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Dwight Yoakam

Dwight Yoakam Books

Singer-songwriter

Dwight Yoakam, born on October 23, 1956, is a renowned American country music singer and songwriter. His music style blends elements of country, rock, and blues, and since the release of his debut album in 1986, Dwight Yoakam has won the hearts of fans around the world with his unique voice and heartfelt songs.

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Related Quotes

“Buddy , you might think that I've lost my mind. But mister, I'd pay twice to do it one more time.”

Thinking Mind Might Lost Pay Insanity More Time Buddy Lost My Mind

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“As a writer, I always tend to take the liberty and the great artistic luxury of a composite form of writing.”

Writing Form Liberty Luxury Artistic Great Art Great Artist Composites

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“As an artist, you have to maintain focus and eliminate the distraction of second-guessing yourself based on the opinions of others.”

Artist Opinion Focus Distraction Guessing Second Guessing Second Guessing Yourself

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“Country music originates with the colloquial, rural aspects of white America. It's really, truly, rural white America's blues.”

Country America White Aspect

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“Film acting has been a very pure experience, because you have to give the purest form of yourself as an artist.”

Giving Has Beens Film Form Artist Acting Pure Film Acting

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“However you arrive at the ability to ignore self-doubt - if you can acquire it or possess it or find it or discover it - move beyond self-doubt.”

Ifs Self Moving Ability Doubt Acquire Self-doubt

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I don't regret any of the musical decisions I have made.”

Made Decision Regret Musical Don't Regret

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I embrace country music because of love, a love of what I came from.”

Country Music Is Embrace

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I like order. It allows me to have chaos in my head.”

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I live out of cans a lot. But I try to indulge only in healthy canned food.”

Trying Healthy Indulge Canned Food

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I'll never quit playing country music, or at least acknowledging it, always, as the cornerstone of what I am.”

Country Quitting Never Quit Cornerstones

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I've always been just kind of consumed by my own thoughts.”

Kind My Own Consumed

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“Music's the one thing I try not to analyze. I don't want to destroy the magic that has always been there for me.”

Want Trying Magic One Thing

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“Musicians exist independent of any of the marketing terms or the categorization.”

Term Musician Independent Marketing Categorization

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“No compression or as little as possible - that's how you get a good recording.”

Littles Compression

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“The future has a lot to do with the past.”

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“We share something in common with the fabric of the whole universe that connects us.”

Whole Universe Common Share Fabric

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“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.”

Country Able Lasts Generations Sitting Gains Radio Buttons Banging Osmosis

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“In the dark morning silence, I placed a gun to her head. She wore red dresses, but now she lay dead.”

Evil Dark Silence Morning Gun Red Dresses Lays Misogyny Evil Women

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“To me, the hook of the riff is what makes a great guitar recording. It's the backbone of the whole song. When you have a strong riff, it's the rocket fuel for the track.”

Whole Song Strong Guitar Track Fuel Hook Rockets Backbone

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“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.”

Film Records Block

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I needed to get into a nightclub and stand up and present the material that way. I needed to present it live.”

Way Materials Needed Nightclubs

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I think that we come to a greater understanding of the world we live in and ourselves through reading.”

Thinking World Reading Understanding Greater

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I hope that books don't go the way of albums and CD, large format albums, and physical product.”

Way Book Products Albums Cds Format

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“My music is very personal. I've created it in solitude. I face a white wall and beller. I like that sound - the expression of loneliness. That's what it's all about.”

Faces Sound White Loneliness Expression Wall Solitude Music Is White Walls

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“My parents were not affluent people and were not - didn't come from the extremities of education. My mother had a high school diploma. I often think I so wish she'd come out of the hills in Appalachia and been able to go on to college. I think she would have made a wonderful teacher.”

People Thinking Made Able School Mother Wish Parent Teacher Wonderful College Goes On High School Hills Affluent Diploma Extremity Appalachia Wonderful Teacher High School Diploma

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“Quality is timeless: It will clearly define itself.”

Quality Timeless

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I heard more of the stories from my mother and my granny and my aunts that would describe what they had known that he didn't often talk about. I remember seeing [grandfather] as a child. He was working in a mine that was fairly close to their home there in Betsy Lane, Ky., and it was so close in proximity that he wouldn't clean up or shower there. He would just drive back home. And I remember one time seeing him come in and it was like seeing an alien person show up because he was still covered in coal dust and soot, and it had a profound impact on me.”

“In retrospect I wrote things about my life and my family's existence, I realized that it was a frighteningly harsh way to make a living. And I used to say that they were slowly dying trying to make a living.”

Way Trying Used Existence Dying My Family I Realized Harsh Retrospect

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“[My grandfather -a miner] had black lung, and he didn't talk about it much. It's almost like a combat veteran. But he witnessed some horrific things.”

Black Combat Grandfather Veteran Lungs My Grandfather Horrific Miners Combat Veterans

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“[My grandfather] was very, very fortunate that he was never trapped in a mining cave-in. But he lost his brother in a mining disaster on a shift that he wasn't working. And he was in a collapse where his brother-in-law was killed very near him in the same section.”

Law Lost Brother Disaster Fortunate Collapse Trapped Grandfather Sections Caves My Grandfather In-laws Mining Brother In Law

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I always knew about as a kid, knew that that particular injury at [my grandfather's] finger had been caused in that disaster that killed his brother-in-law, my grandmother's brother. And he never talked about his own brother's death to me. My mother told me about that and told me about the impact on her family. And that's part of what you hear in the first verse of "Miner's Prayer."”

