Through the window of an upper floor office in West Hollywood, the sky changed from cyan to navy and then indigo blue. The lights of Century City flicked on in the distance, and the expansive view of the Pacific Ocean disappeared from sight.
For about three hours, Dwight Yoakam sat at a conference table with a glass of iced tea and two smartphones in front of him, his mind abuzz with details. The country performer’s stories about music are rife with the minute observations and historical tidbits absorbed and disseminated by die-hard fans. We were there to discuss Yoakam’s new album, the singer’s first batch of new songs in nine years. In order to get to that subject, however, he needed to tell me about his inspirations. He talked about the Dust Bowl and its reach throughout the Midwest, where we are both from. He described the connections between bluegrass figurehead Bill Monroe and celebrated American songwriter John Prine. He covered classic country artists Jimmy Rodgers, Buck Owens and the Carter Family. Yoakam was particularly animated about one of his favorite bands, the Byrds.
He opened the Spotify app on one of his phones and typed in the search box. Yoakam stretched his arm toward me and played “Set You Free This Time,” the third song on the Byrd’s 1965 album “Turn! Turn! Turn!” A green check mark appeared next to the song’s title because the 68-year-old had added it to his Liked Songs playlist at some point. Yoakam cupped his free hand around the bottom of the phone to help amplify the sound.
“He’s completing phrases on the next chord change instead of singing a single sentence within chord changes. It’s very sophisticated writing,” Yoakam said of Byrd Gene Clark as we listened to the song together, like two undergraduates in a dorm room bonding over our favorite albums. He pressed pause and then sang the song’s first verse to me, emphasizing how Clark bends the word “blind.”
“This. This next verse,” he said, tapping the play button again. We listened to Clark sing, “I have never been so far out in front/That I could ever ask for what I want/And have it any time.”
“It’s genius,” he proclaimed. “It’s so self deprecating without being pandering, you know?”
On Nov. 15, Yoakam will release his 16th studio album. “Brighter Days” finds the artist fusing rock ’n’ roll, country and bluegrass touchstones into a clarity of vision that he’s honed since rising from the Los Angeles cowpunk scene in the 1980s. Though the album’s sound recalls the hybrid that rocketed Yoakam to stardom, its lyrical storytelling invites the listener to experience his life in the present. The singer, songwriter and actor had long played by his own rules as a bachelor and a fiercely independent artist. Today, he’s a man happy to live at the intersection of family and collaboration.
“Brighter Days” encompasses a remarkable series of firsts for the musician. Yoakam co-wrote most of the album’s songs, which is unprecedented in his decades-long career. This includes the title track that he workshopped with his 4-year-old son, Dalton, who received a co-writing credit. “I control the publishing on it,” the singer joked. The album’s lyrics are largely inspired by Yoakam’s life as a family man and husband — he and his wife, Emily, a photographer, married in 2020. He also collaborated with pop star Post Malone on the album’s buzzy lead single, “I Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye (Bang Bang Boom Boom).” Malone stars in the song’s music video, shot along the Sunset Strip, along with Yoakam and actors Malin Akerman and Nina Dobrev.
The new album’s title may hint at sunshine and waking hours, but make no mistake, Yoakam is a night owl, a man for whom work begins around dusk and often stretches into dawn. This evening, Yoakam played the Byrds for me to underscore his belief that Clark is a grossly underestimated songwriter. He likened Clark’s skills to those of Johnny Mercer, the Tin Pan Alley icon who wrote “Moon River” and co-founded Capitol Records in 1942. Incidentally, Yoakam had also drawn me into the experience of his weekly radio show, which runs on his Sirius XM channel, Dwight Yoakam and the Bakersfield Beat.
The satellite radio operator gave Yoakam his own channel in 2018 as a space to exercise his studious fandom — to talk with and highlight his peers and heroes and to share his musical taste and knowledge with listeners.
Folk-rock and country-rock pioneer Chris Hillman, the original bassist of the Byrds and co-founder of the Flying Burrito Brothers with Gram Parsons, hosts a show on Yoakam’s channel in which he traces the origins and influence of those genres as well as the California country sound. Another show, “Cow Punks to Now Punks,” focuses on music that shaped the L.A. scene where Yoakam got his start.
For his own show, “Greater Bakersfield,” which he records in a studio next to his office in West Hollywood, Yoakam invites musicians and other cultural figures to join him in conversation, close listening and song. In each episode, Yoakam plays the guest’s music and shares songs that are meaningful to him. He also usually performs a song or two with each guest. Recent visitors have included Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, John Doe and Exene Cervenka of the band X and actor William Shatner.
