked to him in a long time, interviewed him years ago on Air America because I always like, Et Tu, Babe? Was sort of a mind blowing book for me. But this is one of the great writers. And I got talking to Sam and a publisher who was there just about how do you get people's attention to focus on books? How do you get them to focus on anything when there's so much around? And then I believe maybe the publisher said that people are listening to podcasts more than they're reading books. And I thought to myself, well, I guess, I guess I'm partially to blame for that, but I guess this is just A pitch, you know, Read a book. Will you read a Mark Laner book. Read a Sam Lipsite book, Dude, pick up a book. I'll do it if you do it. What do you say? Deal. All right, look, Dwight Yoakum is here and we had a great conversation. I enjoyed it immensely. He just released his first album of new music in nine years. It's called brighter days. And you can get it wherever you get your music, and it's a great record. This is me talking to Dwight Yoakum. Life is busy, people. And if you're like me, no matter how busy you get, you've got to get your fitness in. Peloton has a variety of challenging classes and programs that fit into your schedule. Whether you're a new parent or traveling for the holiday or training for something big or just busy like everyone else. From four week strength building classes to running, cycling, and everything in between, Peloton can adapt to any goal and need during your busiest times. Find your push, find your power with [e-mail] I've lived here a while. I'm from New Mexico, Jersey, genetically, but I grew up in New Mexico.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Grew up out in New Mexico. Your family move out there when you were a kid or.

[Mark Marin]

Yeah, you know, I was there.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Were they at university or.

[Mark Marin]

No, my dad, Air force, was in the air force in Alaska. Oh.

[Dwight Yoakam]

See, in Anchorage.

[Mark Marin]

And then when he got out, he, you know, he's a doc, so he started, you know, it was a kind of a boom town. And a buddy of Albuquerque had moved to Albuquerque.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Wow.

[Mark Marin]

So I moved there. I was about third grade through high school.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Wow. Were you in Alaska before that?

[Mark Marin]

Yeah, two years.

[Dwight Yoakam]

That's in Anchorage. That's insane. What was that like? I mean, you were probably 6, 7 years old.

[Mark Marin]

That's right. But, you know, you have memories.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh, no, no, no, no. Six or seven. That's.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

That's a big imprint.

[Mark Marin]

Well, you feel the weight of that sky up there. You know, I feel like you get closer to the top of the world, you can kind of feel it.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh, no. The curve. Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Marin]

And I feel northern lights.

[Dwight Yoakam]

All of it.

[Mark Marin]

There was that, but I remember mostly, you know, it was. It was. There was a huge earthquake in 63.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And big tsunami that hit up there. Right.

[Mark Marin]

Well, I don't know when that happened, but there was a massive earthquake in.

[Dwight Yoakam]

The late 50s anyway.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

And they hadn quite, you know, pulled it all together. You'd walk out. We could walk out to the inlet and if you walked along the inlet you get to the. Where it hits the sea and I just remember those ice floes, just, you know, just chunks of ice.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Wow. This was Anchorage.

[Mark Marin]

Yeah, Anchorage.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Wow.

[Mark Marin]

I remember a few things.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You ever go to Fairbanks?

[Mark Marin]

I went to Fairbanks to do a show as a grownup. And it's interesting when you fly into Alaska because you're like, holy. There's nothing up.

[Dwight Yoakam]

No, there's nothing. I've never been to Alaska. Been to the Northwest Territory of Canada, which is also same. There's no roads.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

The roads stop when you get in northern Alberta.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

There is a dirt road and then there's no road.

[Mark Marin]

Tundra.

[Dwight Yoakam]

It's like. Yeah, tundra.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

Like it's going like I've gone to. I've done shows in Winnipeg.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

And you fly into Winnipeg, you're like, what the. There's nothing out here.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I've got a shot of. Of the exterior temperature. I forget what it was.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

What amount below. One day when we were touring up. We were in Winnipeg. But I'm fascinated with Alaska, you know, in terms of just the. Never been the edge of the earth. Never been there. And someday they've offered shows. It just didn't work out, you know.

[Mark Marin]

Where would you go? Fairbanks, Anchorage or Juneau? I mean, what are the options?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, usually Anchorage is where it's been.

[Mark Marin]

You know, like, I have no concept of what it's like.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Fair Banks. I pretty small as a kid. I mean I was infatuated with Johnny Horton. If you know. My first hit ever was a remake of a Johnny Horton song. Honky Tonk Man.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But Johnny Horton wrote these great historical. He. He was either taught history. He was a history major in college or whatever. Johnny Horton wrote the theme song to a movie that John Wayne did. North to Alaska.

[Mark Marin]

Okay.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Big Sam left Seattle in the year of 92 with George Pratt, his partner. And he would do this yodel break and his brother Billy too. They crossed the Yukon river, found the bonanza gold about the whole Yukon for all the. The gold rush.

[Mark Marin]

Is it gold rush in Alaska?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Beneath that old white mountain, just a little southeast. So I started leaving listening to this. And then when I was older, I became infatuated with maps. We had. My dad decided he. And he was a master mechanic. Not an educ. You know, not a academic in any way. Yep. And. But he had been in the army. He was a. Had a half a career done like 10 years right at. Yeah, he was a sergeant in the army. I came along. Used to blame me for getting out of the army and. But I'd say he goes, you know, I'd have been retired, but now he look at me. Hadn't been. Because you. Because he couldn't take my mother and myself to Korea, even though the war was still. It was still, you know, to this day. The Korean War is not officially over. It's a truce. That's why the DMZ up there is.

[Mark Marin]

Like mid late 50s.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I was born in 56. By 57, the act of war had stopped in at the end of 53.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Early 54, you don't hear about it much.

[Mark Marin]

It's pretty bloody mess.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh, it was a nightmare.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

John prime wrote a great song called hello in There.

[Mark Marin]

Oh, yeah. It's the best.

[Dwight Yoakam]

If you've heard that. Oh, yeah, of course. Then the guy on the bench talking about, we lost. I forget the son's name in the Korean War. We still don't know what for.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because that was the beginning of wars that had no meaning.

[Mark Marin]

Sure.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Right. No end.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And. And then the next was, of course, Vietnam. The. The precursor was Korea.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And so my dad ended up there. He met my mom. Thank God, because otherwise there's no me.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Met my mother where?

[Mark Marin]

In Kentucky.

[Dwight Yoakam]

No. And by that point, in Ohio, because, funny Enough, politics aside, J.D. vance wrote a book called Hillbilly Elegy that he. He flattered me by using a song that I wrote called Read and write Route 23, about the cultural exchange that happened post World War II. It was happening before that, but really, when the coal mines began shutting down. Southeast Kentucky, West Virginia.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Deep southern Virginia and western Virginia.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And they were mined out. A lot of places, though, they didn't have work.

[Mark Marin]

Your mom comes from south?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Coal mining down the hills. I was born there. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Generations back. I mean, hundreds of years. Lumber before that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And my dad's side, actually, my great grandfather came out of Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, into the Ohio Valley. But that river valley spawned, you know, the Ohio River Valley next to the Mississippi and the Missouri. It's one of the largest rivers, you know, in the United. In North America. And it. It really spawned a lot of culture. You know, Cincinnati, the river towns that were there of industry and so.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

So I was at church one day.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And this fellow who was also a Kentuckian, I used to say, we ran out of gas and didn't make it to Detroit, where Iggy, who I'm sitting on, is from.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

The cats up in Detroit, there were all these transplanted, you know, hillbillies. They were calling you Know, and there was huge country music out of Detroit. And my original producer, Pete Anderson, came out of there, and his father had come from western Kentucky because they would go look for jobs there. John Prine's family, he wrote paradise about his family returning to their home place on the weekends in Western Kentucky because they'd moved to Chicago looking for jobs, they'd looked for work.

[Mark Marin]

So what kind of. Who were the big country acts out of Detroit and Chicago at the time?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, I'm trying to think. Well, recently, Billy Strings came out of Michigan.

[Mark Marin]

I know. Yeah, he's great. I had him on.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Fantastic.

[Mark Marin]

Unbelievable.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But again, his legacy, the lineage. If you read Malcolm McDowell's great book, Outliers, he talks about this in a chapter that they did a double blind test at University of Michigan, setting up a, quote, psych experiment that you could get paid as a student to go be participated in. What? The experiment started in the hallway where they had a big lineman from the football team out there with a file cabinet blocking your way. You know, if you pull out a drawer, like, oh, sorry, man. And you know, just to see if they got a reaction out of these young guys who had a background that was even two generations or so more removed from the South.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And the behavior, the psychological behavior. And they would ask them a series of questions, going to prove what to prove how they reacted to social circumstances and what they took umbrage to. And he talks in a chapter about the feuding culture in southeast Kentucky and where around the world that the feuding culture goes on. Right. And it's usually where the topography or the geography is not conducive to agrarian culture, where it's herding culture. Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Mediterranean crest.

[Mark Marin]

So you get clans, Greece.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You get clandestine behavior because it's a herd culture. And you can't let the smallest umbrage kind of go on un addressed. Like a guy bumps you at a bar. It may be a perimeter kind of probe to see if you're vulnerable to him coming and stealing your sheep.

[Mark Marin]

Territorial.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. With taking what's yours.

[Mark Marin]

And that's what Billy comes from.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Billy Bob, Billy Strings. Billy Strings comes out of east southeastern Kentucky. His stepdad. I mean, I heard that album and it was like, there's a. There's pure eastern Kentucky in this. And then I started reading about his background.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And how they'd moved back, I think the Morehead, Kentucky of that area.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Which is Route 23, which I was born on, Pikeville, which is further, the furthest city down that way.

