Dwight Yoakam
Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., released in 1986, was Dwight Yoakam's debut album, a country record that established him as a singer, guitarist, and songwriter working within the country music tradition.
Yoakam was born on October 23, 1956, in Pikeville, and he later attended Northland High School before enrolling at Ohio State University. His career developed across more than one discipline. A musician and composer as well as a singer-songwriter, he also worked as an actor, a screenwriter, and a film director, moving between country music and the screen with considerable range. That work in country music brought him the Country Music Association Award for International Achievement and the Americana Award for Artist of the Year, two recognitions that together span the mainstream of the genre and its more roots-oriented dimensions.
The reach of his work found further acknowledgment in the form of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a distinction that reflects his standing in both music and film. That star on Hollywood Boulevard stands as a concrete marker of a career conducted across multiple disciplines, one that began with his 1986 debut and has encompassed country music, acting, directing, and screenwriting in the decades since.
Quotes by Dwight Yoakam
But that is a valid, continuing service that that music – which is, in some cases, 80 or 90 years old – is rendering. And proving its own timelessness.
I think actors are at the mercy of the opportunities presented to them. So you kind of have to wait for them to choose you. My music is insular – I can choose that.
I hope that books don’t go the way of albums and CD, large format albums, and physical product.
We started shooting, and then Jodie found out she was pregnant. Forest broke it to me – he’d gone to work and heard it on the radio! It seemed like the movie was doomed. But, like these characters, there was a disregard for all the signs along the way.
Ironically, the success I’ve experienced at country radio has left me ostracized from pop and other formats of radio.
The actual work of recording a record or making a film just requires that you consciously block the time out to do that and nothing else. That’s what I do.
I’m really proud of it. To me, it’s a movie about character behavior and the pecking order of the pack, as well as the central character’s massive survival guilt.
I am probably the last of a generation able to gain an education in country music by osmosis, by sitting in a ’64 Ford banging the buttons on the radio.
I was very fortunate in having David Fincher, the director come to me. Now I’ve seen the finished product, I feel that every bit of the nine months we spent on the film was worth it.
