''If There Was a Way'' is the fourth studio album by American
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, o ...
artist
Dwight Yoakam
Dwight David Yoakam (born October 23, 1956) is an American singer-songwriter, actor, and film director. He first achieved mainstream attention in 1986 with the release of his debut album ''Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.''. Yoakam had considerabl ...
, released on October 30, 1990. Five of its tracks would rise into the Top 40 of the
Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...
Hot Country Singles
Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by ''Billboard'' magazine in the United States.
This 50-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly by collecting airplay data from Nielsen BDS along with digital sa ...
chart in 1991 and 1992. They were "Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose" at No. 11, "You're the One" at No. 5, "Nothing's Changed Here" at No. 15, "It Only Hurts When I Cry" at No. 7 "Send a Message to My Heart", (a duet with fellow
Pikeville, Kentucky
Pikeville () is a city in and the county seat of Pike County, Kentucky, United States. During the 2020 U.S. Census, the population within Pikeville's city limits was 7,754.
In Kentucky's current city classification system, Pikeville is a home r ...
native
Patty Loveless
Patty Loveless (born Patricia Lee Ramey, January 4, 1957) is an American country music singer. She began performing in her teenaged years before signing her first recording contract with MCA Records' Nashville division in 1985. While her first ...
) at No. 47, and finally the No. 18 "The Heart That You Own".
Background
After recording three consecutive number one albums, Yoakam released the greatest hits collection ''Just Lookin’ for a Hit'' in 1989. His first three albums, beginning with ''Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.'' in 1986, contained several old songs he demoed in 1982, with producer and guitarist Pete Anderson recalling, “…we’d had twenty-one of his songs to record, and he wrote some new songs along the way. But not a whole album of new songs.” Consequently, his next LP would mostly be a clean slate. Yoakam’s previous album, ''Buenos Noches from a Lonely Room'', gave him his first two chart-topping country hits (“
Streets of Bakersfield
"Streets of Bakersfield" is a 1973 song written by Homer Joy and popularized by Buck Owens. In 1988, Owens recorded a duet version with country singer Dwight Yoakam, which became one of Yoakam's first No. 1 Hot Country Singles hits.
The song, ...
,” a duet with his hero
Buck Owens
Alvis Edgar Owens Jr. (August 12, 1929 – March 25, 2006), known professionally as Buck Owens, was an American musician, singer, songwriter, and band leader. He was the lead singer for Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, which had 21 No. 1 hits on t ...
, and “
I Sang Dixie”) but it was the end of an era of sorts, with the singer later reflecting, “I look at it this way – those albums are trilogies, in a sense, in retrospect. It’s like, I told ‘em what I was gonna tell ‘em…I was tellin’ ‘em where I’d come from, the legacy and culture that shaped my music.” He expanded to ''Country Musics Patrick Carr: "The first three albums were probably my need to express the cornerstones, my foundation musically and the things I first heard from my parents growing up in Ohio, the things they brought with them from Kentucky..."
Recording and composition
''If There Was a Way'' features the most diverse set of material Yoakam had recorded up to that point, introducing rock and soul influences while retaining the
Bakersfield
Bakersfield is a city in Kern County, California, United States. It is the county seat and largest city of Kern County. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Valley (California), Central Valley r ...
honky-tonk
A honky-tonk (also called honkatonk, honkey-tonk, or tonk) is both a bar that provides country music for the entertainment of its patrons and the style of music played in such establishments. It can also refer to the type of piano ( tack piano) ...
sound that made him famous. The biggest departure is the title track, which incorporates a Hammond B-3 organ into the mix, giving the song more of a
Muscle Shoals or
Stax
Streaming API for XML (StAX) is an application programming interface ( API) to read and write XML documents, originating from the Java programming language community.
Traditionally, XML APIs are either:
* DOM based - the entire document is read i ...
sound than Nashville or Bakersfield. Yoakam cited
Percy Sledge
Percy Tyrone Sledge (November 25, 1940 – April 14, 2015) was an American R&B, soul and gospel singer. He is best known for the song " When a Man Loves a Woman", a No. 1 hit on both the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and R&B singles charts in 196 ...
as the primary influence on the recording.
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the dat ...
comments, “The bluesy, doo-woppy,
Doc Pomus
Jerome Solon Felder (June 27, 1925 – March 14, 1991), known professionally as Doc Pomus, was an American blues singer and songwriter. He is best known as the co-writer of many rock and roll hits. Pomus was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hal ...
-inspired rock balladry of the title track is another move toward the margins for Yoakam - especially with the shimmering B-3 work by Skip Edwards.”
A driving doo-wop piano also infuses “I Don’t Need It Done” while “Takes a Lot to Rock You,” “Dangerous Man,” and the cover of
Canned Heat
Canned Heat is an American band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1965. The group is noted for its efforts to promote interest in blues music and its original artists and rock music. It was founded by two blues enthusiasts Alan Wilson and ...