[Mark Marin]

So when you're coming up. Like where your folks settled in Kentucky?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, we moved to Ohio. We moved across the river. My dad came back and after I was born, he jettisoned his military career, which he lamented the rest of my life. Yeah, I would have been retarded. And I said, you'd have been in Vietnam.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

He goes, well, maybe. Maybe he was in. You know, you had a lot of stripes. They're going to send you first.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Anyway, I mean, it was all. So that was Ohio and a bit of teasing. But then Columbus, which is South Central.

[Mark Marin]

That'S where you grew up.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah, principally. Yeah. But I used to say we were tail light babies. So my mother worked in. She was a key punch operator. She ended up running a data center for a manufacturing company that would fire parts up the road to Detroit in Columbus. Auto parts. Yeah. A large manufacturing factory.

[Mark Marin]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But she had worked her way up being a key punch operator, a computer operator. 50s and 60s, right. You know, big old univac things from, you know, a James Bond movie. And there was a guy that worked with her that went to our church, another Kentucky transplant. Because the whole this migratory kind of move that. And Billy String's family comes into Michigan out of that. I used to joke and say we ran out of gas halfway to Detroit. You know, it's like we actually had some earlier family there that they would land, you know, the girls and my mother's family. My aunt was married to my father's older brother, my mother's older sister. That's. So it's a double. That's how they met.

[Mark Marin]

So it's pretty tight. Family.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, that part just. And they never had children, so my sister and brother and I were. And I'm the oldest and kind of had to find my own.

[Mark Marin]

So where does music start?

[Dwight Yoakam]

The earliest memory I have singing a tour to record player with my aunt and my mom wedged between them on a little couch.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Singing to Hank Lachlan's Send Me the Pillows. You dream on. That's the first musical memory I have. And we were literally hollering it back at the record player. Yes. Split stereo.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Our earliest, like, snap off thing.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And they were playing that record, that band. I wasn't even stereo. That was mono, actually.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because it. Late 50s maybe.

[Mark Marin]

Wasn't a console.

[Dwight Yoakam]

No, not at that point. They had the color TV consoles later, you know, that piece of.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Mike Nesmith told me one time from the Monkeys.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Was a friend. And he said something really, you know, sentiently funny. He said well, you know, Dwight, what they say, because he was film producer in the 80s and he did repo man did. And he said, you know what they say? They say theater is life, film is art and television is furniture. This is in the 90s, you know, when it was still.

[Mark Marin]

Well, he's an interesting character that it kind of factors into.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Brilliant character.

[Mark Marin]

The. The new country.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, all of it. Yes.

[Mark Marin]

What was that? Those albums?

[Dwight Yoakam]

First national.

[Mark Marin]

First national.

[Dwight Yoakam]

He and he had the full on nudie suits.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Chris Hillman from the Birds and I, who's a friend and also did one.

[Mark Marin]

Of his songs on the new record.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yes. He's a co conspirator. He does the burrito stand on my channel. The Bakersfield beat.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

On. On serious channel.

[Mark Marin]

Well, he was a burritos guy and then the Birds guy was birds first.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah, he was a bluegrass kid out of Southern California.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Out of down north San Diego County. Rancho Santa Fe way down. When it was just this outpost down there along the.

[Mark Marin]

But so you start though, like when you start playing your. Your first. Like when did you start to learn guitar? Where was that happening?

[Dwight Yoakam]

I was. Well, first shots of me my dad brought back from Korea, which is what we were talking about earlier. I said, I digress. I took you off on tangents. I started with you in Alaska.

[Mark Marin]

Alaska. We went through Michigan.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yes.

[Mark Marin]

Kentucky. The Ohio River.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Since we started with why you like.

[Mark Marin]

Alaska or why you're fascinated with.

[Dwight Yoakam]

We started with you coming from New Mexico.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

So that's like. Tom T. Hall had a great song title. That's How I Got to Memphis. It's sort of what this interview is like. And that's how I got to Memphis. Tom T. Hall, he's a good one. He's a great writer at Kentuckian and. And his weird connection. His brother worked at the factory my mother ran the data center for.

[Mark Marin]

What was that big hit he had?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, he had. Well, Harbor Valley pta. He wrote Genie.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

But then he had one, a slow one.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, he wrote I love little old pickup trucks.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Slow moving trains and rain.

[Mark Marin]

Rain.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Great writer, great storyteller. Writer. He. No, I never met Tom in passing once.

[Mark Marin]

So you're growing up in Columbus by that point.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

And when do you start playing?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, two years old, I'm trying. I'm carrying a guitar from that my dad brings home from.

[Mark Marin]

Are they made in Korea?

[Dwight Yoakam]

No, no. But he ended up with it vis a vis. Somebody probably owed a gambling debt or whatever. You know, like one of those ones.

[Mark Marin]

With the painted on pick guard.

[Dwight Yoakam]

No, no, no, no. It was a real guitar. F hole, you know. You know, F hole.

[Mark Marin]

K. Like, my dad had a harmony with the F hole.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. Harmony. But K's movie slightly better than harmony.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

K guitar.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

So I had that. And all I wanted to do was, you know, emulate everything I was hearing and got a shot of me in my box set from years ago with my granny Earlene Tips holding the top of us because I could barely hold it. And I. Eventually, when I was about three or four years, I tripped and fell and crushed it. Broke it. So the next time that I actually get a real guitar and I really didn't play it. I was just banging around trying was. I was in third grade and all I wanted that I had, you know, pestered him that whole summer fall.

[Mark Marin]

Your dad.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Guitar for Christmas. Guitar.

[Mark Marin]

What'd you get?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Santa Claus. He pawned a shotgun. The only good gun he ever really had.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And bought me a guitar and. Because he ran a Texaco station at that point, but he had been a master mechanic training the army and. And.

[Mark Marin]

Big deal to let go of the shotgun.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Huge deal. Actually, as I looked back, it. It. It gets to me, you know, as a kid, you don't. Your. My mom would say to me 1. At one point when I was, you know, maybe, you know, bucking my dad or doing whatever I. She'd say, you know, she would bring that up to me, the shotgun, that you have a guitar only because your father, you know, wanted you as an adult. When I think about it, and my heart, you know. You know, because who he was and the kind of guy was, he was not, you know, he was a good guy.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Neither of my parents, thank God for me, were malicious.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I realized as an adult how lucky that part of my life was. They weren't. Weren't geniuses, weren't rocket scientists, but decent people. Really decent. And I really, really, really think, you know, fate.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

For delivering me there and not somewhere else. As I grew to know their people and their experiences, you know. You know, as a young adult, you start, you know, you're hearing stuff, you start to know.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And. And especially over the years. Yeah. Anyway.

[Mark Marin]

And the. Well, so that's a touching thing. He made that sacrifice.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, so anyway, eight years old. Well, I. Yeah. I haven't actually written about that.

[Mark Marin]

It seems like a natural country tag. My dad pawned a shotgun.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I never really literally did. I wrote something. The first thing I ever wrote when I was about 8 years old was called How Far Is Heaven? And the first Line. It was because we were watching every new evening, when we'd sit down to supper, Walter Cronkite would be on the living room, still doing the nightly news. And the first images of the Vietnam War were coming in on night. Rice paddies, helicopters and guys dying. And I wrote this song, a fictitious account, and I didn't really finish it. It was a verse and a bit of a chorus. It was called How Far is Heaven.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And it started with, my daddy got killed over in Vietnam, and here's just a few things that I don't know. So. Hillbilly waltz.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And so I began, and my father was a little disturbed. I would write something about a father. He'd send him. He said, what? What do you think? He wanted me to get killed. I didn't go. He was.

[Mark Marin]

He was a songwriter.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. But, you know, the concept of that was a little evasive for him to grasp at that point. Looking at me at 8.

[Mark Marin]

That's interesting.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Learning a few chords.

[Mark Marin]

What do you think that, you know, what music inspired you to write that?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, the hillbilly stuff that I grew up hearing. And on the weekend.

[Mark Marin]

A lot of dead people in hillbilly stuff.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah, exactly. Darkness in the hollers down there. But. But when we crossed one of the covers that Billy Strings did, I think with Stepdad was Stone Walls and Steel Bars and you on My Mind. It's on that album that they did together. And the first time I ever heard that was Keith Whitley singing. It was Ralph Stanley and his band. He and Ricky Skaggs were young teenage members of the Ralph Stanley Clinch Mountain Boys. And it's a haunted, you know, song, but a guy in prison.

[Mark Marin]

Anyway, it's interesting that you can. If you just. It might change a tone or a tempo. Sometimes the difference between haunting and upbeat is just as well.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And in bluegrass music, you have both going on simultaneously. Often you'll have something, a very dark subject matter with an up tempo, you know, go down. You. Knoxville girl. Where a guy murders this woman.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because she's, you know, been no good to him or something, you know, treated him badly or betrayed him. And it's up tempo. Go down, go down. You knock the girl down. It's like they murders her. It's like kind of a happy dance tune, you know, till. Till you start listening to what goes on.

[Mark Marin]

Yeah. He's like, oh, it's not. So.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You killed that woman, didn't you? It's like down by the banks of the Ohio is a famous folk, you know.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I asked my love to take a walk to take a walk Just a little walk down by the. Where the waters flow down by the banks of the Ohio did he kill her? And he. Yeah, he kills her dead. Kills her deader than dead, actually. But anyway, so there's this. It's Irish, Scottish, Welsh, folk music. This is where it's handed down from. And it's all there.

[Mark Marin]

It's like that.

[Unnamed Guest]

The.

[Mark Marin]

The band's version of Long Black Veil.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Exactly.

[Mark Marin]

Kills me, man.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh, it kills. Well, that's Lavon bringing that stuff to the band, you know, I mean, that you point to one of the great, you know, example. Classic examples of that that, you know, that. I guess it's cathartic, you know, it's. It's.

[Mark Marin]

You.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You. You get the catharsis of this out.

[Mark Marin]

Well, it's interesting that it's because the weight of it, you know, like when you think about Irish music or Celtic music, that the weight of history that Ireland has had to bear is not dissimilar to Kentucky the way you're describing it.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, yeah, they're under the boot heel, right. And they had the Buck Revolt finally, you know, the south becomes a republic. The north is still, you know, up until recent history.

