Chronicles the musical life of the country star who has made a career of blending disparate influences, drawing on interviews to explore his authenticity and success as an artist.

Dwight Yoakam has long been known to country music fans as a musiciam who is as much artist as he is superstar. Over the course of his fifteen-year career, he has received fourteen Grammy nominations. One reviewer described his work this way: "Yoakam's lyrics--Leonard Cohen meets Ernest Tubb--work so well because they're literary without being high-minded. The artfulness of the words . . . doesn't always hit you until you read them on the lyric sheet." Newsweek called Yoakam's most recent record--titled, like his book, A Long Way Home--"a daring departure. It's lush and languid, more introspective than hit-driven. He's looking for subtle emotions, melodic evocations of the distances between people, and he draws on sources as varied as Bobby Darin, Chet Baker, and Buck Owens to get there." A Long Way Home is the first collection of Yoakam's lyrics in book form. It spans his career, from such early albums as Hillbilly Deluxe and Buenas Noches from a Lonely Room to the recently released, critically acclaimed A Long Way Home. Yoakam's songwriting is really storytelling--he poetically writes of subjects ranging from God to drinking to love--and proves him to be as fine a writer as he is a musician.

(Guitar Recorded Versions). This singer/songwriter-cum-actor has charted more than 30 singles on the Billboard Hot Country charts. Here are notes & tab for 11 of his very best: Ain't That Lonely Yet * Bury Me * Fast as You * Guitars, Cadillacs * Honky Tonk Man * Little Sister * Little Ways * Long White Cadillac * Please, Please Baby * Things Change * Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose.

“[A] compulsively readable biography . . . Essential for fans of Yoakam and lovers of good music writing.” ―Library Journal From his formative years playing pure hardcore honky-tonk for mid-’80s Los Angeles punk rockers through his subsequent surge to the top of the country charts, Dwight Yoakam has enjoyed a singular career. An electrifying live performer, superb writer, and virtuosic vocalist, he’s successfully bridged two musical worlds that usually have little use for each other: commercial country and its alternative/Americana/roots-rocking counterpart. Defying the label “too country for rock, too rock for country,” Yoakam has triumphed while many of his peers have had to settle for cult acceptance. Four decades into his career, he’s sold more than twenty-five million records and continues to tour regularly. Now award-winning music journalist Don McLeese offers the first musical biography of this acclaimed artist. Tracing the seemingly disparate influences in Yoakam’s music, McLeese shows how he’s combined rock and roll, rockabilly, country, blues, and gospel into a seamless whole. In particular, McLeese explores the essential issue of “authenticity” and how it applies to Yoakam, as well as to country music and popular culture in general. Drawing on wide-ranging interviews with Yoakam and his management, while also benefiting from the perspectives of others closely associated with his success (including producer-guitarist Pete Anderson, partner throughout Yoakam’s most popular and creative decades), Dwight Yoakam pays tribute to the musician who has established himself as a visionary beyond time, an artist who could title an album Tomorrow’s Sounds Today and deliver it.

Dwight Yoakam's sound breaks down barriers and reaches across a vast musical spectrum. This phenomenal folio presents more than 55 of his hot hits, including: Buenas Noches from a Lonely Room (She Wore Red Dresses) * Honky Tonk Man * Little Sister * Long White Cadillac * Streets of Bakersfield * Pocket of a Clown and more.

(E-Z Play Today). 13 songs from roots-rocking country star Dwight Yoakam, including: Guitars, Cadillacs * Honky-Tonk Man * I Got You * I Sang Dixie * If There Was a Way * Little Sister * Little Ways * Long White Cadillac * Nothing's Changed Here * Please, Please Baby * Streets of Bakersfield * Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose * You're the One.