Yoakam’s music updates tradition with glamour, and continues the Bakersfield sound of California country pioneers such as Owens and Wynn Stewart. Along with guitarist Pete Anderson, whose powerful guitar and sympathetic production would become an important part of Yoakam’s subsequent hit recordings, the singer moved to the Golden State in 1978 after rejection in Nashville. Once on the West Coast, Yoakam became part of a post-punk-rock scene that included other artists with a similar feel for combining roots and experimentation. He played shows alongside such bands as Rank and File and the Blasters, both of which owed a debt to the hardcore sounds of ’50s and ’60s country and the country-rock of Gram Parsons and the Byrds.

Although Yoakam made his debut on an independently recorded EP, A Town South of Bakersfield, in 1984, it was the 1986 release of Guitars, Cadillacs Etc. Etc. that established him as the latest in a line of neo-traditionalist artists who had come to prominence in the early part of the decade. And like John Anderson, Ricky Skaggs and George Strait, Yoakam toed the line between reverence for past glories and a desire to remake country in his own image. Guitars, Cadillacs produced two top-ten country singles: a brilliant cover of Johnny Horton’s “Honky Tonk Man” and the title track. He continued to have hits throughout the decade, while he proved himself master of his own slightly enigmatic but always intelligently presented persona.

In the ’90s, Yoakam and Anderson made records such as This Time and Gone, which produced more hit singles. The voice soared and seemed, at times, to comment on the down side of romance and success, while Anderson’s tightly wound licks dramatized every moment. Anderson produced 2003’s Population: Me; that record’s closing song, “The Back of Your Hand,” remains among Yoakam’s most devastating. Yoakam had also begun an acting career, notably in Billy Bob Thornton’s 1996 Sling Blade, and has continued to take on dramatic roles. After a split with Anderson, Yoakam produced 2005’s Blame the Vain and two years later released Dwight Sings Buck, a spirited tribute to one of the giants of the California-Nashville sound that Yoakam has drawn upon throughout his career. Like Owens, Yoakam is an innovator whose career proves that intelligent experimentation will always have a place in country music.

In addition, BMI songwriter Billy Bob Thornton took part in a Q&A session moderated by journalist and producer of “The Black List” Elvis Mitchell.

A video stream of the event has been posted by LAist.

More coverage of BMI's activities at SXSW2008 is available here.

Shown at the scoring session are "Bad Santa" director Terry Zwigoff, BMI's Doreen Ringer Ross, BMI composer David Kitay and actor Tony Cox (front row).

]]> 2003-11-04T17:00:00-05:00 http://www.bmi.com/musicworld/entry/233771 Burnett, T-Bone, Harris, Emmylou, Henley, Don, R.E.M., Thornton, Billy Bob, Yoakam, Dwight, Zevon, Warren, Pop, Rock, Feature As a songwriter, Warren Zevon is one of the most articulate and witty observers of the vicissitudes, absurdities and ironies of modern life. He's given us glimpses at the "Werewolves Of London, the "Excitable Boy" and "Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner." He has called for "Lawyers, Guns and Money, done time in the "Detox Mansion, and shown us what it's like to be "Poor Poor Pitiful Me." And now the man who sang "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" is giving us all a lesson, tragic as it may be, in how to die with dignity and purpose.

Diagnosed with incurable lung cancer in August of 2002, Zevon promptly set out to do what he has done all along: take the tragicomedy of existence and fashion it into musical art. Given three months to live, he has already stuck around for close to a year in order to give us The Wind, likely his final album. "I was more prolific than I'd ever been, notes Zevon. "I had this goal and it kept me going." As a measure of the esteem his peers feel for Zevon, the set includes guest appearances by Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Timothy B. Schmit, Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris, Dwight Yoakam, Billy Bob Thornton, Ry Cooder, T-Bone Burnett, Tommy Shaw, David Lindley and John Waite.

Such admiration is the just due for one of the bravest songwriters of his day, maybe ever. Zevon explored the dark side in song like a film noir private eye — and became friends with such crime fiction masters as Ross MacDonald and Carl Hiaasen — which seems only natural for a Los Angeles-reared artist who reveled in complexity and contradiction.

Trained as a classical pianist, Zevon first made his mark writing pop songs for The Turtles and playing with The Everly Brothers. The 1976 release of Warren Zevon brought him immediate critical acclaim, and '78's Excitable Boy album hit the Top 10. His stature was such that in the late 1980s, members of R.E.M. played on Zevon's Sentimental Hygiene and formed a side group with him, The Hindu Love Gods. In recent years, Zevon continued to prove his ongoing creative fire with the ironically titled albums Life'll Kill Ya and My Ride's Here (his ride being a hearse).