[Mark Marin]

So when do you start to find your voice on the guitar?

[Dwight Yoakam]

At eight, you know, but it was. It was alone in my, you know, my bedroom. And people like at junior high, high school didn't know. I. I was not. I played drums.

[Mark Marin]

What are you listening to, though? Like you.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I'm listening to my. My dad had a great album by Stonewall Jackson. And he had. He bought it for my mom after an argument because it had a hit song called Don't Be Angry With Me, Darling. Anyway. And he gave it to her as an apology. Yeah. Because. And that's the kind of guy. He came in, he's like, I got you something in her album. And it had Stonewall's hit Don't Be Angry With Me Darling, if I fail to understand.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Anyway, I had this album.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I started listening to it. There's a great George Jones song on an album called Life to Go.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And Stonewall, that was the only version I knew of it. I didn't know that George wrote it till later when I was looking at writing credits. Now, I'll get back to Mike Nesmith in a moment. I know that's where we'll get to California eventually. What? Nesmith will bring us to that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But Stonewall Jackson, his hit.

[Mark Marin]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Life To Go, which is not unlike what we were talking about, you know, the darkness of songs and the hillbilly culture. George Jones wrote, and it goes, I've got a sad, sad story, friends, that I don't like to tell. But he's going to tell you anyway. Sure. I had a wife and family. I mean, it's like, what a way to start. I wrote one years ago. Good setup, sort of, that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

About a guy who goes, you'll be sorry you asked me the reason. It's like the whole song is my. The voice singing it, telling the guy.

[Mark Marin]

But that was sourced in a tradition.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Exactly.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

So he says, I've got a sad, sad story, friends that I don't like to tell. I had a wife and family when they locked me in the cell. I've been in here 18 years. A long time. Long, long time. I know. But time don't mean a thing to me because I got life to go. He tells a story about. I went out one night where the lights were bright Just to see what I could see I met up with an old friend who thought the world of me Bought me drinks and he took me to every honky tonk in.

[Mark Marin]

Town Sounds like a shitty friend already.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But then words were said now he's dead I just had to bring him down. Killed the guy that was buying the drinks.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Anyway, so really poignant now I've gone. Dragged you into that deep part of that. So I gotta fit with the thing that got to me. Even at 9, 10, 11 years old, listening to that album, I was fascinated with it.

[Mark Marin]

There's a weight to it.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. Well, the verse that got me was. He said I had a wife and family when they locked me in the cell But I'll be here in this prison now Till my body's just a shell and I bet that little girl of mine doesn't realize or know that her Daddy's been here 18 years and still got life to go. Because the loss, you know, when that happens, when somebody gets incarcerated and when somebody goes away to deep time. You know, the fam. The ones, the innocents that are left behind and awake.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You don't think about that too much. Merle Haggard song I've talked about over the years, often, that taught me more about songwriting as a young adult. I stared at the record when I heard the lyric. It has one verse. It's called Holding Things Together. It starts with a chorus.

[Mark Marin]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Holding things together Ain't no easy thing to do when it comes to raising children Is a job meant for two and perspective is the wife has left the family, not the other way around. Usually the husband has left, but he's left there with the kids, alone. And he goes, but, Alice, please believe me, I can't go on and on holding things together with you gone. He goes, but the verse. The only verse in the song is, today was Angie's birthday and it must have slipped your mind. I tried twice to call you with no answer either time. But the postman brought a package I mailed some days ago. I signed it Love for Mama, so Angie wouldn't know.

[Unnamed Guest]

You.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Don't get any more poignant than that. This is a dad that has to cover for the mom that's left. You know the old blues song, Motherless Child?

[Mark Marin]

Sure.

[Dwight Yoakam]

There's nothing worse.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because I watch. You know, I've got a little guy in this album.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Brighter Days. He's an outgrowth.

[Mark Marin]

He's. He sings at the end of one of them, right?

[Dwight Yoakam]

He does, yeah. He comes in because he forced me to write this. Didn't force me.

[Unnamed Guest]

He.

[Dwight Yoakam]

He prompted my writing. The song.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

Which one was it?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Brighter Days, the title track.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

As I looked at him, and we were in the height of. At that point, two years into Covid. He's about two years old. He was born in 2020. And what a strange experience, you know, like my living, my life. Reverse. Anyway, it's like I thought that possibility for me.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You were out. Yeah. Well, I didn't think. And I'd always thought I would have children, you know, and you look around one day, John Lynn's famous quote, life's what goes on while you're making other plans.

[Unnamed Guest]

Right.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You know, and there he was. And there he is, thanks to my beautiful wife Emily, who came into my life, you know, some years before we had planned on. We'd decide to get married. And it. Just. As fate would have it, in 2019, which is. We're gonna make good on this promise. We're getting married.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And then he showed up. We realized just before we were married, she was pregnant with him.

[Mark Marin]

And you're no youngster.

[Dwight Yoakam]

No. You know, you're like, well, I'm spry.

[Mark Marin]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And you know what? He makes me young.

[Mark Marin]

Now, I'm sure.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I now feel a certain. And it's not a condescending.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Tone to this day, but I feel a sadness for especially guys.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because women have a natural maternal instinct that they, you know, kind of sense. Sure. Being a mother is part of their biology.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

We don't. You know, it's not our nature. We just. Our nature Is to try and not get trapped. Another great song Merle wrote Merle Haggard. This is California country music in capital letters was called the running kind. And I was born the running kind with leaving always on my mind yeah, Home was never home for me at any time. He said every front door left me hoping that I'd find a back door open.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because there just had to be an exit for the running kind. That's kind of the summation. Especially young guys, you know, 19, 20 type of guy.

[Mark Marin]

Yes.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I mean, yeah, they're. But I think it's more common for men to, you know, the hunter gather the nature of.

[Mark Marin]

Or also just, you know, kind of like a selfish up.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yes. The selfishness of men, you know. Sure we are.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I never thought that way till I had my own little guy. And I'm like, you know, a child in my world. I went, wow, you know, I miss this for other people.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Friends.

[Mark Marin]

Good for you.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Friends that I. No, no, no. I mean. I mean, you know, it's a weird emotion.

[Mark Marin]

No, I think it's good.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I mean, I miss it for other friends.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

Other. Other guys, you know. You know, I don't. I. I've been married twice. I didn't have kids. I used to do a joke about it takes special kind of asshole to have two wives and no kids. I think my second wife put it like this. You think I'm bringing children into this?

[Dwight Yoakam]

I had. Yeah. I mean, it's like that.

[Mark Marin]

Well, that's my country song.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And the funny thing there, you think I'm bringing kids into this. Oh, man. Anyway, so.

[Mark Marin]

But no, but I see guys.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

Who have kids and definitely change them. It opens up something in you.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. It talks about the glory and the happiness and the fulfillment, but they also don't talk about the struggle for parents.

[Mark Marin]

Well, the panic at me, like, you know, I think that's one of the reasons I didn't have them. Like, I used to say, like, you know, I don't have kids. And if I think about having a kid right now, my thought is, like, is he okay? Is he still breathing? Did you check on the kids? What's going on?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, my mother used to tell a story about this old woman, lived in this holler. She said they came by her house, Ms. Collins. She said, Ms. Collins, why are you crying? She's on the porch. She said, oh, I was just thinking. She goes, well, what were you thinking about? Made you cry?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

She goes, oh, I was just thinking, I don't have any children, but if I was Ever to have had a child.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And something happened to that child. Oh, something could have happened to that child. And I'd have been just what if they'd have died? And what you're going to. It's this whole made up scenario with the story goes on and on.

[Mark Marin]

She's miserable.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. Made herself just a thought of. And it is. I've never been as frightened in my life as when in the four years he's been led the few moments of sheer terror that I thought he was hurt. I've never felt fear like I've felt for myself or anybody, a family member, but never as severe as that. So in any event, I. Yeah, I very fortunately have had this. And the album was an outgrowth of that day. I was sitting and reading a book and this. And you know, one of the rooms in the house that I have a guitar sitting in. And he came in and he has a little Telecaster ukulele dragged around.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because he went, he says, weird experience. He. I was back out toward the end of 2020 doing a couple of things. In 2021, I was out doing shows and he was able to, you know, he went out and would probably went to 60 shows by the time he was 2 years old. Stopped because it got harder as he got a little older. But he would have this little Telecaster ukulele. So he had that on. He goes, dad. He was talking a bit. He's play. He was like pointing my guitar. He's like, ah, come on, come on, play. And I thought, oh, okay, I'm gonna stop what I'm doing. So I stopped. I was looking and just his excitement about it, you know, touched me and I grabbed. It started, what do you want to sing? What do you want? And he. And he would kind of intone stuff that I, you know, he'd heard me sing or whatever.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I looked at him and just began. I said, well, let's. Let's write something. Let's make something up.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I started singing that first verse like, what are we going to do? Looking at him. Just the joy of him, his expression, his excitement of the smallest thing of just me picking up that guitar, stopping what I was doing to focus on him, brought such excitement to his eyes. And he started laughing. And I said, okay, well, the brightness of that moment because in 2022 we were all still fumbling around with being shut down. Opened up, shut down. Couldn't go to the grocery store without a three masks on. And anyway. And I went, well, there's brightness And I was just like, brighter days are up ahead. Because early on he. I was getting him just when he was an infant. Yeah, say something to me. And I got him on video going, tell daddy you love him. He made the sound of just mimicking me and I, you know, kept that clip like you said I love you to me, you know, projecting onto this two month old, three month old. But I looked at him and went brighter days or up at brighter days. That's what you said the first time you ever spoke to me. Just that you know, the license. And so he was howling back and forth to me with this, you know, bang around. And so then I finished that song and I gave him a co writer credit on it. But I do control the publishing. I had to let him know that.

