2D
Monday, August 18, 1997
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Singer splashes color into country genre
Yoakam combines rock blugrass to produce a new kind of cover album
The Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A lounge-lizard version of a British Invasion classic. A dance rendition of a Glen Campbell ballad. The Clash — bluegrass style.
Not at all.
Is Dwight Yoakam kidding on his new CD Under the Covers? Has he been so busy remaking himself into a movie star — the bad guy in Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade — that he hasn't had time to write his own songs?
"It was an outgrowth of a live radio broadcast we had done ... in the summer of "95," Yoakam said. "We did a couple of cover tunes. We did a Merle Haggard thing and we did Goodtime Charlie."
"The response by the call-in audience was so strong that the label asked if we would do (a CD). As (producer) Pete (Anderson) and I discussed it further, we discovered we had a window of opportunity to record it after we recorded the Gone album in the summer of 1995. We did most of it that fall."
The newly released Under the Covers contains 12 tracks. The most unusual is So Tired, a Big-Band version of the song written by Ray Davies, leader of The Kinks.
"It was important to find our own interpretation of everything we did," Yoakam said from Austin, Texas, where he recently finished work on his next movie, The Newton Boys, starring Matthew McConaughey.
Under the Covers also contains remakes of songs by Roy Orbison, Sonny and Cher, Johnny Horton, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Them (Van Morrison's first band).
There are some misfires, but none of the songs are boring.
Among the highlights:
—Things We Said Today. Yoakam's version of the John Lennon-Paul McCartney tune is darker than The Beatles'.
—Wichita Lineman. Yoakam turns the hit ballad by Glen Campbell into a fast-paced dance tune.
—Baby Don't Go. This song was written by Sonny Bono, who recorded it with then-wife Cher. On Yoakam's album, Cher's part is sung by Sheryl Crow.
—Train in Vain, originally on The Clash's 1980 album London Calling. Yoakam's version is hard-country, almost bluegrass-style.
Elsewhere in country music
WHOLE LOTTA BUCK: An 8-foot, 500-pound bronze of Buck Owens by artist Bill Raines is now on display at Owens' entertainment complex in Bakersfield, Calif. Raines says he wants to be the Frederic Remington of country music. He's working on statues of Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams Sr. that will be unveiled in Nashville next year.
COUNTRY MUSIC LIBRARY: There's a biography out on Eddy Arnold, the smooth singer of ballads, including Make the World Go Away. The author is Michael Steissguth, and it's published by Schlirmer Books in Old Tappan, N.J.
—The Last Time, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Yoakam makes a breakneck country tune out of a song that was a bland blues-pop offering when the Stones did it in 1965.
While it's an unusual combination of songs, Yoakam previously has performed many of them in concert. As with his other albums, elements of rock and country are mixed without regard for radio formats.
"I don't think we had a specific agenda other than the enormous joy we found executing the performances of all these songs for the sake of the song itself, "Yoakam said. "And we always disregard being a prisoner to any specific genre of music."
Musical restlessness has paid off for the 40-year-old Yoakam, who was born in Pikeville, Ky., raised in Columbus, Ohio, and became famous out of Los Angeles after being spurned by Nashville record companies in 1974.
His 1986 album Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. etc. sold over a million copies and included the hit Honky Tonk Man, an old Johnny Horton song. He has released six CDs and a greatest-hits package since. The 1993 CD This Time, produced four hits, including Ain't That Lone Yet.
Anderson, who has produced all of Yoakam's records and plays guitar in his band, said financial success was a long time coming.
"I worked with Dwight for 2 and a half years, and never made a dollar," he said. "We never made money touring until 1991.
"We made the first EP (A Town South of Bakersfield) ourselves, and when (record companies) came calling we had already built up an audience. We signed with Reprise because they gave us the money and went away. We made the record we wanted to make, not what they wanted."
And there's more to come. Yoakam has a Christmas album due out in September, after which he will begin recording original material for an album in 1998.
The Delevantes' style likened to other native
The Associated Press
New Jersey brothers sparkle in Nashville
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Delevantes don't come from the South, or even South Jersey. But they still make some of the brightest country music today.
Bob and Mike Delevane were raised in Rutherford, N.J., and later moved eight miles to Hoboken, Frank Sinatra's hometown. Nevertheless, their harmonies sound more like The Everly Brothers of Kentucky or The Louvin Brothers from Alabama.
On their Capitol Records debut, Postcards From Along the Way, which came out in July, many of the songs are about home — either loving it or desperately needing to get out. Sometimes both.
"The influence of Springsteen was very strong in New Jersey," said Talent, who, like the Delevantes, moved from New Jersey to Nashville.
It's a tried-and-true country music theme, one well-explored by another Jersey native, Bruce Springsteen. The Delevantes' producer is Gary Tallent, bassist in Springsteen's old E Street Band.
"They write about what they know. It's my job to kind of keep it (Springsteen influence) to a minimum, not to maximize it, because people will point fingers and make a big deal out of it."
The subject matter on Postcards From Along the Way is akin to Springsteen, but the sound sure isn't. The Delevantes offer nasal harmonies delivered atop simple, poignant melodies.
But there are gritty lyrics, too.
On This Engine Runs on Faith, a family piles into an old car with "a mattress tied to the roof with cord and dreams," and heads South to
GaryTallent
Delevantes'producer
look for work. Suitcase of Leather is the story of someone who left home, told by a friend who staved.
John Wayne Lives in Hoboken is a love letter from the Delevantes to their hometown. It includes this verse:
"Now the stars they sparkle, and the stars they shine
far, far off from the riverside.
But the stars they sparkle, and the stars they shine
right here in this little town of mine."
Many of their songs are byproducts of Bob and Mike Deleaveau pondering their decision to leave Hoboken in 1993 to try their luck in Nashville.
"It was a bigger sacrifice than I realized," Mike Delevante said. "You start to miss things a lot more. It's just always there in the back of your
mind.
"You wonder, 'What if I hadn't done this, what if I had stayed home?' A lot of our friends are as happy as can be just staying in one place."
Raised in the suburbs, the middle-class sons of a personnel director and a homemaker, the brothers were close enough in age to share the same friends. They're both in their mid-30s but declined to be more specific.
"Mike took up guitar first," Bob Deleavane said. "I started shortly after that. We took lessons together."
Younger brother Mike remembers hanging around until he was asked to join jam sessions.
"I think the deal was — he was a better guitar player," Bob Delevante said.
They formed rock bands together, and a friend turned them on to Flatt & Scruggs and bluegrass music. Bob even played in a bluegrass band for a short time.
Both graduated from New York City art schools — Bob from Parsons School of Design, Mike from The School of Visual Arts—and did free-lance work to support their music careers.
Their four-piece band, Who's Your Daddy, became a mainstay in Hoboken, a live music hot spot in the 1980s. In 1988, the brothers made their first trip to Nashville to pitch their work to music publishers. One of the first, Mike Porter at Warner Chappell, listened to their tape and asked to hear more.
"That's an amazing thing," Bob Deleivante said. "In New York, you might see a receptionist."
The Deleavantes eventually signed a publishing deal with Porter and started making frequent trips to Nashville before pulling up stakes, and moving there.
At a Steve Earle show, they met Tallent, who produced their 1995 debut album on Rounder Records, Long About That Time. Capitol then signed them on the strength of that record.
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