By Wil Comstock
MCAU Contributing Writer
Dwight Yoakam, 11 p.m. Sept. 21 at Mercy Lounge
By the
time this show started, I had stood for five hours. Four hours at the AMA’s closed circuit viewing at The Family Wash and one
hour during Green River Ordinance’s performance. It was worth it! It was my birthday, and staying up late and
seeing Dwight was my present to myself!
Yoakam grew
up listening to Bluegrass. "Being born in Pikeville, Kentucky,
it's been inevitable from the beginning of my career - from the beginning of my
life - that I would end up making a bluegrass record" he told Billboard
magazine. Dwight recently recorded
eleven of his deep catalog songs with bluegrass arrangements for his new album “Swimmin' Pools, Movie
Stars...” a reference to the
Beverly Hillbillies theme song. Producers Gary Paczosa and Jon Randall rounded
up some of the best pickers in town for this project. Bryan Sutton on guitar, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Barry
Bales on bass, Adam Steffey on mandolin, and banjo player Scott Vestal. These are the players, plus Jon Randall, that came out to back Dwight for this
show! Chris Lord Alge, who mixed the album, insisted
on coming out to do sound!
They played
through the whole album, delighting the crowd and giving me goose bumps on
numbers like “What I Don’t Know”, “These
Arms”, Two Doors Down”, “Guitars, Cadillacs” and “Please, Please Baby”. These songs were made for Bluegrass! The
delivery was impeccable. Dwight joked
that he was the only one on stage making mistakes. Yoakam finished with the
tender “Gone (That’ll Be Me)”. Coming back for an encore, on a somber note, Yoakam
said that while they were recording, they got word one morning that Prince had
died. Dwight explained that the love of
music crosses all genres. He asked the band
that morning if they could play a Prince song. While the tape was rolling, they went into “Purple Rain”, never intending for it to end up on the
album. This is the song they closed with
and the last song on Yoakam’s new album.
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