Whooping Llama

Here’s a video I made of a burn-out contest Dad and I took part in a couple months ago. Our car is the S-10 Blazer at the end. Didn’t win a thing, either.

I love Buck Owens. I love Dwight Yoakam. I love the classic recording of “Streets of Bakersfield” they did in 1988. It would just make sense, then, if I love an album full of Buck Owens songs performed by Dwight Yoakam. I do not.

Buck Owens was a true visionary when it came to country music. He, along with Merle Haggard and a few others, melded rock and roll and more traditional hillbilly music into a totally unique sound—christened the “Bakersfield Sound” in honor of the scene’s Californian epicenter.

Owens’ music is legendary. Even the Beatles were fans (they covered his hit “Act Naturally” on their Help! album). Songs like “Who’s Gonna Mow Your Grass” and “I Don’t Care (Just As Long As You Love Me)” turned Nashville on its ears and made lots of Music City fat cats very uncomfortable. Buck Owens was the leader of a country counterculture. Buck Owens was cool.

So why can’t that kind of work stand on its own? Well, it could…and should.

I do understand Yoakam’s logic: Buck was a lifelong hero and longtime friend. And, to his credit, Dwight has made a solid collection of Buck Owens covers. The album’s not horrible, not by a long shot. Dwight Sings Buck is, however, tired.

Yoakam, God bless him, tried to spice things up. He reinterpreted a couple of Buck’s bigger hits (his weird reading of “Only You” turns the country ballad into some strange R&B/gospel thing). He included some relatively obscure Owens tunes—even making one, “Close Up the Honky Tonks” the album’s first single. He bought a guitar with the words “Buck ‘Em” emblazoned on the pick guard.

Still, I don’t get the sense that Mr. Yoakam put a whole lot of energy into this release (especially its title). The performances are top-notch, but little remains of the vigor found in Yoakam’s other records like his first, Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc., or even his last, Blame the Vain.

The problem here is that Dwight knows these songs too well. They’re not fresh to him anymore (I’d be afraid to know how many times Yoakam has sung “Together Again” in his lifetime). These songs are like an old t-shirt for Dwight: comfortable for sure, but not something you’d wear on a date.

Leonardo da Vinci’s disciples didn’t do cover versions of the Last Supper. They took the stuff the master showed them, used it in their own work, and built thereon. That’s how a legacy is constructed. Dwight Sings Buck isn’t fine art. It’s a cheap lithograph. Yoakam should have stuck to what he does best—making Buck-inspired music.

In the same way that Johnny Cash will be remembered as the idiot savant played by Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line, tribute albums like this one tarnish an artist’s work. They create a caricature of the art that the uninitiated take as a self-portrait.

If you need some Buck Owens in your life, and everyone does, buy the new greatest hits collection. You’ll get 21 original recordings by Buck and the Buckaroos, and you won’t regret the 15 bucks (heh) it’ll set you back. If you want a Dwight Yoakam album, buy Blame the Vain. They’ve got it at Wal-Mart.

As for Dwight Sings Buck…just hit the skip button.