[Mark Marin]

Well, I'll tell you this record like, you know, I hadn't heard a record of yours in a long time. You haven't made one in a long time. But I put this thing on and I'm like, holy fuck. He means business.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh well, thank you.

[Mark Marin]

I mean every song is great song.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Holy fuck. Could go the other way too.

[Mark Marin]

Oh no.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But thank you.

[Mark Marin]

Every fucking song lands. And the sound.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, some of it came out of this channel of the Bakersfield beat on the Sirius XM because that's where I met Post in 2018. He came in. I didn't know of him. Only through Post Malone. Yeah, Post Malone, yeah. And he had just had the. He had White Iverson had happened and he had the first Commerce, the big, you know, Republic record that he put out. And he was between that and the next one.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I said, I know I haven't heard. And they said, have you heard that he's got you on all of his playlists? And I didn't know that. I looked into. He's raised in Dallas, right. He's a kid, you know.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Taken to Texas and he came on the show and he's noodling around with one of my guitars at the Sirius station, you know, with the studio.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And before we start and I'm like watching him, I said, what are you playing? Because I could tell it was a finger pick. Bob Dylan. He started don't think twice.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I said, ho, ho ho. I said, you. And Charlie Crockett later told me, you.

[Mark Marin]

Know the country guy.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Charlie said, yeah. I first heard of my. Went up to Dallas, he's a teenager that his dad was dropping off at bars. He said, there's this guy Austin Post was his name is given name. And he said and he's sitting in clubs. His dad drops him off, and he sits and does Dylan songs.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And that's. I said, no, no, you're playing that first. So that folks know, you know, whether it's the band's long black veil or whatever, that you really. The earnestness of his love of music.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Independent of style. Because at that point, he was known for the kind of pseudo rap, that urban thing, and that launched him. And I knew he had enormous love for country music. He wanted to do Thousand Miles From Nowhere, my song, and we did it that night. And then I had him do Haggard stuff with me. And it's on video. If you. If you. If you. So this is what.

[Mark Marin]

This inspired you to do the record?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, it led to my doing what I did with him on the record, which, you know, bang, bang, boom, boom.

[Mark Marin]

Right.

[Dwight Yoakam]

A track on there.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I don't know how to say goodbye because I had finished the album, had mixed it two weeks later. They called, said post because they had asked me about doing Stagecoach with him.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because I'm the night. I was there the night before, doing my own show. And they said, post is there. The next. Wants you to sit in, if you would. I said, sure. He said, he's doing this, like a covers album. Country music, which was not correct, you know, became the album that he's put out now. F1 trillion.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But they said, but he wants to sing on your record. I said, I just finished it. It's like, mixed, done.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I said, God, why didn't somebody tell me three months ago I could. And I got through a couple stop lights and said, you know, my wife was with me, a car, Emily. I said I was going to write something for us because I know he likes traditional country music. So I'm going to write a shuffle. Because we had decided we would do. That's what the calls back and forth were about. My manager saying, they want to know which. So I said, well, I already did Thousand Miles with Carrie Underwood at CMA Fest. And.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And we did guitars. She and I did that there Fast as you with Keith Urban at Stagecoach. And I said, I sound a. I said, maybe little way. And he'd call back and say, yeah, a little ways. He loves little ways. So I went. He loved that. I said, I'm gonna write one for him just for he. And I do. And so I did this in that vein of that moment in my career. The. The second. That came off the second album, Hillbilly Deluxe.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I have, you know, the COVID Of Chris Hillman on this record, outgrowth of doing the radio shows with him and then him launching his own show on our channel. And then Jeffrey Steele, who was a California native and a country musician in the late 80s, early 90s with his band Boy Howdy. That came in the next wave after my band and I broke in the mid-80s out of the cow punk scene, you know, with Lone justice, you know, the Los Lobos. Well, the precedent groups were the Blasters. Yeah, Los Lobos.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

They were on Slash.

[Mark Marin]

Right.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And that whole X, John Doe and Xine and the Knitters, the offshoot of that, because the cow punk, the punk rockers. Which California, every decade or so has rock and rollers who decide they want to explore the country roots of California.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And that is Merle Hagen, Buck Owens. Well, they go back to that. But preceding that, which is one of the slug lines of the channel, is the Dust bowl to the Hollywood Bowl. All points between and beyond.

[Mark Marin]

Right.

[Dwight Yoakam]

From Buck Owens to the Byrdes at all points between and beyond. Because one begats, begets, begats. Right. And that's that way in history. You know, it's throughout. You know, it's social, cultural history. But it's the Tom Joad road. The Grapes Are Wrath.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Delivers. Really. What gives you Fleetwood Mac and the pop incarnation of the Eagles in the 70s? California. The California sound that took over the airways.

[Mark Marin]

Sure.

[Dwight Yoakam]

From the early 70s through the late 70s. Right.

[Mark Marin]

So. But you come up listening to Merle, listening to Buck Owens.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. Early. Because they were distant figures in California. And I didn't realize till I became a young adult that disparate. You had Nashville.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But you had this outpost, the Bakersfield sound. The Bakersfield beat came out of actually Hollywood.

[Mark Marin]

I think credence even comes from it.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, the East Bay.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oakland. The working class side of the bay. Right. The blue collar John, top forward. He talks about that he. He'd never been to Lodi and he wrote Lodi. Yeah, he said never been. But you do. You.

[Mark Marin]

You went to Nashville briefly.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah, well, you know, I went. Because that's you. You went there.

[Mark Marin]

You had a band together.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I didn't have a band at that point. I had a rockabilly band out of high school. What goes back to, you know, nobody knew.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I was at home in my room and in church. Acapella. Church. Acapella. Singing in church. We didn't. Church of Christ was. I was raised in. And the. The variation of the church that I was in didn't believe in the first century. They used Any instrumentation in worship. So we had a pitch pipe and we sang Acapella. So I came out of that culture. So I was singing there as a child all the way through.

[Mark Marin]

Right.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And it's hillbilly hymn tradition.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Which is different than deep Southern gospel, which is rooted in African American culture, you know, and the blues influence of that. This is Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Presbyterian hymns.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Like Old Rugged Cross, you know, in the Garden. Famous hymn, the Hillbilly Hymns. But my schoolmates, my peers, didn't know anything about this. They didn't know I could sing at all.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I heard some band members, stage band members, trying to get ready for a variety show that I was hosting. Singing. Trying to do some incarnation of Shanana.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

73. Because they had happened at Woodstock. Yeah, right.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Shanahana had taken this throwback to the 50s. There was a moment, you know, and the movie came out, American Graffiti.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

That same summer. And sure, I heard them trying to do something. I went in and went, what are you guys doing? And I said, well, you know, you're doing, like a Greaser thing. You know, band. So I went, well, you mean like this? I picked up the guitar. They didn't know I played. They know I played drums. And I started singing Everly's to them. And they were like, what?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

So I began. Became the front guy. And I was hosting that, you know, that high school variety show that year with another guy because I was in the theater department. And I ended up doing it for the first time my junior year. And it became a rage. You know, this. You know, the 50s band. Yeah. It was a. It was a weird kind of hybrid of that because I didn't gas my hair back.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I had hair still there. My bangs hang. But all the other guys look like.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You know Lords of Flatbush? The movie that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You know, Henry Winkler and Sylvester Stallone.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Great film.

[Mark Marin]

I rewatched it.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's an odd movie.

[Dwight Yoakam]

It's a very odd movie. The greatest scene ever in there is where Stallone's at the jewelry store where the girlfriend brought him the ring that he could. And he goes, dad, won't you wait outside?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

If you ever.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah, grab the gig. You see that girl outside? He makes her go out of the jewelry. You see her stand out there. She chewing gum and kind of. He goes, if you ever see that girl come in the store again, you ever show her a ring, there's that much money, I will come back here. Anyway, if nothing else, that scene is great. There's a Humanness to that.

[Mark Marin]

Oh, yeah. It's a real gritty movie.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, the humility of what he had. Just like, he couldn't buy that ring.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

For her. Even if he wanted to.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And he, you know, this jeweler, you know, trading her up, you know. You know, getting her in.

[Mark Marin]

You like all the heartbreak stuff.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, you know, just the moment of, you know. Yeah. So that was going on that whole period, and I, you know, was now decided. I got this taste of response that was strong and positive.

[Mark Marin]

You've done some theater, though, too.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah, yeah. I'd been. Not very sophisticated stuff, but just, you know, on stage and acting and. But this was the first love, you know, the thing that I'd done, you know, kind of kept hidden.

[Mark Marin]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You know, at home. And I broke up with the guitar and we started playing gigs, and there were sock hops going on again because American Graffiti and all that stuff I get out of high school. Nothing going on. The country rock thing had taken hold by this point. The Eagles and all. So I was really 72. 72, 3, 4. Right, right. Because they get out in 74. So the.

[Mark Marin]

The 60s. So the birds are done.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah, that's done. But it's the precedent. Sure. And the Burritos version of this. They're the most famous band that nobody ever heard. I. I knew the Eagles were out there. And Credence. John Fogerty, as. Through junior high in high school.

[Mark Marin]

What a band.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh, he was my. My handhold that I could have a conversation with a peer. That and Led Zeppelin. So all that. But Creed and John Fogarty, because you're at that point of transition. Cause I have an older sibling. I'm the oldest of three, so I didn't have a. Coaching me through. And I had an access point to Fogarty, ironically, because looking out my back door where he's just listening to Buck Owens, you know. Dude, dude, dude. Looking out my back door. And I knew there was something special and unique and American about Fogarty and what he was doing, you know, in Credence. And they became, you know, without a plan or design. The soundtrack, if you will. The backdrop sound audio soundtrack to the Vietnam War in a lot of weird ways. Run through the jungle Fortunate son. You know, all those things that he was writing.

