I've reviewed country honky-tonker Dwight Yoakam several times, and I thought a little freshness might be in order. So Saturday night I handed my pen and pad to my brother Dave, who is lead singer and lead guitarist for the country music band Aspen Ridge.
I figured together we might be able to capture a couple of new insights. Here's what we came up with.
To begin with, knowing when a country concert is appreciated and when it isn't is easy. The hard part is knowing when it's deep-down professionally good.
Merle Haggard once got angry at his lead guitarist and tried to sabotage a show. He pegged the wrong endings onto songs, sung the wrong words, mucked up the guitar leads. To his amazement, no one in the audience seemed to notice or care. They called him back for two encores.
The same thing seemed to be happening at the Yoakam concert Saturday.
Fans got fanatical, as fans will. But not many true musicians went away feeling they got their money's worth. The glitz and staging were all in place - a backdrop with a Southwest flavor that showed simulated sunsets, outfits fit to kill and high-energy lighting - but the music was not quite right. Backup singers kept forgetting to come in - even on crucial numbers such as Lefty Frizzell's "Always Late." Not enough corn meal was spread around the stage for Yoakam to really work his Elvis dance moves, and the singer himself seemed to spend half the time quarreling with sound men about the sound. Four or five times sound personnel scuttled onto the stage and into the spotlight to try to make things right. It never got quite right.
Like Hank Williams Jr., Yoakam trades heavily on his "bad boy" image, and the tossed off feeling to his shows is supposed to be part of his charm. But the tossed off sets are wearing thin. As a performer he's almost obligated to play his hits, of course. And "Guitars, Cadillacs," "Streets of Bakersfield" and "I Sang Dixie" put in appearances. But even when shooting from the hip, the spontaneity seemed staged. It seemed to be the work of a "cowpunk" who has the purest set of hard country pipes since George Jones but seems to be burning up at an even younger age.
"The thing is," Dave says, "he has total crowd control. He walks out and takes charge of the entire arena. But the outlaw image is wearing thin. When a show starts 40 minutes late and it takes five minutes to get the singer back for an encore, you're reputation as a renegade starts hurting, not helping.
"In the end, for me one of the most interesting parts of the night was watching the athletic moves of the country swingers in the aisles. They're like gymnasts now. I saw women using their Instamatic cameras to snap pictures of the dancers, not Yoakam."
The opening group, The Lonesome Strangers, are a tight, bright, young California band. They showed some real virtuosity on guitars and drums and showcased incredibly tight harmonies.
But their lazy, understated, unemotional vocal style - reminiscent of the downbeat Cowboy Junkies - seemed out of place. For hardcore country listeners - listeners that listen to Yoakam - sentiment and heartfelt singing is the name of the game. Groups like The Lonesome Strangers do better in trendy bars where there's an obsession for "taste," an obsession that makes everyone - including the performers - completely self-conscious.