Free Dwight Yoakam by Don McLeese Page A

might have been without the band’s seal of approval—would be able to make the leap from the L.A. rock scene to the top of the national country charts was a remarkable act of prophecy.
    â€œIt seemed obvious,” he says. “Yeah, totally. I was actually more of a fan of mainstream country then than I am now, or at least an observer. And country music, like pop music or anything else, has periods where they don’t know what’s going on. They figure it out, and then they don’t know what’s going on again. And then they figure it out, and then they don’t know . . . You know what I mean? So when Dwight came along, the
Urban Cowboy
thing was dying, and it was being replaced by some pretty limp-wristed, lackluster stuff. The powers that be in Nashville just did not know what the next thing was: ‘What’s the next hat style?’
    â€œI don’t know if Dwight sat down and did demographic research, but I know that he was smart in that he knew that presentation was half of the ball game—the presentation of his image and to some extent that of the band,” he continues. “And harkening back to the early-to-mid 1960s, visually. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I just found this shirt, and I think I’m gonna wear it tonight.’ It was calculated. And that’s not a bad thing. So, yeah, I knew he was gonna become a mainstream star.”
    And Alvin wasn’t the only one. Bill Bentley, who would become a senior publicist at Warner Bros. while Dwight was at the label, was then working at the indie label Slash, home to the Blasters and X. He was also occasionally booking shows at the trendy Club Lingerie and writing about music for
L.A. Weekly
and other publications. He had been a writer, editor, and drummer in his native Texas, and the first time he heard Dwight at the Palomino, he was floored.
    â€œDwight was living in a garage, seriously, in the Hollywood Hills,” remembers Bentley. “I think it had a bathroom and a door. And Bill Campbell, this great Texas guitar player that lived in L.A., said, ‘There’s a guy that you should meet who lives by you. His name’s Dwight Yoakam, and he’s really good.’ And Campbell never says that about anybody.
    â€œSo one day Dwight just appears, and he gave me these two tickets and said, ‘Bill Campbell said you might like to come and see me.’ He’d been playing way out in the valley, and he was opening a show at the Palomino. The Palomino was
the
country club in L.A. going back to the 1950s, and I’d seen a lot of people there. And this guy gets up there, and I swear to God—I didn’t get to see Elvis when he was young, obviously—but it was like, holy shit, how can this person be so good?
    â€œBecause at that time country music at its best was maybe John Anderson,” he continues. “I think Kenny Rogers had taken over. It just really sucked. The Outlaws [Waylon, Willie, et al.] had kinda worn out their welcome, and they had never meant that much in L.A, anyway. In the four years that I’d been out there, I hadn’t seen much country music that I’d liked.
    â€œAnd then this guy—
goddamn
. Not only did he sound good, and the band sounded good, but he
looked
good. Dwight always looked impeccable, dressed to the nines in those short jackets and just the right cowboy hat. It was just the total package, and I knew this guy was gonna be huge. He had everything—the songs, the voice, the band, the look. And that was at the Palomino! Maybe about ten times in my life I’ve seen a band where I thought there’s no way for this to miss.”
    You knew he would make it as a big country star? “Yeah, I did,” he replies. “Remember, I was around for Rank and File and all the cowpunk movement. And from a million miles away you could tell that Dwight wasn’t part of that. He played those shows with them and the Blasters