Dwight Yoakam tells Billboard about what fueled his first album in nearly a decade.
, and four decades after he turned the Nashville establishment on its head with his distinct brand of West coast honky-tonk, punk and rockabilly,, out Friday , was forged by years of life shifts, both personal and professional, and finds him moving ahead musically with a new set of inspirations. In March 2020, he wed photographer Emily Joyce and in August of that year, the couple welcomed their first child, son Dalton Loren.
“I don’t co-write a lot. The first one was a very auspicious beginning, with Roger Miller in 1990. Most albums, probably 70% or 80% is my own solo writing,” Yoakam says, adding, “We had such fun discussing relationship to all things California music. He was raised in the Valley and his dad owned a garage blocks away from the famous Palomino Club, so he grew up in the shadow of that.
His willingness to filter a range of sounds and inspirations through his own musical lens is what led Yoakam to his breakthrough in the mid-1980s. He first tried his luck in Nashville, coming up against roadblocks due to his retro-progressive musical style. He decamped to California, refining his music and further soaking in the influence of Bakersfield and Buck Owens. In 1984, Yoakam independent project. caught the attention of label execs, and he signed with Reprise Records.
“I had literally just finished the album a week and a half earlier, and I was unaware that he had done thealbum at that time,” Yoakam says. “I knew he was doing stage shows and I knew something was afoot about duets he was doing, but I didn’t know how extensively what it was all about.”
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