[Mark Marin]

I just watched that DVD of them live at Albert Hall. Oh, they were just a fog. How good a machine, dude.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh, how good.

[Mark Marin]

It was like, almost like they. They didn't fucking even care about the audience.

[Dwight Yoakam]

No, they were.

[Mark Marin]

You know, he was right there on.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Top of the drummer Music.

[Mark Marin]

Pure music.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Pure music. Fogerty. I mean, so I was. I was thrilled, you know, that. But I didn't know how to put an electric band together at that, you know, So I. So it was Emmy's record, that first record.

[Mark Marin]

Were you, like. Were you kidding?

[Dwight Yoakam]

And Linda. Linda. Those first three. Linda. Ron set out.

[Mark Marin]

Sure, sure.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You know, because she was doing Silver Threads and. But Emmy. Because by then I was. I was just 75. College, you know, so I was at Ohio State, and I was, you know.

[Mark Marin]

So everything's coming into you, but you're not playing country.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I go to Nashville because I'm figuring that's the act. I had friends there that I could go down there and kind of hang with. And I auditioned to the Opera Land park, because I thought we. I don't know. Nobody's got a road map. How do you. My parents didn't know. They just thought, well, you better go to college, get something to fall back on. Because we. Nobody knew. Show business is so foreign.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, sure.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Everybody, even. I'm sure your family.

[Mark Marin]

Well, they never wanted you to sign. They don't want you to go that.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Way if they don't have family in it.

[Mark Marin]

They're worried.

[Dwight Yoakam]

No, they are.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

So I go to Nashville and spin my wheels there briefly.

[Mark Marin]

And was there something there that disillusioned you?

[Dwight Yoakam]

No, I just. They offered me an alt slot in the park because they had performers throughout the Opryland park through the summer.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I passed the first audition, and I hung around a couple of weeks, went back and did another, and then went back home and back to Ohio. And they called, said, well, you have an alternative, so if you just want to come and hang out.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

In the meantime, my guitar player, guy named Billy Elves. Yeah. Who'd been in that rockabilly band with me.

[Unnamed Guest]

Right.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Said he had relatives in California. He was coming out here. I didn't realize he was just coming to visit. His intent wasn't to stay. He said, you're going with me, right? You're coming. I'm taking you. You're going.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because he. He had the wherewithal to sense I needed some prodding. And so I sold my 68 Impal to my brother.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

For 150 bucks.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And gotten his 74 Volkswagen Beetle. And we took off.

[Mark Marin]

All downsizing.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. Well, I gotten that with him and didn't even own a car. We. And we drove and ended up in Long Beach, California. And he had family in Tustin, down Orange County. And I said, well, look, man, we've come this far. Let's find someplace either at the beach or in Hollywood.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And we started in Santa Monica and couldn't afford anything until we got to Long Beach.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

It was something we could probably make ends meet to afford. We ended up there. He stayed till just like 4th of July. This was in the spring, like early March. And he left.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I planted my flag and stayed, you know, I got a job, I rode a bus and got a job in the loading dock at Bullocks Lakewood, an old department store. And I stayed, you know, and I managed to scrape money together, get a car, a little Chevy Vega and start driving up to the Palomino at night, the club in the Valley. And they had a hoot night up there every Thursday night. And I'd go up there and watch.

[Mark Marin]

And who was around.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. And sit in and started like minded musicians. Well, I met a guy named Boo Bernstein who became an executive at Capitol Records later, but he was a steel guitar player. Just various guys. And you start to try to put a band together. And I finally did through a guy from Tulsa, Oklahoma named Stuart Deming. I remember these names. Yeah, this guy and he knew a drummer named Richard Coffey. And Richard believed in me enough. He started playing with me in a place called the Corral. Out here in Lakeview Terrace. Yeah, Right up the road here from where you are in Glendale.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Where Foothill and Osborne meet.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh yeah, right. Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

It's new. It's now no longer there. It's gone. There's like a civic center, a library or something for kids.

[Mark Marin]

So you're tapping into what is country here.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah, it's always been. It's been here since the Tom Joad Road, the, you know, the Dust bowl they brought with them the Okies, the Archies in the Texas.

[Mark Marin]

Right. But what's going on in.

[Dwight Yoakam]

In 70s 1978. 70. Yeah. All the punk scenes go. Because LA punk happens really in 79 with X. Yeah. But it's going on. But I'm suited to do what I do. I'm, you know, I'm doing Bill Monroe and Merle Haggard.

[Mark Marin]

You got a mandolin player?

[Dwight Yoakam]

No, but I've got just hillbilly me on the guitar and guitars, lead guitarist, bass and drums and were playing. I couldn't, I look back and I thought, well, I wasn't good enough to play the Thursday, Friday, Saturday slot.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

At this late at the Corral. But I was good enough to do the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So I'm doing the off nights.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I was driving air Freight in the daytime, Go out there at night and start at 9 and playing covers. 9 till 2. But my covers were hardcore country.

[Unnamed Guest]

Right.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I mean, and it's right ahead of the urban. The whole urban cowboy thing had happened that year. I think when it came out. Or 79. It came out still.

[Mark Marin]

You're just playing for whatever you can scrape up the country.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I wouldn't do the top 40 version of country. I wasn't doing Looking for Love, Urban Cowboys. I was doing Haggard, George Jones, you know, all the stuff that would. You know.

[Mark Marin]

Sure.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But people wanted to dance to it and they liked it. And I spent a year in there. A solid year off notes.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Five sets a night. And, you know, you. It grows you up. I met other musicians and was there the night that John Lennon was killed. I remember Delaney Bramlett.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Who? One of the great musicians in California ever came out of the South. He and Leon Russell formed the band for Shindig.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I didn't realize at the time, but he came in wrecked because he knew John Lennon right. That night. So that's what I'm doing that year. And I'm getting my sea legs and meeting more musicians. And a guy, Boo Bernstein said, I'm playing with this guy. You got to come meet him over the West Valley. He's playing at this place called Wild Bill's Roundup.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I go over in Chatsworth. Right?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And sit in this night. And it's this guitar player named Pete Anderson.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And he heard me sing this Merle Haggard song. And we. I said, well, I do it name. And we did two or three songs. He starts telling me he's curious about me.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And he's from Detroit. And it leads to us developing a musical friendship and him saying, what are you doing by this point? Through the drummer from Tulsa.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

He said, you gotta meet a guy who's a staff engineer at United Western. And he meets me through Richard and says, thank you, Richard. This guy I could cut saw. He had spec time. He was a house engineer at United Western, which is the old Western recorders on Sunset Boulevard that Frank Sinatra built with Built Putnam, who had a United Sound. Yuri. Speakers in the studios. One of the big monitors.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

The blue foam on the horn. Yuri. You know, United. So United Western Studios. I had no idea the history of this till later that I was in there. And he said, well, we'll trade. If I can get you a deal, we'll trade publishing. And I was green enough to not realize, you know. You know, you're. Because been Writing these songs for years that I'd been here writing about my family and, you know, my life.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Before California.

[Mark Marin]

Sure.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And he said, I can, you know, cut sides on you. So after I get off at work at night, he would have spec time there and I'd go in and we would cut. And the band he put together because he knew he had access to the cats in town.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And it's the end of the Wrecking Crew.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yes.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You know, late.

[Mark Marin]

Sure.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But this point it's probably 81, but.

[Mark Marin]

Okay.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But the guys that I cut the demos that are on my best. There's a new series of albums that came out on Warner the first part of the year. The first three albums.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And there's other stuff that came out and they're these demos. And the band that did the demos consisted of Glenn D. Harden on piano, who was in Elvis's band, David Mansfield's plan fiddle, David Mansfield's mandolin fiddle player. I mean, Prodigy was on Rolling Thunder Review with Bob Dylan, like 17 years old out tour. He had Jerry McGee on guitar, who had been part of the Wrecking Crew. Going back to the Monkeys. And I'll get back to Nesmith and I. Yeah. And our experience together. But Nesmith is doing country rock before there's a term for it in the Monkeys. 66, that first album. I'm a kid who sees this. You know, I got the Beatles by that point. But, you know, still not as fully as that explosion color on a console TV. Right. In the fall of 66, into everybody's living room. It's this fictitious band, but there's a real musician, Mike Nesmith in this band who writes Linda Ronstadt's first radio hit was the Stone Ponies. You and I traveled to the beat of a different drum. Mike Nesmith write that Stone Ponies. That was his song.

[Mark Marin]

Really?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. And. And so they're letting Mike have us two songs on each Monkees album.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

That he gets to sing and produce and write. And so I hear on the first Monkees album, I hear not knowing. I'm hearing Carole King co write with Mike Nesmith. I'm hearing the Boyce and Hart write inverted versions of Paperback Writer with Last Randa Clarksville, which turns out being hillbilly fied. So that's going on. And Nesmith was bringing the Texas sound out to the Monkeys.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

He said they didn't want to hear any hillbilly they want to hear from. He said, but you can do it. Just don't call it that. But I point to. On the channel and Chris Hillman and I talk about this a lot. That it really begins country rock with First National Band. No, with Rick Nelson and the Ozzie and Harriet Show. And Rick Nelson. Ricky Nelson.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Becomes 16 years old and Ozzy decides I'm going to let him do his music on the show.

[Mark Marin]

Right.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And he becomes the heartthrob that.

[Mark Marin]

What was the hit?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, the first hits. Hello, Mary Lou.

[Unnamed Guest]

Well, hello.

[Dwight Yoakam]

That's country rock.

[Mark Marin]

But that's really a Leuven brother Elverly Brothers.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, but. But it's country rock. When you listen and listen to. Listened to him play Young World and the guitar sound, the tonality of that and then what he did, it's not Memphis rockabilly.

[Mark Marin]

Right.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You know, Ozzy let Ricky pick most of that material. People are unaware of that. Rick Nelson picked his own material.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And my argument is that he's one of the greatest singers in rock music because he didn't think he could sing.

