Review | Guitars, Wide-Brimmed Hats, and Hillbilly-ish Hipness

Bedecked with his ever-present Stetson, veteran country music slinger Dwight Yoakam wears his hat and roots well. Yoakam, who delivered a tight, compact, and career-spanning show at the Santa Barbara Bowl on July 11, reminded us once again that he may have his Kentucky cred in his pocket, but he is also deeply plugged into the Cali-country continuum. 

The Californian part of the saga equation gets a bit complicated. Yoakam rose out of the ‘80s post-punk/new wave scene in Los Angeles, somehow fitting in with acts such as Los Lobos, X, and the Blasters, all of whom had their own piece of the post-roots music cultural real estate. But Yoakam, who can claim membership in the cowpunk scene, also has strong and proud links to the Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard and, as he explained to the Bowl crowd, the new country rock hybrids of Gram Parsons, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, and even the Eagles.

Enter special guest Chris Hillman, of Byrds/Burrito boys fame, who joined Yoakam on the Bowl stage for a couple of vintage songs (with sound suddenly gone a bit fuzzy), climaxing with the landmark Parsons/Hillman tune “Wheels.”

Yoakam by now claims some serious authenticity as a maker of modern-day country classics himself, especially the hooky likes of “Guitars & Cadillacs” (I dare you to think of the title without the chorus nudging your noggin’) and “Fast as You,” which served as strategically placed concert cappers. Yoakam also eased into more artful and lonesome-toned turf for another “greatest hit,” “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere.”

Cover material conveys an important part of the background story of Yoakam’s musical DNA, breeding, and advocacy. At the Bowl, bolstered by a tight band featuring ever-tasty guitarist Eugene Edwards, he managed to touch on the range of influences making up who he was and is. Musical history kept calling from the opening song, the Carter Family’s good cheer anthem “Keep on the Sunnyside,” through Elvis Presley’s “Little Sister,” Buck Owens’s “Streets of Bakersfield,” Johnny Horton’s “Honky-Tonk Man” and Lefty Frizell’s “Always Late (with Your Kisses).” But from the pop side of the fence, he put his own drawl-spin on Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” — itself an homage to early ‘60s rockabilly — and an encore of the Elvis Presley hit “Suspicious Minds,” slathered in Yoakam sauce.

Friday night’s country-rock blowout at the Bowl was a triple-header occasion, with opener Ben (son of Merle) Haggard and the Mavericks (regrettably, another engagement made me violate my policy of always catching opening acts). Yoakam’s set delivered its goods at a steady, professional casino-set-like clip, broken up only by one strange, gonzo ramble involving Billy Bob Thornton (in whose film Slingblade Yoakam played a fine arch villain) and a whole lotta’ 805 name-checking.

Given the overall strength and Dwight-classic goodness of his latest album, last year’s Brighter Days, it’s a shame Yoakam didn’t serve up a longer set and include more of the twanging finery from that song set. The only tracks tapped from that source was the show-opening Carter Family gem “Keep on the Sunnyside” and an original Yoakam almost apologetically put in the otherwise old favorites-styled set, “I Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye (Bang Bang Boom Boom).” The tune, a duet on the album with Post Malone, is a shamelessly kitschy and fiendishly catchy shuffle number.

In a way, Yoakam has heroically managed to transcend the rigidity of mainstream country radio formats over the decades and stick to a more or less timeless formula, partly because he was always a man outta time and fashion. In 2025, as in 1985, Yoakam is who he is, an entertainer who spans various political and cultural taste persuasions, with and without hats.

Yoakam still seems to be singing the truth when he sings, “Yeah, my guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music / It’s the only thing that keeps me hangin’ on.” Well, he’s a bit more complicated than that, but the song remains true to at least some aspect of the man, the artist, the Kentuckian out west.