For twenty years, New West Records has been issuing great performances from the archives of the series Austin City Limits on CD, video and vinyl. On August 11, they will add two new editions with Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam.
The original concerts for the two releases were both shot on the same day, October 23, 1988, and saw the artists crossover to each others programs, Dwight guesting on Buck’s performance of Under Your Spell Again and Buck and Flaco Jiménez guesting on Dwight’s performance of Streets of Bakersfield.
Both releases will have CD/DVD and 180-gram vinyl sets with the full performances by each artist including a number of previously unreleased songs. Austin City Limits founder and producer Terry Lickona add liner notes in each set.
Lickona recollects his first encounter with a young Dwight Yoakam: “Twenty-something Dwight Yoakam was literally the new kid in country music when he stepped onto the Austin City Limitsstage in October 1988. But even then, as he has ever since, he was doing things his own way. Dwight was born in a small Kentucky town and grew up listening to mountain and bluegrass music, and unlike most of the mainstream country-pop crooners of the ’80s, he almost single- handedly revived the rockabilly/honky tonk/hillbilly sound that was one of the cornerstones of country music’s formative years. Early on he discovered the fabled ‘Bakersfield’ sound of the ’60s and adopted it as his own, in the tradition of country legends Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. Buck, in fact, became his hero and friend. When Dwight was playing a fair in Bakersfield, he stopped by Buck’s office and coaxed him into playing a few songs with him onstage that night. The result was a lasting friendship and their historic duet, Streets of Bakersfield. Much like his heroes, Dwight has been true to his roots and breaking new ground for almost 20 years.”
Lickona also reflects on his first encounter with Owens: “Maybe it was an epiphany of sorts. As Buck tells it, “One day I was watching Austin City Limits and Dwight Yoakam was on, then he dedicates the program to ‘Buck Owens.’ So I said, I’m going to see what this kid is like.” It wasn’t long after that he was on stage with Dwight singing his old hits. Buck was bitten by the bug to return to music, after calling it quits almost ten years earlier. This man from Sherman, Texas, probably best known as the wide-grinning rube on Hee Haw for so many years, started a country music revolution. Or more accurately, a counter-revolution. It was called “The Bakersfield Sound.” He and fellow revolutionary Merle Haggard were cranking out raw, hard-driving honky-tonk music that stood the country-pop coming out of Nashville on its head. When Buck Owens and the Buckaroos would launch into ‘I’ve got a tiger by the tail, it’s plain to see … !’ the packed crowds would be on their feet and headed for the dance oor. Along the way Buck inspired none other than the Beatles to record their first country song, his classic Act Naturally, and the master of soul, Ray Charles, to immortalize one of the best-known country songs ever, Crying Time.”
The track lists:
Dwight Yoakam
Guitars, Cadillacs
Smoke Along The Track
What I Don’t Know
Home Of The Blues
1,000 Miles
Please, Please Baby
Little Ways
Honky Tonk Man
Streets Of Bakersfield
Buenas Noches From A Lonely Room (She Wore Red Dresses)
Always Late With Your Kisses
Little Sister
I Sang Dixie
This Drinkin’ Will Kill Me
Buck Owens
Act Naturally
Together Again
Love’s Gonna Live Here
Crying Time
Tiger By The Tail
A-11
Hot Dog
Put Another Quarter In The Jukebox
Memphis
Under Your Spell Again (With Dwight Yoakam)
Johnny B. Goode