[Mark Marin]

So this moves through, you know, so your roots come up through. Eventually it gets. Because that's Pre Birds.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh, yeah. So.

[Mark Marin]

And that Chris Hill and I talked about it.

[Dwight Yoakam]

He said. Yes, you are right. Rick Nelson.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Is the. Is the radar return of what's going to come from the horizon. Sure.

[Mark Marin]

But in terms of like where your direct descended from like the.

[Dwight Yoakam]

The late Birds. That Sweetheart of the Rodeo album.

[Mark Marin]

Sure. And then. But then those Mike Nesmith records.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Absolutely. Joanne Silver Moon. Those things I heard on the radio.

[Mark Marin]

No one really knows about that. Those albums.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I know the first.

[Mark Marin]

It's the first national band.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Right. Brilliant.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And he has Red Rhodes in that band.

[Mark Marin]

There's like what, three or four records.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. And. And. But her name was Joanne and she lived in a meadow by April.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And he wrote that. And he had Standing in the Lonely Light of the Silver Moon.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

These hillbilly things. This country rock. First National Bandstown and.

[Mark Marin]

But like when you're on AM radio, when you're living here though. So when you start really working, when you get out of the country rooms. Are you playing with Les Love?

[Dwight Yoakam]

A guy comes out and hears me because Pete and I had put another incarnation of a band together and we started playing the bars. We got fired more. We got as much as we got hired.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because they wanted to hear urban cowboy, top 40 country. And I wasn't doing that. Wasn't suited to do it. Wasn't doing it. And we were really by that point doing electric bluegrass. I was doing. You know, I would start each show with Hear Me Calling Bill Monroe. TWEETHEART of mine. Pete knew a fiddle player named Brantley Kearns, who was a great harmony singer and fiddle player. I knew the drummer from the King Bees named Jeff Donovan, who was a swinginess guy. The best wrist rib shot action I've ever heard. I said, I got this drummer man, I'd like to get him to play drum. And Pete said, okay. And I got the bass players, guy named JD Foster. So we put it together between the two of us.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And we started playing, you know, these clubs. We started, you know, hiring, and we would work. They would all say they wanted to hear hardcore country music until they got a dose of me for a weekend or two. It's like that stuff you're doing that hard, country music. We're thinking we might need something softer than that because I was doing George Jones, you know. Yeah. And we were doing it with a passion and with a rave up, you know, like I said, if you took late 30s Bill Monroe or Jimmy Martin, you talked about Detroit. He. Jimmy Martin broke out of Two Wheeling, West Virginia, WWE and in Detroit radio.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

He went up to the big hillbilly station in Detroit and he had massive success up there on that radio station.

[Mark Marin]

So you're blasting the country.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. And a guy named Bill Bentley comes out and sees we meet in a driveway where I lived in a garage apartment, and we're standing in the driveway talking. He goes, well, what do you do? I said, well, I'm, you know, singer, song around, trying to. And he gets curious because he's a. He's a writer for the LA Weekly.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I didn't know. Yeah, Meet him in the driveway.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

We just start shooting the. And he says. He says, what do you. I said, well, I'm doing this. I said, well, I'm playing the Palomino if you're interested, you know, come out. I gave him some tickets, you know, the Palomino. And he comes out and sees me and he's booking nights at the club Lingerie.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

In addition to being a writer for the Weekly and a head publicist over at Slash Records.

[Mark Marin]

Okay.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because they have Los Lobos. So that's just signed the blast.

[Mark Marin]

The Americana thing.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. Before there's a term. Right. And he drags Dave Alvin out to see me at the Palomino.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And Dave Alvin said, he walked in and looked at Bill Bentley and went, this guy's. This kid's got limousines in his future. And Dave took me under his wing and.

[Mark Marin]

Great guy.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. He allowed us to go to New York and open for The Blasters. He let us go to Houston, Texas and Austin, and that's actually where I got signed by Warner. The folks out of Nashville came there, saw me open for the Blasters in Austin and signed us. But Bill Bentley championed me. Wrote a gatefold piece in the fall of 84 on that album in the LA weekly that helped launch me to the Sun Times, the East Village. I then wrote, picked up that lp, the six song version, the independent record. And that led to my being signed to Warner. But in the middle of all that, the scene had started happening, the cow punk scene with the Knitters, the offshoot of the X. But. Yeah, but Maria McKee and Justice. Yeah. And it was a Los Crusados, which had been the plugs as a punk band. All these bands that were happening and we were on the bill with. Was rank and file around Rank and file, that's who. Yeah, Tony and Chip. The deals become rank and file. So that's going on.

[Mark Marin]

We're.

[Dwight Yoakam]

We're sharing bills with all those bands. You know, I'm this hillbilly thing, cowboy hat, me and them, you know. And it was this moment. In fact, Michael Gilmore wrote about it in. In. I think he wrote a piece in the Herald examiner about it. And then Todd Everett wrote about it.

[Mark Marin]

But what's interesting is that like out of the. Alejandro Escovedo, he. You know, he's in Austin, so he's. He still. He wrote, you know, that record of his Gravity.

[Dwight Yoakam]

No.

[Mark Marin]

Oh, my God. It's one of the great records. But nonetheless, somehow or another, what's interesting about your career is that you're playing straight up fucking balls of the wall country. And at that time, country's not really going in that direction.

[Dwight Yoakam]

No.

[Mark Marin]

And then somehow or another, you. You sort of. There was a couple of guys, the old timers, that were kind of like George Strait and who were bringing it back.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, Ricky Skagg. Ricky Skagg, a fellow Kentucky. And it had had huge commercial success. In 84, he had come out of the hot band, Emmy Lou's band.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And he went back to Nashville.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And he launches when it has a massive gold album with. And I think it's 84. Yeah, 84 and 85. Those first two albums were Ricky and then George had come out from Texas in 83. 83 at George Strait.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And another guy that happens in that moment, Neo traditionalism, John Anderson. But it doesn't really, you know, have that moment until 86 with myself and then Steve Earle. Right. But Guitar Town, he did Guitar Town on the Heels of Guitars, Cadillacs have been out.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

As an indie record.

[Mark Marin]

Right.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And then we get signed and then Steve puts his out.

[Mark Marin]

But you have like solid country hits on all three records.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, yeah, it starts. Yeah, that begins. And that separated me, you know, again then from the remnants of the scene here, because it took me in a different path. Funny enough, I was played on MTV until I had a country hit and they didn't want anything to do because I had a commercial country hit and they didn't want. They segregated us, you know, back out to and. But VH1 still played me. And I'll tell you who played me all the way through. Was much music in Toronto.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

They never quit. I would be played right in rotation with U2, you know, or whatever. They didn't.

[Mark Marin]

You know, you had this whole style going and.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah, there was a thing. California thing, you know, that we were doing it, I guess.

[Mark Marin]

But it became like you. I mean, you're like. At this point, though, you're established country.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

So we get here now to, you know, Hillman's cut song on your new record. And you also did the traditional. Which one did you do on this?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, we. We covered the old Carter Family.

[Mark Marin]

Yeah, the Carter Family.

[Dwight Yoakam]

They're literally. They're from 30 miles from where I was born. Pipewell, Kentucky.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Just on the other side of the Virginia line. Clinch Mountain, Sunnyside, which people will know most famously used by the Coen brothers in Brother Roarta. As the Soggy Bottom Boys were going into that radio station to try and get some money cutting a record. Old timey music. A flatbed truck goes by advertising for the new the Governor and it's run. And they're doing the Carter Family, Sunnyside. Keep on the Sunny side. Always on. And I used it in my residency show in 2019. It's all ties to the album Pre Covid. And in the first two months of 2020, as we do the residency for a second time, we're supposed to do it again later.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But the world goes sideways. But that I work up as the. As the first song that I do when I walk out, because it starts with a bunch of visual. It's a three hour show where I. Can you believe I talk the whole time?

[Unnamed Guest]

No.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. Shocking, Shocking. Stunned, that revelation that I ramble on. But it was me going. Because the radio channel had started by that point. So we took it as a residency.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because one of the agents, Jeff Frasco over at caa heard the channel. He goes, there's gotta be. It's Like a TV show or. A show.

[Mark Marin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Something with this channel. I said, maybe. I said, maybe. You talking about me doing a residency over there? Yeah. I said, let me go in and pitch this. So I did. It's all the deck. It starts in the 30s, but I start first in Bristol, Tennessee, with modern commercial country. Ralph Pierre goes from New York with the first portable recording devices.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Down to Bristol, Tennessee, and advertises, Come one, come all, sing for me.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And he. And the two people that came the first week, he went on down to Carolina and set up again. But the two that came in that became, you know, modern country music were Jimmie Rogers.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

You know, The Singing Brakeman.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Singing Brakeman.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

The Blue Yodeler.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And the Carter Family. AP Mother Mabel.

[Mark Marin]

So you start there.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah, I start there with this resident to explain to the live audience, they see the dust, you know, the beginning, the Depression.

[Mark Marin]

They see how you get to California.

[Dwight Yoakam]

How everybody gets to California. How that music gets to California. Right. How all of us get to California. The Tom Joad Road.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I go out and begin that. And I. So I used this jacked up, Stones esque. I said to the band, I said, I got an idea about rethinking Sunnyside.

[Mark Marin]

And that's on the record.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I. So come full circle. Two years, I go, I'm going to cut that. Because we're now in the doldrums of, you know, everything we live through with the pandemic. And I'm like, sunnyside, keep on the sunny side. Even in the height of the Depression. Came out of the depression, so it fit the record and. But with an aggression, you know, that.

[Mark Marin]

The whole record has a fucking drive.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

You know, even the swell ones have a drive. And it's like the difference in, you know, your production, like, is I once talked to Fogarty, you know, and I said, you know, I got all those old fantasy records.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh, yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

And, you know, and those grooves are deep and they all sound clean as fuck. And, you know, everything is.

