Blame the Vain [Digipak] (CD - 2005)

Personnel: Dwight Yoakam (vocals, acoustic guitar, background vocals); Dwight Yoakam; Al Bonhomme (acoustic guitar); Skip Edwards (pedal steel guitar, piano, Fender Rhodes piano, Wurlitzer piano, Hammond b-3 organ, Wurlitzer organ, synthesizer, hand claps); Phillip Vaiman (violin); Eric Gaenslen, Eric Gaenslen (cello); Jim Barth (strings); Jessica Bolter (oboe); Taras Prodaniuk (bass instrument); Gary Ebbins (hand claps); David Roe , Timothy B. Schmit, Dave Roe (background vocals); Gerry McGee (acoustic guitar); Keith Gattis (electric guitar, hand claps); Thomas Dienner (viola); Lee Thornburg (French horn); Mitch Marine (drums, hand claps); Bobbye Hall (bongos, cowbells, shaker, tambourine, percussion); Jonathan Clark (background vocals).

Audio Mixers: David Leonard; Mike Houge.

Recording information: Track Record, Studio B, North Hollywood, CA.

Photographer: Randee Saint Nicholas.

When Dwight Yoakam burst onto the charts with his first album in 1986, he was the young honky tonk firebrand who set out to remind Nashville of its noble past and celebrate the accomplishments of Bakersfield heroes such as Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. The irony is that nearly 20 years later, Yoakam is in pretty much the same boat as the artists he championed in the 1980s -- he's a respected veteran of the country scene who still has a loyal audience but lost the interest of the major labels and isn't drawing the attention he used to get. But if any of this troubles him, you'd never guess to listen to 2005's Blame the Vain, which is his sharpest and liveliest set in some time. With Yoakam producing himself for a change without the help of longtime studio partner Pete Anderson, Blame the Vain also finds him fronting a new band anchored by guitarist Keith Gattis, and the new blood seems to have done wonders for Yoakam -- while he wasn't exactly in a slump, Blame the Vain boasts a sharper and more energetic approach than his last several efforts, with "Just Passin' Time," "Three Good Reasons," and the title cut revealing that Yoakam is still a honky tonk man supreme. Elsewhere, the whacked-out intro to "She'll Remember" and the ad-libbed final rant on "Intentional Heartache" show Yoakam's firmly in touch with his inner goofball weirdo, the songwriting is both literate and down-home in the manner of his best work, and he sings up a storm from front to back. Two decades into his career, Dwight Yoakam is still the man who is too country for Nashville, and on Blame the Vain he shows he's got too much strength and soul to let anyone hold him down -- this is inspired stuff from a rebel who still has plenty to offer. ~ Mark Deming

Dwight Yoakam is the Baskin-Robbins of heartbreak, turning out more variations on classic lovelorn themes than anyone might have thought possible. As he's done dependably since the mid-1980s, the man who put New Traditionalism on the country music map brings the Buck Owens/Merle Haggard sound into the present, with occasional rock and blues touches. Yoakam reaches even further back on the mournful ballad "Lucky That Way," building on a classic Hank Williams-style template. But he can be unpredictable as well; the anomalous intro to "She'll Remember," awash in synthesizer and jokey British accent, could have slipped off a Blur album, and the wide-screen strings-and-tympani drama of "The Last Heart in Line" finds Yoakam dipping into Roy Orbison territory. In lesser hands, the catalogue of emotional train wrecks that is BLAME THE VAIN might come off monochromatic, but with a master craftsman like Yoakam, the endless stream of subtleties in his multi-hued view of failed romance are consistently involving. minimize