Dwight Yoakam – Dwight Sings Buck / Derailers – Under the Influence of Buck

Exactly twenty years have passed since Dwight Yoakam, playing the Kern County Fair, met his hero Buck Owens and coaxed him back onstage after years of semiretirement, leading to their 1988 #1 duet on “Streets Of Bakersfield” and a lasting, deep friendship. Beyond that, Yoakam consciously avoided recording any Buck covers, feeling that Owens, then still performing with the Buckaroos, could do that himself.

Everything changed, of course, with Owens’ death last year. The younger, Austin-based Derailers long ago earned Buck’s respect and friendship with their devotion to his sound. He relished sitting in with them and when the band played Owens’ venue the Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, Buck & the Buckaroos were usually double-billed.

Press material for Yoakam’s tribute mentions that he reinvents his friend’s songs on a collection featuring fifteen of Buck’s 1956-67 hits, although Owens’ first chart hit, “Above And Beyond”, actually came in 1959. That song is included, along with “Act Naturally”, “Your Tender Loving Care”, “Excuse Me”, “Love’s Gonna Live Here” and others. Yoakam affectionately filters most of the material through his own style, which never differed that much from Buck’s, except that Dwight now has a pedal steel guitarist, Josh Grange.

It gets even more interesting when Yoakam throws the Bakersfield playbook away and reimagines some of Buck’s favorites in ingenious ways. He effectively reworks the venerable melody of “Together Again” to give it an unexpected R&B-gospel feel. “Only You” was a simple country lament; here, Yoakam transforms it into something new and exceedingly clever, his fervent, intimate vocal underpinned by a Hammond B-3. Slower, more complex rhythms from percussionist Bobby Hall replace the usual shuffle beat on a six-minute “Close Up The Honky Tonks”. “Under Your Spell Again” rides atop the same sort of chugging rhythms as the cover version Johnny Rivers recorded during his Whiskey A Go-Go period.

The Derailers were criticized by some (myself included) for overdoing the Buckisms early on, but their more recent albums largely avoided that pitfall. A tribute album, obviously, is another matter. That’s why one can shrug off the five-song overlap with Yoakam’s album as inevitable. Instrumentally, the Derailers reproduce the Buckaroo style so faithfully, flawlessly and affectionately that at times, only four decades of improved recording technology separates them from the originals. Chris Schlotzhauer’s pedal steel playing and Scott Mathews’ drumming are particularly accurate, the results comparable to the way Asleep At The Wheel flawlessly channels Bob Wills.

Vocalist Brian Hofeldt makes the very mistake I hoped he’d avoid. With the best intentions and with obvious love, he tries — far too hard — to reproduce Buck’s vocal timbre and phrasing instead of filtering Buck’s spirit through his own voice. Add to that the instrumental re-creations and the album winds up sounding like Karaoke Buck — surely not their intention, but that’s how it plays out.

Conveying how Buck sounded onstage and on records might seem like a good idea on the surface. On the other hand, a huge percentage of Buck’s recorded output is easily available (including DVDs of his own 1960s TV show “Buck Owens Ranch”, with he and the Buckaroos at the top of their game). The Derailers would have been wiser to unleash their creativity and loosen the reins, as Yoakam did. Buck, who did his own experimenting from 1969’s “Who’s Gonna Mow Your Grass” until his final Capitol contract ended, surely wouldn’t have minded.

The past three years have seen unending Johnny and June Carter Cash homages in music and literature (Cash impersonators, a la Elvis and Patsy Cline imitators, are even starting to sprout up in clubs). It raises interesting questions of how Buck Owens’ legacy will fare long-term. That’s not totally clear, but one hopes those who want to pay him homage will remember the adventurous side and his unwillingness to stand still.