Occasional Bootleg Series No. 5 - Dwight Yoakam

Occasional Bootleg Series No. 5 - Dwight Yoakam, KPFK FM Los Angeles
Aug. 4, 1985

Tracklist: Honky Tonk Man, Down The Road, Heartaches By The Number, Reading, Righting, Route 23, Miners Prayer, South of Cincinnati, It Won't Hurt, This Drinking Will Kill Me

This is what bootleg's are all about. Rare as hen's teeth, good sound quality and something that is never going to be issued by a bone fide label. This is a radio appearance by Dwight Yoakam and his band when they were peddling for a major label to pick them up. The show, for KPFK FM in Los Angeles in the summer of '85 has some indepth interviews interspursed with songs. The band are the crackerjack crew that first came to my attention with the Guitars, Cadillacs, etc, etc album. They had a pure, honest honky tonk sound with an acoustic feel that had Pete Anderson's twangy guitar cutting through it to devistating effect. They are Dwight on vocals and acoustic guitar, Jeff Donavon on drums, Brantley Kearns on fiddle, J.D. Foster on upright bass and Pete Anderson on electric guitar.

Musically, this show is everything you would expect from mid '80s Dwight, with fans of his first couple of albums likely to be foaming at the mouth with the contents here. If anything, I would say that the version of Heartaches By The Number is arguably, better than the released version, it's underproduced sound suiting both the song and DY and the boys musicianship. The interviews are also what you'd expect of Dwight, i.e. intelligent, articulate and slightly pompous. Not in a big headed way, it's just that with Dwight, his motto seems to be "why use a simple word, when a strange, long one from the depths of the thesaurus will do just as well". Make no mistake, this is a brilliant find and should be easy enough to find out there in internet land.