’s magnanimous “Let’s Work Together” boast a more hard-edged rock sound foreshadowed by Yoakam’s psychedelic cover of the
Blasters's “Long White Cadillac” found on ''Just Lookin’ for a Hit'' the previous year.
Another change was Yoakam collaborating with fellow songwriters such as
Kostas and
Roger Miller
Roger Dean Miller Sr. (January 2, 1936 – October 25, 1992) was an American singer-songwriter, widely known for his honky-tonk-influenced novelty songs and his chart-topping country and pop hits " King of the Road", " Dang Me", and "Engl ...
. The album’s first single, “
Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose,” was written by Kostas and Wayland Patton, and it was producer Pete Anderson who brought the song to Yoakam, telling him, “…this is one song I came across that sounds like something you would have written for yourself.” Yoakam and Kostas teamed up to compose “Nothing’s Changed Here,” which Anderson gave a bluesy, swaggering arrangement, and Kostas had a hand in writing the aching “Send a Message to My Heart,” which Yoakam performs as a duet with Patty Loveless. Yoakam’s other songwriting collaboration was on “
It Only Hurts When I Cry” with country legend Roger Miller, and the song, which reached #7 on the country singles chart, contains the famous wordplay found in some of Miller’s biggest hits. In 2015 Yoakam recalled writing with Miller to ''Rolling Stone'': "It was so organic and so easy because of his naturalism and wit and ability. He was a true genius. Roger knew when to say, 'No, you’re right. That’s good. Leave it alone. We don’t need it.' Roger would defer very quickly because he had a great internal artistic barometer, and he’s just one of the true giants in pop music writing."
Although ''If There Was a Way'' shows Yoakam’s “fragmented musical personality",
[ it also contains unremittingly bitter and despairing country originals, such as “Sad, Sad Music” and the metaphorical “The Heart That You Own.” Although the latter only reached #18 on the country singles chart, it remains highly regarded (]Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
covered the song in concert) and proved Yoakam could still write songs of heartache on par with previous classics like “Johnson’s Love,” “1,000 Miles,” and “I Sang Dixie.” A dominant theme found in Yoakam's new songs is the new aloofness or absence of a lover, as he croons on the bridge of "The Distance Between You and Me":
:''I lie awake and here you breathing''
:''Only inches from me in this bed''
:''Not much space but it's all that we needed''
:''To live alone not that out love is dead''
On "Sad, Sad Music" the narrator declares, "I swear that I woke up with you this morning, but I can see that it's been days since you were here..." while "Nothing's Changed Here" contains the lines "I I feel you body lyin' next to mine, I reach out to touch you but you're not there for me to find..." Yoakam carries off these songs vocally with without a trace of irony, and the dark subject matter that dominates them, and the entire LP, may have played a part in his decision to conclude the album with the optimistic "Let's Work Together,' but, as Yoakam biographer Don McLeese writes, that particular cover song "served to show there were interpretive limits to what Dwight could do. He was far more convincing brooding about dark nights of the soul than celebrating the brotherhood of man.”
The album's biggest hit was the ballad “You’re the One,” which reached #5 and was the final song from his 1981 demo session to be used for a major label release. Thom Jurek of AllMusic calls “Since I Started Drinkin’ Again” (another old song played in Yoakam's 1986 set at the Roxy, which can be heard on the Rhino Deluxe Edition of ''Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc, Etc.'') “…a bluegrass shitkicker, but it is one hell of a self-destructive broken-heart song that features some awesome fiddlework by Scott Joss and mandolin and backing vocals by Tim O'Brien.” Album opener “The Distance Between You and Me” also incorporates banjo but, with its unconventional arrangement and exasperated lyrics, sounded downright surreal compared to most of what was on country radio in 1990. (The non-performance sequences in the music videos Yoakam starred in for “Turn it On, Turn it Up, Turn Me Loose” and “Takes a Lot to Rock You” also verge on the bizarre.)
Reception
The album rose to No. 7 on the Country Albums chart. AllMusic: “Here again the rock side of country, the soul side of rock, and the country side of soul are all wrapped here in Yoakam's voice backed by a band who have a complete understanding of the tune. Highly recommended.”[
]
Track listing
All songs written by Dwight Yoakam except where noted.
#"The Distance Between You and Me" – 2:41
#" The Heart That You Own" – 3:08
#"Takes a Lot to Rock You" – 2:59
#"Nothing's Changed Here
"Nothing's Changed Here" is a song co-written and recorded by American country music artist Dwight Yoakam. It was co-written with the country songwriter Kostas and was released in July 1991 as the third single from Yoakam's album '' If There Was ...
