Come and listen to a story about a man named Dwight
Bluegrass and Los Angeles aren't exactly bosom buddies. And yet there's something perfect about Dwight Yoakam calling his first bluegrass album — a set of reworked tunes from his back catalog — “Swimmin' Pools, Movie Stars.”
“It's a wink at my career and my life in music,” Yoakam said from his Southern California home. “Remember, the `Beverly Hillbillies' theme song was performed by (bluegrass legends) Flatt and Scruggs.”
Back in the late '70s, after a spell in Nashville, Yoakam loaded up his stuff and moved to Beverly Hills — OK, close to Beverly Hills. A self-proclaimed honky-tonk hillbilly, the singer-songwriter hung out in the West Coast cow punk scene and slowly honed his chops.
Eventually, Yoakam — who plays tomorrow at House of Blues — polished his sound (a little) and went on to sell 25 million albums. Along the way, he made a name for himself in Hollywood starring in such critical smashes and blockbusters as “Sling Blade” and “Panic Room.” But hit songs and ace acting gigs never kept him far from his roots.
“The whole album felt fairly natural because my melodic sense has always been greatly influenced by where I was born, in rural southeast Kentucky, and the mountain music that happened around my culture,” he said.
He initially intended for the album to be a mix of newer covers and bluegrass standards; producers convinced Yoakam to pull from his own catalog. “I couldn't argue with flattery,” he said, chuckling. His honky-tonk tunes fit nicely into the two-beat rhythm of bluegrass with such classics as “Guitars, Cadillacs” and “Please, Please Baby” sounding like porch pickin' favorites. But the biggest surprise of the set is the reworking of “Purple Rain.”
The day Prince died, Yoakam — who only knew the icon in passing — was headed to the studio for a session. When the musicians gathered, Yoakam suggested they try the tune.
“We were all very shaken by the news,” he said. “It was cathartic for all of us, but after we worked on it, I didn't think about it. Later, almost a month later, some guys in my band heard about the sessions and asked, `Well, you're putting it on the record, right?' I told them, `I don't know.'”
Yoakam had a killer track in his hand: a legendary pop hit with barn-burnin' fiddle and high-and-lonesome harmonies. But he wasn't convinced it made sense for the album. Then he bumped into Lenny Waronker, the man who signed Prince to Warner Bros. Records.
“He asked to hear my version and repeated what my band said, `You have got to put this on the record,'” Yoakam said.
“Purple Rain” is a fitting closer to an album connecting roots music and glitzy Los Angeles. It proves that a great song transcends genre.
“Musicians aren't trapped by genre,” he said. “Record labels and radio all need to categorize stuff to market it. But musicians, we listen to everything and like a lot of different things. All the guys I was recording with knew `Purple Rain.' They're all hardcore, supreme bluegrass players, and they knew the song. We didn't have to teach that to them.”
Yoakam digs into his bluegrass past – and that surprising Prince connection