I’m not sure what to make of his cover of Buck Owens’s “Close Up the Honky Tonks,” but I like Dwight. Always have, through thick and thin, even when he was dating Sharon Stone. Naturally, I liked it a little better when Yoakam was going around with another blond on his arm. Starting with their cute version of “Streets of Bakersfield” in 1988, I always thought that Yoakam and Owens made a lovely couple.

Yoakam did a lot to rehabilitate old gizzard lips after decades of syndicated Hee Haw put a huge, goofball-shaped dent in the man’s reputation. But Owens, who died last year, is rightly considered a giant by those of us who sit around thinking about these things. He gave country music a keening, electric edge when it most needed it in the ’60s, introduced Merle Haggard to the world as an original member of his band the Buckaroos, and gave Ringo Starr his theme song. That’s just three out of, I dunno, a million cool things he did.

Like his mentor, Yoakam isn’t afraid to bugger around with country music, and it’s one of the reasons he wipes the floor with any single one of the mulleted freaks from Nashville’s seemingly endless clown parade of one-note wonders. His 1997 album Under the Covers is a case in point. It’s an utterly mental attempt at covering the Beatles, Them, the Rolling Stones, the Clash, the Kinks, and yes, Sonny and Cher. I’m not sure that it works. I’m not sure that Buck Owens’s 1971 album Bridge Over Troubled Water works either, but in any event, I don’t care. I admire the balls.

With Bridge Over Troubled Water, Owens tried on Dylan and Donovan, as well as Simon and Garfunkel; a pretty bold move when the Masters of War could rely on Nashville for a little Red Necks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer-style state propaganda. Ironically, as evidenced by his version of Paul Simon’s “I Am a Rock,” and given the melancholy mood of the time, the one thing Owens could never really pull off was “sad.” “And a rock feels no pain,” he croons in the downbeat middle eight, straining to sound depressed. “And an island never cries...” It’s meant to make us cry, but it can’t, because you half expect Owens to break out with a “hyuk, hyuk, hyuk!” once the band kicks back in.

“Close Up the Honky Tonks” always sounded oddly cheerful coming out of Buck’s mouth, but Yoakam’s version, from his new album Dwight Sings Buck, makes the song’s sadness more explicit. If I’m still ambivalent about the results, I doff my hat to Yoakam’s continued striving. (He should probably keep his hat on, though.)

The Tyee, October 2007