Yoakam’s “Greater Bakersfield” is the sieve through which much of “Brighter Days” filtered. The country singer met Malone in 2018 when he was a guest on the show. Yoakam was fascinated with Malone’s background in Texas and how knowledgeable and earnest he was about music. “I made him sing the Dylan cover [‘Don’t Think Twice’] alone first because I felt that people needed to hear this,” Yoakam said. “I wanted them to hear how sincere he is.” As Malone began making the transition to the country music look and sound he now employs, he and Yoakam stayed in touch and became friends.
In April, the pair performed Yoakam’s 1987 song “Little Ways” at the Stagecoach Festival in Indio. “I hear people emulating him now,” Yoakam added. “Zach Bryan in a little weird way sounds a bit like Post when he’s unencumbered by a lot of production.”
Dwight Yoakam.
(Paul Yem / For The Times)
The radio show is also how he fell in with Jeffrey Steele, Bob DiPiero and Shane Minor, who worked on “Brighter Days.” Together or separately, they co-wrote “Wide Open Heart,” “I’ll Pay the Price,” “California Sky,” “I Spell Love” and “Hand Me Down Heart” with Yoakam.
“He’s such a smart, detailed guy,” said Steele, a Nashville-based songwriter who’s had hits with Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Rascal Flatts, LeAnn Rimes and others. Yoakam contacted Steele after watching him perform at a benefit concert in October 2018, when the long-shuttered Palomino Club in North Hollywood briefly reopened to raise money for the Valley Relics Museum. The pair bonded over their mutual love of the club and the artists that played it, and Yoakam invited Steele to try writing with him. Steele appeared on “Greater Bakersfield” soon after.
Another thing the pair have in common is twilight working hours, and their willingness to go until “you completely tap out,” according to Steele.
“Something genius always falls out of that,” he said, “and Dwight knows that. I love that he’s still like that.” When the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the nation in 2020, Yoakam and Steele continued their collaboration on Zoom and invited Steele’s friends DePiero and Minor to join them.
Steele describes a working environment filled with detailed reference points. “When we were trying to get a certain feel for a song, Dwight would cite a bass part from an old Byrds song from the ’60s,” he said. “We would look at each other like, ‘What the hell is he talking about?’” Other artists Yoakam cited include the Kinks, Linda Rondstadt and Roy Orbison. He also referred to early rockabilly music and a lot of ’60s-era rock music. Steele said the album has “all these threads of influence that only Dwight knows because he’s a historian.”
The Byrds, the Bakersfield sound and California country and country-rock traditions are what lured Yoakam to Los Angeles in the late 1970s as the so-called urban cowboy movement took hold in Nashville. As Music City went pop, Yoakam traveled west. He began gigging at Southern California honky tonks in the early ’80s with a band of sonic polymaths featuring Pete Anderson, lead guitarist and Yoakam’s longtime producer.
Dave Alvin, co-founder of the Blasters and the Knitters — the latter also featured Doe and Cervenka, among others — bands that were pillars of the L.A. cowpunk scene, said he caught an early Yoakam performance at the Palomino after wandering into the club randomly in search of a beer. “There were about 35 people in the audience, and I just took one look at the guy and thought, ‘Oh, there’s a star,’” he recalled.
He helped get Yoakam out of the honky tonks and into L.A. punk clubs such as Madame Wong’s, and the country singer opened for the Knitters and others. A few years later, in 1985, the Blasters hired Yoakam and his band as the opening act for a tour of the South and the East Coast. Alvin and Yoakam were already close friends by the time Yoakam released an expanded version of his first album, “Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.,” on a major label in 1986.
Alvin said he knew back then that there was something unique and enduring about him. “When we first started getting to be friends, before he got his Warner deal, he already knew what songs were going on his second album,” Alvin said. “And with the exception of two, he was right on the money. He was really smart and really focused on becoming what he became.”
Yoakam has since released 29 studio, live, cover and compilation albums. He’s won two Grammy awards, one Academy of Country Music award and was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019. Although much of Yoakam’s most celebrated work has centered on classic country themes such as hardship, heartache, loneliness and drifting, “Brighter Days” demonstrates considerable joy. Yoakam said it was “born of my fortune and the love in my life.”
In describing his unusually positive experiences during the pandemic, when he married and became a father, Yoakam’s voice became strained by emotion. “I was so fortunate to have the two of them in my life when that world happened,” he said. “The album comes from that.”