Firsts Kids Law Mother Prayer Particular Brother Impact Fingers Disaster Injury Grandmother Grandfather Verses My Grandmother My Grandfather In-laws Miners Brother In Law

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I wrote "Miner's Prayer" after [grandfather] died. I'd gone back to his funeral, and he died in 1979. And I came back to California, and I think a couple of weeks after that funeral wrote that song thinking about him, his life.”

Thinking Song Prayer Gone Week Couple Died California Funeral Grandfather Miners Father Died Grandfather Died

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“Sadly, I wish I had been able to play ["Miner's Prayer"] for [grandfather]. Yeah, I'll never escape the influence of him in my life. And my - his wife, my grandmother, Earlene Tibbs - those experiences with them shaped me musically probably more profoundly than anything else in my life and shaped me as a writer.”

Play Able Wish Prayer Wife Influence Yeah Grandmother Grandfather My Grandmother Miners

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“They both sang. My grandmother had a very haunted mountain voice and would sing hymns. My grandpa would sing but in a very, very subdued way.”

Way Voice Mountain Grandmother My Grandmother Hymns Grandpa

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“The congregation that I was raised in was one that sang and a non-instrumental fashion. It was all a cappella singing, and so that had a major influence on me.”

Influence Fashion Majors Singing Raised Congregation

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“Those songs [from church], I think, shaped to some degree how I would evolve as a writer, pentameter of songs, the melodies of those kind of hillbilly hymns - I used to refer to them - because they were not Southern gospel as much as they were passed down from Scottish Welsh Protestant hymnals.”

Thinking Kind Used Song Church Degrees Evolve Melody Southern Protestants Scottish Hymns Welsh Hillbilly

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I listen to hundreds of those hymns sung repeatedly over the years of my life. And I know that they probably influenced a rhyme scheme maybe to certain extent. They influenced the pentameter of placement of words, etc. And it's not something that's a conscious thing that occurred.”

Knows Years Certain Conscious Etc Schemes Rhyme Hymns Placement

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“It's more in retrospect as I've thought about it over the years and look back at what I wrote, how I wrote things - like there's a song that Ralph Stanley later recorded with me that he had guested on my record what was called "Travelers Lantern" that I wrote as basically, you know, a hymn.”

Knows Years Looks Song Records Traveler Hymns Retrospect Stanley Lanterns

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I guess I stayed with the faith. I mean, organized religion is not something that I've maintained a direct connection to in my life, but the spirituality of it has had an indelible impact on my life and remains with me.”

Mean Spirituality Direct Connections Remains Impact Organized Organized Religion Indelible

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I don't really drink, but I've been around a lot of drinking and, at 18, when you start playing in bars, you start to witness the good, the bad and the ugly of alcohol as a source of escape. I wrote about it because I witnessed its use as a means of medicating - a lot of people using it to medicate themselves from hurt.”

People Mean Use Hurt Source Drink Drinking Ugly Alcohol Bars Witness Good The Bad And The Ugly

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I was raised in the Church of Christ, which was a very abstinent faith. And I just didn't [drink] - there was never anything that I found seductive enough, I guess, to have a romance with it.”

Enough Romance Found Christ Church Drink Raised Seductive Church Of Christ

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“When the whistle blows each morning and I walk down in that cold, dark mine, say a prayer to my dear savior. Please let me see the sunshine one more time. When oh when will it be over? When will I lay these burdens down? And when I die, dear lord in heaven, please take my soul from 'neath that cold, dark ground.”

Soul Dies Heaven Dark Prayer Walks Lord Morning Mines Cold Please Let Me Down And Lays Dear Blow Burden My Soul Sunshine More Time Savior Dear Lord

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear falling on my ear the son of God discloses. And he walks with me, and he talks with me. And he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”

Stills Joy Fall Voice Walks Known Share Son Garden Ears Rose Dew Walk With Me

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I tried to pay some small tribute to A Man and a Woman (1966) with the recurring musical theme.”

Men Pay Musical Theme Tribute Recurring

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“I can't escape being born in Pike County, Kentucky, grandson of a miner, Luther Tibbs, and his wife, Earlene, and traveling as a child up and down Route 23 between Kentucky and Columbus, Ohio, where I was raised, experiencing life via working-class people. Nor do I want to escape.”

People Want Children I Can Born Class Wife Raised Working Class Routes Luther Up And Down County Ohio Columbus Kentucky Miners Grandson Columbus Ohio

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“Ironically, the success I've experienced at country radio has left me ostracized from pop and other formats of radio.”

Country Left Radio Pops Format

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“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.”

Thinking Kind I Can Actors Opportunity Waiting Music Music Is Mercy

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“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.”

Feels Film Bits Products Months Directors Finished Nine Fortunate Worth It Nine Months

Author:Dwight Yoakam

“In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.”

Years Ideas Able Past Song House Memories Habit Bases Constant Commit Bags Tape Recorders Cassettes

Author:Dwight Yoakam

About the Author

Born: October 23, 1956
Known for: Singer-songwriter
Quotes: 61

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Grandfather Thinking Country Miners Song Way Able Hymns Kind Music Is

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