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Date Posted: 22:56:34 10/15/01 Mon
Author: DWIGHT- YOAKAM-KY
Subject: A LONG WAY HOME

Dwight Yoakam
A LONG WAY HOME, the 11th release from DWIGHT YOAKAM, is a celebratory return to the hard-driving honky-tonk and plaintive balladry that established him as a major country force over 12 years ago. In another outstanding collaboration with producer-guitarist Pete Anderson, the singer/songwriter has painstakingly assembled what is clearly his most personal, inward-looking collection of songs to date. It's his first album of all-new material in nearly three years, one that echoes all the sonic hallmarks of classic country while honoring YOAKAM's own singular, forward-looking artistic vision--a flawless combination that makes for an adventurous earful.
Recently, the multi-talented, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter has been pursuing different paths of artistic expression and these explorations have been highly rewarding, as evidenced by his acclaimed performance in the Academy-Award winning motion picture Sling Blade and the current Richard Linklater-directed 20th Century Fox film The Newton Boys, where he has a major role alongside Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke and Skeet Ulrich. Musically, 1997's freewheeling country, pop and rock safari Under the Covers and the solid, sentimental holiday set Come On Christmas also found YOAKAM breaking new ground. When he arrived in Austin, Texas last year for The Newton Boys three-month location shoot, YOAKAM was so wrapped up in preparing for the role that he didn't even bring his guitar along. Perhaps not surprisingly, A LONG WAY HOME is an album that seemed almost to create itself. Significantly, this is also the first album consisting entirely of songs written without any collaborators. The emotions herein are YOAKAM's alone, and the intimate feel was also borne out of the acoustic orientation of these songs. As YOAKAM explains, "There are songs on Gone that I wrote on acoustic guitar, but this album, specifically, had a lot of acoustic guitar catalyst riffs."

"I arrived in Austin assuming that I would be so focused working on the film that I'd turn to writing this album when I got home," YOAKAM says. "But as it turned out, we were shooting five days a week and I would work maybe three of those days, and I found myself wanting to play music--it was naive of me to think I'd be there for three months and not feel the overwhelming pull to make music. So I went and bought an acoustic and an electric guitar and began exploring the things that I was hearing, musically, in my mind at the time, while staring out of the hotel window watching the river go by and the big Texas thunderstorms at night. I'm always trying to seek out the necessary isolated solace to be able to be still long enough so that I can hear the sounds that lead to my writing a song." While the remarkable process by which these "things I was hearing in my mind" are transformed into finished recordings is a crucial part of YOAKAM and Anderson's methods, the core of this set is its unflinching examination of the all-consuming mystery of romance. A LONG WAY HOME approaches the subject from a variety of perspectives, some rich with irony, others bruised and pleading, but all are unerringly centered on the heart.

The opening track "Same Fool," urged on by the terrific Ralph Mooney-style steel guitar of Marty Rifkin, commands immediate attention via its irresistible sound and the double edged-lyric. As YOAKAM says, "It's a hard driving rhythm, a relentless bass line, that never stops moving. To me, it's making a self-deprecating observation, `I've been the fool' and it's also a statement of emancipation." "The Curse," a moody exercise in the Johnny Cash vein, demonstrates that "We fall under the spell of love, and it's horrible," YOAKAM says. "The moment you cross that threshold and enter the magic garden that romantic love exists in, you are doomed to be subjected to its curses. I think that at first glance it could seem bitter, so I hope that people catch the sardonic element in it."

With its chiming guitars, the first single "Things Change" is a bittersweet anatomy of a faltering relationship in which YOAKAM sings: "Forever's a promise/We couldn't survive/Hey, I may be slow/But I ain't blind." Next is the stunning Bakersfield-style weeper "Yet To Succeed," of which YOAKAM says, "A few friends have told me they have the impulse to drink immediately as soon as the song starts! That's how country music came to us, from juke joints, road houses, saloons, and it reflects that legacy in a certain sense, but also incorporates an almost operatic melodrama in the production."

The brash, upbeat "I Wouldn't Put It Past Me" is, the singer explains, all about "that fever you get caught up in when pursuing anything with such passion that you become blind to the fact that you might be using a blowtorch to light a match, in terms of overuse of energy or funds or love in this case, where anything that you may get will never replenish what you spent in arriving at that place." The classic honky-tonk shuffle "These Arms" is gilded with shimmering strings that underscore "a lyric that is about futility, absolute, abject futility, and the greatest tragedy to know that you have brought about your own demise, and we all seem to be capable of that but we also are capable simultaneously of being our own savior from that self-inflicted destruction."

"That's Okay" is also steeped in irony, with its bright, Merle Travis-style guitar picking serving counterpoint to a gloomy lyric of false bravado: "What this guy is thinking is, `If I could just get out of this room with my dignity intact,' but he's saying `no, no everything is fine, but I'll just go out and collapse in a heap on the street and crawl home but everything is really fine.'" YOAKAM continues this double-edged upshift with the hard-hitting roadhouse romp "Only Want You More," which is, he says, "A self-flagellistic moment on the album and it's steeped in this raging, almost brutal kind of tempo and groove, of hillbilly boogie that just won't let up--hillbillies on pills. It's recklessly wild and that's the emotion, `go on and hurt me baby, it only makes me want you more.'"

The steel and fiddle-limned ballad "I'll Just Take These" perfectly captures the pain of losing everything but a handful of happy memories, while the title track "A Long Way Home" embodies the theme of the album--which, says YOAKAM, "is hope in the face of self-inflicted despair, hope in spite of one's self, and the admonition to ourselves to feel obligated to give ourselves hope."

"Listen," couched in a richly colored, full arrangement, offers more of that wistful hope, while the straight gospel-tinged mountain lament "Traveler's Lantern," featuring bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley on banjo and vocals, has a message that could apply not only to the song's protagonist but country music as a whole; it's about "not just saving myself but illuminating the path, putting out a beacon, a traveler's lantern, in terms of the collective journey we have with each other." The set closes with "Maybe You Like It, Maybe You Don't," which is actually a brawny reworking of "Only Want You More" with a nod to the King (or as YOAKAM says, "there's a little sheepish Elvis impersonation for you") and delivered with the depth of skill and feeling that characterizes YOAKAM and Anderson's work.

A LONG WAY HOME is an altogether arresting collection, one that YOAKAM summarizes as "late 20th century, fastback muscle-car country music, it's absolutely country and country-rock in its total scope. Musically, the approach to it and everything we're doing doesn't really deviate from that--it stays pure and embraces that with as much passion as I've had for several years." Such passion is not to be taken lightly, and here YOAKAM is hitting a powerful new artistic stride. As anyone listening to A LONG WAY HOME would agree, it's a journey worth taking.

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