[Dwight Yoakam]

What's him producing?

[Mark Marin]

I know that. So I said to him, it's very funny because I'm thinking about, like, even the opening of this new record to your record of brighter Days.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Right.

[Mark Marin]

I said, well, how do you. How do you choose? How do you mix? And he goes, well, we're.

[Dwight Yoakam]

We're.

[Mark Marin]

We're thinking of a. AM radio speaker in a car. So when the guitar plays, you put that up front. When I'm singing, you put that up.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, there's. There's a Funny story about Jimmy Martin's band, this bluegrass. When you said you put that up, the guitar player put that up for J.D. crow. I don't know if you know that name, but he had the, you know, the New south and he. Great bluegrass banjo player. And he was playing in Jimmy Martin's bluegrass band after Jimmy left. That's how Jimmy Martin replaced Flattens Crux.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Or Lester Flat. He's a singer. Then he leaves Bill because he gets his designs on himself and you know. And never became an Opry member because of that Bill Monroe block. That forever.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And. But he's got his band and JD Crow's playing banjo with him and he says one day he said, he goes, something came up and they're standing there looking at you. He goes, jimmy, when you were singing, you were the star. He said, well, I'm a plan that banjo. I'm the fucking star. So Fogarty saying that. Yes. When he. You put that up. Well, that's how we use. When I. I'm old enough that. When I was first ever in a recording studio. The little brown wood grain boxes. Orotones.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You've seen them.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

The little cheapest 6 inch speaker.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

That's what you mixed on final. Because that's what it was going to sound like. They would say in a car and.

[Mark Marin]

That would be in the booth.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. In the control room. You'd sit there and go, that's what it's. The big speakers sound glorious, but you know how everybody's going to hear it.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

On that, the shittiest, cheapest little.

[Mark Marin]

And that's why some records sound shitty on good systems.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, I. So you know what I mixed on this?

[Unnamed Guest]

What?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, we went from Pete and I used to. I caught. We couldn't afford to go record it. Capital.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Till I got Simon Warner. We cut the set. The last four songs at Capital.

[Mark Marin]

But on this record.

[Dwight Yoakam]

No, no, no, no. The first album ever. Guitars, Cadillacs and the. But on the. On the. On the original six song lp.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I could master. I had enough money to go master at Capital.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

So went in there, a guy named Eddie Schreier and I went back to my little one room as Dave Alvin said to somebody that Dwight lives up there at the top of Argyle.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Above the freeway.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Hollywood, Franklin or at. Yeah, Franklin and Oregon.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

He said he lives up there in the smallest apartment you ever saw in your life. Because he came there was to pick me up. We were going to go to one of their gigs and he looked it was literally an 8 by 8 room with a little step in the sink was in the kitchen. I didn't even have a bath. They had a toilet and the tub and the whole bath. It was funky, but it was up in the hill, so I was peaceful. This is 1984. And I go up there and I had the only thing I'd ever afforded myself, you know, living out here and being able to buy as an accoutrement to my life was an old JVC receiver. It had the blue dial, remember the JVC lit up blue, green. And I bought a pretty good pair of Altec Lansing speakers. Sure, I could afford that much. They were 10 inch woofer tweeter. And so I had that set in an 8 by 8 room. And I'm listening and I call up Pete and I go, hey man, there's a bass feedback on a couple of tracks on the lacquer. Yes, what I want. Yeah. He goes, he said, eddie Shriver, he's in the Capitol. He's like. I said, I don't know. I know I said, but it's just. Come over here. So he drives over, he calls, Eddie goes, hey, Dwight's got something. He goes, where's he live? What the. I'm incredulous. You know, I'm calling the engineer. Yeah, at Capital. You know, like I'm questioning his, you know, like the base feedback. So I'm sitting there, I go, no, man, I. Her day goes by too. I've listened to these tracks. Pete comes, he goes, eddie, you buried. So you know, he's like, there. No, I listen, I just listened to it again. I put it on. He goes, I've got a copy, it's fine. Two days later, phone rings at Pete's. He goes, hey, man. Said. He said, holy. He goes, they just went down the hall. I can't remember the guy. The oldest engineer, mastering engineer at Capital.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Is four, four bays down from. I don't know if you've ever been to Capitol Studios. You gotta go. If they open back up, go.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because Les Paul designed the echo chambers.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

They're underneath the parking lot. And the studio B at Capital is one of the greatest recording. If you go in there and burp, it sounds like a record. But you better be good because whatever you do, it's going to sound like it's on a record.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And if it ain't good, it's going to sound like ain't good on a record.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

So down the other end of the hall, an L shaped set of these, these, these Mastering rooms.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, he said, I walked down, I. And what was his name? I can't. Anyway, he said I went into his room to hear something else.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And put one of my lacquers on. Holy. He said, man, my room hadn't been tuned in like four months. He said I should have never let it go that long. He said, I have a bass frequency. It's all out of white. He said, get Dwight's record back. Come on back. He said, I gotta remember, he said. I went in and sure enough, he's right. There's a frequency on two of the tracks. It's like, came off my little Altech Lansing speakers.

[Mark Marin]

So how'd that impact how you recorded this one?

[Dwight Yoakam]

So speakers listening to.

[Mark Marin]

Right.

[Dwight Yoakam]

So what we started doing after that? Well, when we started mixing.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I would go to the car and sit with a cassette tape.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Before CD and with CDs, I would go sit with a CD and play back because I'd catch things in my car that we wouldn't catch in the room. It sounded rocket and great. David Leonard became the first pro mixer. Dusty Wakeman was our engineer on the first album and he would mix. And that's what you used to. Then Pete said by our third album, or actually the fourth album, he said, you know, I think we need to get one of these guys. And we did. David Leonard, that. That are just mixing engineers. They're specialists.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

It's almost like having a. You know, for medicine, a specialist comes in.

[Unnamed Guest]

Sure.

[Dwight Yoakam]

He only does the snip here and that there and goes. Close them up, you know, A specialist. And that's what mixing engineers have become. Chris Lord Algae is one.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

They focus on mixing records.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And they're. And that's all. That's what they do. They don't track anymore. They just. So we started that. And with. Even with David, I would catch stuff in my car that he wouldn't. And so Chris Lord Algae and I started doing records together a few years ago. And he. When I got my last car, they quit putting CD players in them.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I said it hadn't made it between the last record and now. And Chris, we started getting ready to do this record and he said, hey, you. We're going to bring that. I had no Corvette. No 7 Corvette that I drove for years.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

He goes, you have to get. He go, we gotta. I'm serious. We're bringing that on a trailer so you can sit in the parking lot and you can listen. Doing the. I said, no, we don't need. I Said the world doesn't live there anymore, Chris. It's MP3s. Yeah, Spotify. Everybody's listening through earbuds. And he goes, no, no, Chris. He had superstitions. So we get there and I go in the first track that we mix. And he didn't know. I don't know if, you know, JBL puts out these Bluetooth speakers.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, there's a thing called a clip. It's the smallest of those.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

It's monorail, even.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

It's a round. Looks like a donut. And it clips on. You can just clip it on your bike. I have one of those, and I started listing on that next to the phone, which if you hold an iPhone 14 vertically, it's mono. If you flip it horizontally, it becomes stereo.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

So I'm listening and I don't tell him till about three mixes in because he's got a ghetto black. We listen to that, like, the Orotone thing. And he goes, so you're not listening. You don't want to bring the car and the cd? I go, no, I'm okay. We're gonna be okay. And then I brought in. I showed him what I said, I've been listening on this. On the way home, I leave you. I drive and I'm giving you my notes based on the next day. I go in next day to mix again. He's got two of them he ordered on the Amazon. He got him. Because he. When I started playing it that way before he realized, wow, like they said, this is how the world's gonna hear it.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Like Fogarty said to you. Yeah, that's what they're gonna hear.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And the Beatles. If you listen to those Menorah, the mono records and even the stair. It's like the vocal and. And Pete and I used to be said, well, you gonna be ready? Because radio is going to compress it. And the vocal gets louder.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But it's funny that John would say that.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You know, and there's. There isn't. I'm a huge. Well, you mentioned Credence. A lot of guys, I can tell, you know Credence.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

See, I. I'm talking. And the Blue Ridge Rangers album. How about that?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

The solo record. He did listen to that.

[Mark Marin]

Okay.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Before, when he breaks up over the Souls Ants.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Buying the other three out. And they voted against him because he knew. He said, I packed records for Fantasy. That's where he worked. That's how they got their deal.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because he worked in the record company packing boxes and shipping he was in.

[Mark Marin]

The shipping Blue Rangers record.

[Dwight Yoakam]

So. Well, he leaves when they break up in 73. And he goes and does a solo album. Look up John Faherty, Blue Ridge Rangers.

[Mark Marin]

Okay.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And it's him doing Merle Haggard today. I started loving her again. Loving you again. He does Working on a building, the old gospel thing. He's doing all this. He goes, hank Laughlin, please help me. I'm falling in love with you. It's Fogarty doing that and playing everything himself.

[Unnamed Guest]

Wow.

[Dwight Yoakam]

That's where that begins, you know.

[Mark Marin]

One of the first records I ever had when I was a kid on a cassette that my parents, you know, left downstairs with a cassette player was Cosmos Factory.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Cosmos Factory. I became enamored. One of the albums I went and bought riding my bicycle down to rinks. It was just, you know, like a target. And they had record dude, shop the.

[Mark Marin]

Guitar on Come around the Bend.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh, up around the Bed.

[Mark Marin]

Oh, my God.

[Dwight Yoakam]

His tone. And like you said, that Royal Albert hall stuff. There's an innocence to John and the band when they were interviewing them about being in Europe. And they're looking around like, you know.