Being at death's door has taught Zevon "to value every moment, and do so with typically dark humor and aplomb. When David Letterman recently devoted an entire show to the singer/songwriter, Zevon noted how facing his own mortality showed him "how much you're supposed to enjoy every sandwich."

And as he presciently noted in 1983, "If you're lucky, people like something you do early and something you do just before you drop dead. That's as many pats on the back as you should expect." But thanks to his music and indomitable spirit, Zevon's legacy shall no doubt live forever.

Indeed, though he only emerged recently from the streets of his native Brooklyn, Mos Def has already demonstrated the style, integrity and relentless drive of a true artist. His irrepressible creativity can be attributed to his desire to alter social perceptions. "As a black man, I don't want to live in any of the boxes they've arranged for me, no matter how comfortable or tidy those boxes are," Mos Def told Essence magazine. "So, I resist all of the labels."

For Mos Def, resisting all the labels has resulted in his most audacious triumph yet. The rapper recently made his stage debut in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play, Topdog/Underdog. Assuming the role of Booth - a part initially performed by the much more experienced Don Cheadle - Mos Def has won unanimous praise for his stage debut. Describing the "marvelous" performances of Mos Def and co-star Jeffrey Wright, the New York Daily News wrote: "[they give] this material the vitality and sheen of elegant jazz riffs."

Born Dante Beze, Mos Def surfaced in 1994 as a guest rapper on recordings by UTD and De La Soul. In 1998, he joined Talib Kweli to become a founding member of the rap duo Black Star. Striking out on his own in 1999, Def's debut solo album, Black on Both Sides, melded activist rhymes with old-school funk rhythms and worldbeat melodies. Drawing favorable comparisons to rap pioneers like Public Enemy, KRS-1 and Rakim, Black on Both Sides is considered by many pundits to be a contemporary hip-hop classic.

In 2000, Def took a temporary respite from music to explore other areas of entertainment. As host of HBO's Def Poetry Jam, he established himself as an influential force on the spoken word scene. Around the same time, the rapper made a typically splashy acting debut. Demonstrating the same slow-burning charm he exhibited on his rap recordings, Def won praise for his role in Spike Lee's controversial film Bamboozled. The rapper then appeared in MTV's Carmen: A Hip-Hopera, opposite Beyoncé Knowles of Destiny's Child. Capping off a spectacularly productive year, Def was acclaimed for his acting role in Monster's Ball, a role that found him acting opposite Halle Berry, Billy Bob Thornton, and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.

Now, with the recent success of "Top Dog/Underdog," Mos Def has successfully transformed himself into a rapping/acting double threat. But just when it seemed he had accomplished enough, along comes news of Black Jack Johnson, the debut album featuring Mos Def and an all-star rock lineup. Featuring former members of Parliament/Funkadelic, Living Colour and Bad Brains, the band promises to set a new rap-rock standard.

There's British-billy Elton John joining the maestro in the down-home Elton/Bernie Taupin tour de fields "Country Comfort." Sounding anything like a "Sir," Elton launches visions of a rocker gone country, adorned not in glitter but in jeans, and rocking not on stage but in a wooden chair on an Appalachian front porch.

Enter Kentucky hillbilly Dwight Yoakam, joining forces on "Borrowed Love," a Yoakam/Scruggs (Earl and son Randy) dirge, warning that borrowed love is never cheap. A real Billy - Billy Bob Thornton - adds his unique Texas/Hollywood take to the Merle Kilgore/June Carter Cash classic "Ring of Fire."

Those anticipating the high, lonesome sound of traditional bluegrass, elevated so elegantly through the years by such masters as Scruggs, Lester Flatt and Bill Monroe, are in for a shock with the appearances of global superstars who rushed to record with Scruggs: Rocker-billies Sting, Don Henley and John Fogerty; movie-billy Steve Martin, who handles his banjo solo with aplomb; cosmic-billy Leon Russell and veteran country-crooner blueblood billies like Rosanne Cash, Johnny Cash, Marty Stuart, Vince Gill, and Travis Tritt.

This is not an album review. Its just one indication of the importance the music world regards the legend of Earl Scruggs.

