Zen and the art of keeping it country

The joy of live performance is in accepting the offers of the gods on the night, honky-tonk star Dwight Yoakam tells Tony Clayton-Lea

Dwight Yoakam has always sought success: the 50-year-old Kentucky native dropped out of Ohio State University (where he studied history and philosophy) and went to Nashville in search of, at the very least, a measure of it. Surely there, he thought, he would find a following for his dead-centre honky tonk, a music influenced by two of the honky-tonk greats, Lefty Frizell and Buck Owens. The committee at the Grand Ole Opry, however, had other ideas - Yoakam's honky tonk, they deemed, was too "old" country. What they meant, implies Yoakam, is that it was too authentic. So began a lifetime of antipathy toward the Nashville country/pop music scene, a niggling grudge the country singer still harbours.

In 1978, Yoakam moved from Nashville to Los Angeles, where he found his niche during the nights and at weekends by playing with various up-and-coming roots bands (including Los Lobos). During the day, he earned a crust as a truck driver, but as the months and the miles drifted by he could feel good things were about to happen. Years passed. And then more years. By the time he was approaching 30, Yoakam began to wonder if his ambitions of becoming a chart-topping honky-tonk singer were perhaps out of his reach.

Twenty years later, sprawled on a comfy sofa in his LA-based record company's offices, talking to the European media in preparation for a forthcoming tour (including an Irish date at the Midlands Festival, July 29th) Yoakam ponders on his late start and his subsequent recognition as one of the leading artists of the new era of country music.

"I waited a long time to get the opportunity to record and release albums," he says in a drawl that sounds tired and weary after a full day of promotional duties. "It has given me - and continues to give me - pleasure."

Time is a problem, he admits.

"This year and last year we were touring extensively for my latest album, Blame the Vain, and when we finish touring in November I'm looking forward to going back into the studio. I have a continued stream of musical ideas with little time to bring them to fruition. We didn't tour too much in 2004; we had the previous few years, and for the first time in a decade I had the opportunity to come back to Europe, which was a great sense of reacquainting myself with the audience I found in the mid-1980s."

Is he something of a workaholic, a man making up for the lost time, in a manner of speaking, of his 20s? "Maybe - hey, it's hard to hit a moving target. I guess I'd be foolish to wait around on the opportunities for the next career I might have."

There probably won't be a next career - Yoakam already has two on the boil, and divides his time (perhaps not equally) and his passion (50/50) between music and acting.

While his music has garnered the type of plaudits normally reserved for rock stars (Rolling Stone once said of him that he is "neither safe nor tame. Yoakam has adopted Elvis's devastating hip swagger, Hank Williams's crazy-ass stare and Merle Haggard's brooding solitude into one lethal package. He is a cowgirl's secret darkest dream"), his acting has delivered some very useful character roles in the likes of Sling Blade, The Minus Man, Panic Room and, more recently, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

He has also added director/writer to his list of credits with 2000's South of Heaven, West of Hell, a well received Western where he was assisted by a notable cast that included friends and colleagues Billy Bob Thornton, Peter and Bridget Fonda, and Vince Vaughn.

"Acting has a greater affinity with what I do in the recording studio," offers Yoakam, "in that it's about executing something with the safety net of editing or multiple takes that are available to you. It tends to expect a more complete thought in execution. Whereas doing live performances - be they in music or theatre, which I've also done - is performing without a net. There's a certain exhilaration to playing live, though, and it's sometimes frustrating if things don't go according to plan. But I've tried over the years to accept that as the universal expression of the offers of the gods on any given night."

It's better to embrace whatever happens, he allows, to accept if not embrace the moment. "Playing live is more like sailing a ship than driving on a highway and choosing specific gears. You're so at the mercy of the elements when you play music live, and the best lesson - like when you're dealing with the sea and the currents - is to be acutely aware of what the sea is doing. Because what the sea wants to do - not what you want to do - is what will decide how you set your course.

"The energy of the moment delivers the goods. The minute I get on stage and turn to face the audience I'm looking to escape with them via the energy that comes from me and them."

This is all very Zen-like, and far removed from the primal forces of what spurred Yoakam on in the first place (guitars, Cadallics, girls), but he talks about embracing the communal event of the live-gig experience in a serious way, as if over the years it has grown in importance, has become more relevant.

"The thing about live performances is what goes wrong most of the time is a technical thing, and that breaks the Zen-like state of what you're trying to do. It's like the Beatles lyric in I Am the Walrus - you are me and we are here and we are all together, or something like that. We're all together, man! And that's what I'm trying to achieve. I've been trying to do it with my guitar and my voice from the time I was a child on the front porch in the holler in Kentucky to right now, still to this day and this moment."

Both acting and music are an intrinsic part of his creative approach, he explains, because they each stem from an intuitive point of view. "It was a wonderful experience working with Tommy Lee Jones (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) - it felt as if we were doing a play, executing a scene and allowing it to live without interruption. Also, working with director David Fincher (Panic Room) was a great thing for me. It was interesting hearing him later describe what it was like working with the likes of myself, Jodie Foster and Forest Whitaker on that movie. He confirmed that I approached acting in the same way as my music - the way that Elvis Presley once described it, too - let's get real gone. In other words, to transcend this time and place."

The former philosophy student and one-time beau of Sharon Stone has other words of advice before he goes; life, he says, is a series of lessons learnt. In the disciplines of music and acting it is best, he suggests, to try not to control direction. "If you do, then one of two things might happen - you'll stifle and suffocate it, or you'll find that its beauty has slipped through your grasp. Allow yourself," he says, "to be a conduit for the expression of feeling."

Yee-haw hoedowns and country music clichés? Not with this guy. It's no wonder Nashville was scared.

Dwight Yoakam performs in the

Midlands Music Festival, Ballinlough Castle, Athboy, Co Meath, on Sat, July 29; www.midlandsmusicfestival.ie. Blame the Vain is on New West Records