[Mark Marin]

Because they are so, like watching that. I just watched that recently. It just came out. But they are so like, you know, they are just in it with each other.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. And. And like a lot like the Beatles in that. They're a bunch of guys. Tufts from Liverpool.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Who aren't London. They're not the Stones. They're not sophisticated.

[Unnamed Guest]

No.

[Dwight Yoakam]

They're not guys that went to. I mean, John went to art college, but not really. I mean, you got Ringo and George and the, the. The cats, you know, so there's, there's like. There is a love. Would you watch Get Back, an eight hour documentary. The first hour and a half. I was scared. I said, how long does this go on? I'm like a fly on the wall.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah. And then you realize what you're watching and you go. I tell. I've told audiences said, look, if you want to see something great, you love music. Watch. Get back.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Get past. I said, don't be afraid. It's eight hours that you'll never regret spending. Why? Because what you learn is they love music, but more than anything, they loved each other.

[Mark Marin]

And. But they're magic. Like, I really think, like, my theory is, is that all those hamburgers when they were jacked up.

[Dwight Yoakam]

10,000 hour rule.

[Mark Marin]

But also they're jacked up on speed.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

And like they had a mind melt and it never went away.

[Dwight Yoakam]

No. No.

[Mark Marin]

But so.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And they're from a four block. They're like siblings.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

It's.

[Dwight Yoakam]

It's like. It's like Tom Fergarte and John.

[Mark Marin]

And they understood the guys that.

[Dwight Yoakam]

They're all from the East Bay. They're from within a four block radius.

[Mark Marin]

It's just one mind.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And bands that go to New York, guys that meet each other in la, you know, from all over.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

They're never locked like that.

[Mark Marin]

It's crazy.

[Dwight Yoakam]

The only band. Only bands that are. Are siblings.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

So.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And they can't last.

[Mark Marin]

So on this record that by doing that thing you were doing with those little speakers.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

Because like every. Like I noticed it immediately with the first. That. The first guitar chord. I'm like, oh, I'm fucking in. What the hell is that?

[Dwight Yoakam]

My casino. Holy shit. That's the Beatle. That's the Revolution Casino.

[Mark Marin]

I saw John over at. At the Rock Hall. The guy took me in back.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You saw his.

[Mark Marin]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh my God. He sanded that down from a sunburst. Yeah, that's the one that he and George are playing on the Buddha Con.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

The bootleg.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Video, you know.

[Mark Marin]

Oh, really?

[Dwight Yoakam]

Oh, those are those epiphones. And he sanded his blonde.

[Mark Marin]

I know, it's great.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And that's the famous. The one on the rooftop.

[Mark Marin]

But like every song on your. On the new record just kind of comes right out and it's because of what you did.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Thank you for.

[Mark Marin]

I loved it, man.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I. I'm flattered that you would listen in that way. And. And yeah, I hope. I hope folks realize I love music because it's the only thing. Well, one of the only things, not the only thing. Paintings can do it.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Art.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Art, when it's executed well, can do it. I mean, visual art, but also theatrical art, film art, storytelling. Art can make us all understand how much we have in common.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Not what we are, you know. Sure. By the power mongers that want to separate us.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

But those that really understand and physicists are now discovering this more and more every day about the universality of our existence. That, wow, we all share space outside of ourselves somewhere other. Do you know what I mean? And music is that.

[Mark Marin]

Sure. It's magic.

[Dwight Yoakam]

So that's my goal is that excitement that I felt. I get it every time the band. I become 13 in a garage, trying, struggling to be the guy I saw on tv. To be the guy that. Dave Edmonds. Dave Edmonds. Also T. Rex.

[Unnamed Guest]

Oh, yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

What you're hearing on the. I talked to David Bowie one time. He, you know Was flattered me with just being a fan of stuff I was doing. Acting wise. We met each other and. And he was. I said, let me ask you. A fan of Mark Mullen. Of course. Oh, God. And he said. He said, it's not. Who does it first? It gets all the credits. Who does it second?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

He said, mark. Because if it's the Top of the Pops.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Show where he and Elton John are sitting in with Mark. Elton's playing piano, and they're doing Bang a Gong.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

With. With, you know, Mark. But the first. First one of his was, you know, was Hot Love.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

T. Rex. The guitar sound.

[Mark Marin]

Oh, my God.

[Dwight Yoakam]

On Bang a Gong.

[Mark Marin]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Dave Edmonds.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And then later, Rockpile and the Pretenders. Dave produces the first, I think, three albums of the Pretenders. Dave Edmonds.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And Nick Low with Elvis Costello.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

That whole thing. I. I gravitated more immediately to new wave because there was still. And the Clash.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I covered the Clash with Ralph Stanley, of all people. And Ralph didn't know the clack. What we did. Train in Vain.

[Mark Marin]

Oh, yeah.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Because when I first heard that, I was living in. Up above, you know, Hollywood.

[Mark Marin]

I thought that that guitar sound at the beginning of this new record is like. It's just got.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, that's my casino.

[Mark Marin]

That's the best, dude. But the thing is, every fucking song.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Wide open heart.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

Every song just pops right out of the thing. Like every fucking one, dude.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Thank you for saying so. But it's just. It's an homage to everything that I loved about music. The stuff you and I have touched on the ricochet of our musical memory.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

Great job.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And it's. Thank you.

[Mark Marin]

And I appreciate you talking.

[Dwight Yoakam]

Well, I did talk, didn't I?

[Unnamed Guest]

Well, you did.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I never got back to Alaska, and I'm going to right now.

[Unnamed Guest]

Okay, you.

[Dwight Yoakam]

And I began with me asking you where are you from? Alaska. There's another Johnny Horton song you gotta hear when it's springtime in Alaska north to Alaska with the title track of the John Wayne movie. Okay, but there's another song that came out of that film because when it's springtime In Alaska it's 40 below and there's a haunted female voice who goes. When he says that, he goes. I mushed from Fort Baron through blizzard of snow I'd been out prospecting for two years or so or more Pulled into Fairbanks the city was a boom so I took a little stroll to the Red Dog Saloon When I walked in the door the music was clear the prettiest voice I had heard in two years. It was redheaded little who was singing a tune. We did the Eskimo hop all around the saloon. And it's like the hook on it is when it's springtime In Alaska, it's 40 below.

[Mark Marin]

Well, it sounds like you got to get up there.

[Dwight Yoakam]

I probably do good talking at some point. It's great to talk to you, Mark, and thanks for having me.

[Unnamed Guest]

You bet.

[Mark Marin]

There you go. Did you learn something? Huh? Did you? Dwight Yoakum, the new album, which is awesome. Brighter Days is available now. Hang out for a minute, folks. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. That's progressive.com and here's some legal info. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations, people. We've had some great stories told on WTF throughout the years, so we've been collecting them and putting together bonus episodes filled with some of the best stories from past WTF guests. This week on the full Marin you can get the collection of epic failures with stories told by John Benjamin, Terry Gross, Chris Gethard, Natasha Wagero, and this one from Danny McBride.

[D]

Okay, I lived here for. I managed to stay in for like two years. And then I went through a really bad breakup with the girl I'd been dating since college. And then that. That threw me back. That was the first trip where I went back.

[Mark Marin]

Was she here with you?

[D]

Yeah, she moved here with me. And. And then she started, like, wearing, like, slinkier clothes and. And everything just went downhill really fast.

[Mark Marin]

You're losing her. You were here to make it. She was here to find somebody who already made it.

[D]

Yeah, and that's the thing, too. When you move here as a young kid, you're right out of film school, you're 21 years old, and it's like there's guys who are 28 and have some real money, and you're still kind of living on like a $25 a week sort of like, you know, and.

[Mark Marin]

You realize that you're just there to provide them with new girlfriends.

[Dwight Yoakam]

You bring out your fell for the trap right.

[D]

Right out of the gate. And so that was like, the first, like, hit the wall of, like, geez, this is. This is tough out here.

[Mark Marin]

This is brutal heartbreak and no way in.

[D]

Yeah.

[Mark Marin]

It's like, you. You didn't have an agent or nothing, right?

[D]

Oh, nothing.

[Dwight Yoakam]

A couple ideas.

[D]

Just a few shitty scripts that, you know, I came out with, and you're.

[Mark Marin]

Eating fat burgers and, you know, wondering how to make. How many people were living in the.

[D]

House at that point? There were four of us. Yeah. And. Yeah, so that was no. That was no good in. In an apartment in Burbank. And I can remember still the day when I. When I found out that it was over with her. I was working at the Crocodile Cafe, and I. In Burbank, which is no longer there, and I went into the manager and just told him. I'm like, I don't think I could do my shift today. I'm just. I don't know. My girlfriend just broke up with me, and I'm. And I was there. I'm like, don't cry. And I start crying in front of this guy who doesn't give a shit. And he's just looking at me, and I'm. He's like, all right, just get yourself together. Like, go take some time off. And he puts his hand out, and I assume that he's going in for, like, a hug, but he wasn't. He was going for a handshake. And I'm just, like, hugging him, crying with my apron from Crocodile Cafe. I remember just walking back to my apartment just, like, with my apron, like, wrapped up in, like, my white polo shirt with my name tag just like, la. I hate this out here.

[Dwight Yoakam]

This is, like, the worst.

[Mark Marin]

There's so many bad. There's so many beautifully poignant bad parts of that story. The misjudged hug and then the walk back with the work clothes. To subscribe to the full Marin, go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF Plus. And don't forget, this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You're curled up on the couch. It's cold outside, but you're cozy and ready for a perfect night in therapy. Can feel a bit like that. It's your comfort place where you replenish your energy with BetterHelp. Get matched with a therapist based on your needs and do it entirely online. It's designed to be convenient and suited to your schedule. Find comfort this season with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com learn more and save 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp h e l p.com and a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by Acast. And here's some classic guitar from the personal vault Boomer Lives, Monkey and the Fonda cat. Angels everywhere. All right. Okay. All right.