Add Paul Shaffer and Melissa Etheridge to the heady company for the still-unassuming North Carolina native whose farmer/bookkeeper father also played some pretty mean banjo and fiddle, as did Earl's brothers and sisters. Early on, Earl lost his father, then lost himself in the banjo, rubbing melodies from his genie of wood and strings. At the tender age of 10, he honed a three-finger picking style that revolutionized the role of that instrument. Earl's obsession with the five-string banjo increased during his high school years in Boiling Springs, N.C., where he improved his stylings every chance between schoolwork and farm chores.

Young Scruggs played his banjo with abandon until he suddenly realized he was using three digits instead of two. For an entire week, he perfected the song "Ruben" using the three-finger method. He applied it to other songs, in different tunings, smoothing and straightening rollicking melodies into what has become known as the "Scruggs Style."

More expertise came as a member of Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys, where he and fellow member Lester Flatt later split to form the famed Flatt & Scruggs duo, scoring the first number one bluegrass smash, "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," the theme song to the hit TV show The Beverly Hillbillies. Earl's evergreen "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" gained international fame when featured in the movie Bonnie and Clyde. Flatt & Scruggs broke up in 1969 when Earl formed the Earl Scruggs Review, backed by his sons, Randy (producer of the new album and an acclaimed musician himself), Gary and the late Steve. Keeping it in the family, Earl's wife, Louise, has been his long-term manager - not an easy calling in the then-female glass-ceiling Nashville days of the '50s and '60s.

From the Grand Ole Opry to grand new Grammys, Scruggs has enjoyed a career that's now at its zenith: BMI, CMA and Grammy awards, appearances on Letterman and Leno, and a role in the new Faye Dunaway movie, Colored Eggs.

Bluegrass music has come and gone in favor more often than Michael Jordan comebacks. But Scruggs has the perspective gained by a half century on the job: "It will always have its peaks and valleys," he observes. "But any good music is going to stay around."

Newly inducted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame, Stuart tallied hits on major labels and crafted such ambitious projects as his critically acclaimed concept album The Pilgrim.

"My bedrock is all of the above, and what I'm doing at the moment," explains Stuart, whose state of the art moment is now writing songs. Although The Pilgrim didn't climb into the upper reaches of the charts, the ambitious effort earned two Grammy nominations and led him into new avenues of creativity. "I knew that was a commercial disaster" he says, "but I knew I had to do it because it would pull back in some of the credibility I had squandered. After that album, I made a conscience call . . . and wiped the board completely clean."

Marty and his wife, Grand Ole Opry great Connie Smith, then headed to Hawaii for a month. "When I came back and started following my heart, it turned into the busiest and most productive period of my life," notes Stuart. "You find out how much fire you've got left and where it really burns."

Recent creative highlights include scoring the Billy Bob Thornton movie All The Pretty Horses, writing and performing the end-title ballad and producing the soundtrack CD, which earned a Golden Globe nomination. He also worked with Faye Dunaway on music for her short film production of Tennessee Williams's Yellow Bird.

As a producer, Stuart has collaborated on two albums with Thornton. "We have that southern connection," advises Marty. "He's a man of vision and integrity. He fights, and lives and breathes for the same principles in Hollywood that I love here."

Marty's TV credits run from A&E's Biography to Austin City Limits. Journalist Marty has graced the pages of the prestigious Oxford American while photographer Marty has shot engaging images for books, magazines, album covers and gallery exhibitions. And songwriter Stuart has won numerous BMI Awards.

A leading historian of country music, Marty serves as President of the Country Music Foundation, and applauds the opening of Nashville's new Country Music Hall of Fame, which contains artifacts from his own collection. The multi-talented minstrel, who started touring at age 13 playing mandolin for Lester Flatt, appears destined to one day become a member of that elite group of country greats.

"When it's all said and done," he observes, "that's where we want to be. That's where our treasures go and our legacy lives."

But even by his exacting standards, Prine’s latest album is a bold move. In Spite of Ourselves finds the singer interpreting 16 honky-tonk classics originally recorded by country legends like George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Jim Reeves and Tex Ritter. To make the concept even more interesting, Prine performs duets with acclaimed country divas such as Emmylou Harris, Trisha Yearwood, Patty Loveless and Lucinda Williams. Says Prine: “I sat down and made myself a dream list of duet partners, then we started calling people up. To my surprise, they all said yes. I like singing with girls. It kinda takes the edge off my voice.”

For Prine, In Spite of Ourselves marks a triumphant return to the recording fold. The singer, who recently rebounded from cancer surgery, has reemerged with a vengeance. Aside from the critically acclaimed In Spite of Ourselves, Prine has scored a role in Billy Bob Thornton‘s upcoming Miramax film, Daddy & Them.