![]() ![]() That’s how kinetic the scene was and how great the support was for music. And Los Lobos took me up into the Bay Area at Bill Graham’s club, one night we opened for Los Lobos in two different clubs in the same night in San Francisco. In particular, the Blasters took me to Houston, Texas, New York City, and Austin, Texas. Later, like Dave Alvin and the Blasters, Los Lobos acted as enablers for me to take my music outside of Southern California and took me cross-country on bills with them. So yeah, we were playing that show that night with Los Lobos. I don’t know if he did Madame Wong’s China Town, back up to the Music Machine in Santa Monica then to Club 88 where we were. That particular night, Los Lobos and I were on a double bill at Club 88, out on, I think it was Pico Blvd in Santa Monica, out in the city of Santa Monica, but I think he may have started that night with Carla Olson and the Textones at Palamino and worked his way across to the Lingerie. Gilmore pointed out that, that particular night, he said, “What a moment we’re all sharing,” and I agree. Los Lobos were coming out of the East LA…kind of the remnants of the East LA rock & roll scene that goes back into the 1950s, from Ritchie Valens and forward, and the influence that had on rock music, and then you had Dave Alvin and the Blasters from Downing. All bands that were loosely confederated with each other, in a way that was belied by the disparate nature of the musical styles. Michael Gillmore was writing about that in the Herald-about, in one night, being able to go out to the east end of the Valley, you know the Palomino Club, to the beach, Santa Monica, and see a collection of about five different clubs full of musicians that were performing shows on that particular Friday night. It seemed like, in that five year period, a lot of things happened, there were bands like Rank and File that were originally the Dils, the punk band, the brothers who formed Rank and File, you had Tex and the Horseheads, Carla Olson and the Textones, along with Maria McKee who was on my first Warner album, doing a duet on “Bury Me.” Los Lobos-David and those guys-their careers started to take off, and by ’83 we were out together, by ’84 we had started doing some double bills. I remember Mikal Gillmore writing an article where he said, you know, “It was a great time to be a party to what was going on in LA.” The period I’m talking about is probably from about 1980 to 1985. Yeah, absolutely, we would play co-bills with them on different nights. I was recently talking to Louie Perez from Los Lobos for this 40th issue we’re working on and he was talking about the early days, in the early ’80s, when you and Los Lobos were both sort of emerging. In the meantime, check Blame the Vain as well as the double disc anniversary re-release of his benchmark debut album, Guitars, Cadillacs, etc etc, which just came out Tuesday (Note: we also just found out that you can text "Dwight" to 7466* for "ringtones and more," which has blown our minds but please believe we are about to do it AT THIS TIME). ![]() After the jump, read the un-edited transcript of our absolutely crazy, long, two part conversation with Yoakam, where we touch on everything from Vince Vaughn, Waylon, Nudie Suits and how to block a cowboy hat, to insane amounts of music history, Dwight's film career, and much, much more. After all that, needless to say, we knew who to call when we were concocting the celebration that was our 40th issue. Imagine how psyched we were, then, when we first spent time with him after a Conan appearance around the release of his latest album Blame the Vain in the summer of 2005 and, in half an hour or less, for no other reason than because he wanted to, he ran us on a conversational journey out of the hills of Appalachian Kentucky where he grew up and into Ohio, then paused to give us the entire history of all genres of American roots music (without forgetting our friends from the British Invasion) through the lens of the 1950's radio of his childhood, then brought us out to Bakersfield, CA and a few miles south to Los Angeles to paint a picture of the scene there that gave birth to his career, beginning in the early ’80s. To some of us here at FADER HQ, Dwight Yoakam is a lifelong hero - we grew up on cassettes of all his albums and haven't been able to go more than a week or two with getting a fix ever since. Even though our 41st issue has officially hit newsstands and our 40th Issue Spectacular has retired to the dept of backissues, we've still got more extended features to let out of the bag. ![]()
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