my family, was country. So at the moment that country rock was starting to inundate AM radio, I could play the Eagles, I could sing it. That was me.â
Yet it was his writing that would allow Yoakam to discover who he really was, or at least develop a persona that would prove compelling to the indie, roots-rocking punk crowd even before he plunged into the country mainstream. Even his Liâl Abner-ish name seemed to exude authenticity, making him sound a little like the bumpkin he never was or would be. You couldnât capitalize on a name like that by continuing to sing Eagles covers.
âWith writing, I controlled my own destiny,â Dwight says. â âIâll Be Goneâ made me realize I could do it in my own way. And âIt Wonât Hurtâ was written about the same time.â
âIt wonât hurt when I fall down from this bar stool,â sings Yoakam, strumming his acoustic guitar, as we sit in his office. âAnd it wonât hurt when I stumble in the street. It wonât hurt âcause this whiskey eases misery, but even whiskey cannot ease your hurting me.â
This was the second cut on the demo tape, following âThis Drinkinâ Will Kill Me.â Another highlight from the demo that would wait until his third album for release, âI Sang Dixie,â recounts the story of a man from the South who had died âon this damned old L.A. street,â after âthe bottle had robbed him of all his rebel pride.â
In those early L.A. days, he was billing his band as Dwight Yoakam and Kentucky Bourbon. Yet, as Dwight would subsequently tell any interviewer who bothered to ask, he had never touched a drop of alcohol and likely never would. First, because his fundamentalist religion prohibited it. Second, he had seen what it could do, during years of playing at bars for drunks and in close relationships with those who suffered from the disease of alcoholism.
âI wasnât raised on it and had never witnessed alcoholism at close range until I knew a guy named Richard Christopher,â says Dwight. âHe was quite a piece of work, a Runyonesque character. He was six-foot-six, and he was originally from Cleveland, Ohio. He developed coupon books to sell to people. He had a masterâs degree from Ohio State and ended up being drafted into the Korean War.
âHe was just this carny guy. I would listen to him tell these war stories. And he was also a severe alcoholic. But functional. He managed this apartment complex and was also wheeling and dealing with trading furniture, stuff like that. He walked with a cane and looked like Ichabod Crane. His drink of choice was vodka with prune juice or anything else. Iâd stop by and listen to Dick Christopher ramble on a little bit. And I wrote âIt Wonât Hurtâ about him.â
So, the teetotaler began to specialize in drinking songs, a venerable tradition of honky-tonk music, but one that had fallen from fashion in the sanitized country music of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The airwaves were no longer filled with the likes of neo-honky-tonker Gary Stewart, who lived the life of which he sang, and who had enjoyed considerable country success early in the 1970s with breakthrough hits including âDrinkinâ Thingâ and âSheâs Acting Single (Iâm Drinkinâ Doubles).â As country was starting to veer toward soft rock, there wasnât as much emphasis on hard liquor.
Yoakamâs subject matter and sound distinguished him as a honky-tonk throwback, and he had no problem reconciling such material and the bars where he performed it with the religion in which he was raised.
âI didnât feel that my salvation or destiny was imperiled by that,â he says. âBut Iâd also witnessed enough drinking and drugging in the early â70s, which led to the debauchery of the late â70s, Studio 54 and all that, where there couldnât