Dwight Yoakam - Dwight Sings Buck

Dwight Yoakam pays his debts in full on Dwight Sings Buck, a 2007 salute to Buck Owens, the Bakersfield hero who shaped his sound more than anyone.

The connection ran deep. Yoakam had championed Owens when Nashville had all but forgotten him, coaxing him back into the spotlight and sharing a hit duet with him in 1988. When Owens died in 2006, a tribute felt inevitable, yet this one plays less like a memorial than a celebration, cut with the same twang and swagger that once made those old Capitol singles leap out of jukeboxes.

The songs fly by in a rush of bright, trebly guitar and crisp shuffles. My Heart Skips a Beat and Act Naturally crackle with honky-tonk electricity, Close Up the Honky Tonks swings with barroom ache, and Together Again lets Yoakam's high, keening voice linger over one of the loveliest heartbreak songs country music has ever produced.

Rather than copying the originals note for note, he plays them with the respect of a disciple and the confidence of a peer, keeping the arrangements lean and the harmonies tight. It is a joyful handshake between two generations of West Coast country, and a reminder of how much of Yoakam's own style was born on Buck's records in the first place.