Dwight Yoakam at Terminal 5

Dwight Yoakam was born in Pikeville, Kentucky, but was raised in Columbus, Ohio. During his high school years, Yoakam sang and played guitar with local garage bands. Aiming for higher goals, he attempted to gain some traction in Nashville, Tennessee, but the lords of country music were more interested in the urban cowboy genre than his honky-tonk roots music. In 1977, intending to become a recording artist, he moved to Los Angeles, California. Eschewing the country circuit, he performed his pioneering style of neo-traditional music in rock and punk clubs, playing alongside roots-rock and punk acts. Ultimately reaching a diverse audience, Yoakam sold more than 25 million records. He has 12 gold albums, and nine platinum albums, including the triple-platinum This Time. Yoakam was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame on October 14, 2019. Yoakam's flourishing acting career perhaps has diminished his recorded output, however; his 15th and most recent album is 2016's Swimmin' Pools, Movie Stars.

With no new album to promote, Dwight Yoakam's performance tonight at Terminal 5 possibly was inspired by his entrenchment in his 18-month-old satellite radio station, Dwight Yoakam and the Bakersfield Beat. His most recent studio album was a bluegrass album, but his concert hinted minimally to mountain music. Instead, Yoakam was more than ever a country music revivalist, honing in on California's country sounds of the early 1960s. While he frequently reinterprets cover songs, the set seemed to pivot on more covers than usual, including songs popularized by Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Buck Owens & the Buckaroos, Merle Haggard & the Strangers, Johnny Horton, Lefty Frizzell and others. Yoakam sang well, reliving the lilts and twangs that made this music authentically American home-grown. His three backing musicians supported him well. The diminishing factor was that there is more to Yoakam than the Bakersfield Beat, and this was not entirely evident at his concert.