" (Dwight Yoakam, Kostas) – 2:56
#"Sad, Sad Music" – 3:53
#"Since I Started Drinkin' Again" – 3:43
#"If There Was a Way" – 2:54
#" Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose" (Kostas, Wayland Patton) – 3:23
#" It Only Hurts When I Cry" (Yoakam, Roger Miller
Roger Dean Miller Sr. (January 2, 1936 – October 25, 1992) was an American singer-songwriter, widely known for his honky-tonk-influenced novelty songs and his chart-topping country and pop hits " King of the Road", " Dang Me", and "Engl ...
) – 2:34
#"Send a Message to My Heart" (Kostas, Kathy Louvin) – 3:15
#*duet with Patty Loveless
Patty Loveless (born Patricia Lee Ramey, January 4, 1957) is an American country music singer. She began performing in her teenaged years before signing her first recording contract with MCA Records' Nashville division in 1985. While her first ...
#"I Don't Need It Done" (John Sieger) – 4:45
#" You're the One" – 3:59
#"Dangerous Man" – 4:17A
#"Let's Work Together
"Let's Stick Together" is a blues-based rhythm and blues song written by Wilbert Harrison. In 1962, Fury Records released it as a single. Harrison further developed the song and in 1969, Sue Records issued it as a two-part single titled "Let's W ...
" (Wilbert Harrison
Wilbert Huntington Harrison (January 5, 1929 – October 26, 1994) was an American rhythm and blues singer, pianist, guitarist and harmonica player.
Biography
Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Harrison had a Billboard #1 record in 1959 with ...
) – 3:33A
*AOmitted from cassette version.
Personnel
As listed in liner notes.
*Pete Anderson
Pete Anderson is an American guitarist, music producer, arranger and songwriter.
Anderson is most known for his guitar work with, and critically acclaimed production of, country music star Dwight Yoakam from 1984 through 2002, a partnership th ...
– electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gu ...
, acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...
, baritone guitar
The baritone guitar is a guitar with a longer scale length, typically a larger body, and heavier internal bracing, so it can be tuned to a lower pitch. Gretsch, Fender, Gibson, Ibanez, ESP Guitars, PRS Guitars, Music Man, Danelectro, Sch ...
, producer
*Tom Brumley
Thomas Rexton Brumley (December 11, 1935 – February 3, 2009) was an American pedal steel guitarist and steel guitar manufacturer. In the 1960s, Brumley was a part of the sub-genre of country music known as the " Bakersfield sound". He performed ...
– steel guitar
A steel guitar ( haw, kīkākila) is any guitar played while moving a steel bar or similar hard object against plucked strings. The bar itself is called a "steel" and is the source of the name "steel guitar". The instrument differs from a conve ...
*Lenny Castro
Lenny or Lennie may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Lenny (given name), a list of people and fictional characters
* Lennie (surname), a list of people
* Lenny (singer) (born 1993), Czech songwriter
Arts and entertainment Music
* '' ...
– percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
* Chuck Domanico – acoustic bass
*Jeff Donavan – drums
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsticks ...
*Skip Edwards – keyboards
*Tommy Funderburk – background vocals
A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are us ...
* Scott Joss – fiddle, mandolin
A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...
*Jim Lauderdale
James Russell Lauderdale (born April 11, 1957) is an American country, bluegrass, and Americana singer-songwriter. Since 1986, he has released 31 studio albums, including collaborations with artists such as Dr. Ralph Stanley, Buddy Miller, an ...
– background vocals
*Patty Loveless
Patty Loveless (born Patricia Lee Ramey, January 4, 1957) is an American country music singer. She began performing in her teenaged years before signing her first recording contract with MCA Records' Nashville division in 1985. While her first ...
– duet vocals on "Send a Message to My Heart"
*Roger Miller
Roger Dean Miller Sr. (January 2, 1936 – October 25, 1992) was an American singer-songwriter, widely known for his honky-tonk-influenced novelty songs and his chart-topping country and pop hits " King of the Road", " Dang Me", and "Engl ...
– background vocals
* Tim O'Brien – mandolin, background vocals
*Dean Parks
Weldon Dean Parks (born December 6, 1946) is an American session guitarist and record producer from Fort Worth, Texas.
Albums
Parks was member of the North Texas State One O'clock Lab Band before moving to Los Angeles to work with Sonny and Ch ...
– acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...
*Al Perkins
Al Perkins (born January 18, 1944) is an American guitarist known primarily for his steel guitar work. The Gibson guitar company called Perkins "the world's most influential dobro player" and began producing an "Al Perkins Signature" Dobro in 2 ...
– banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...
, Dobro
Dobro is an American brand of resonator guitars, currently owned by Gibson and manufactured by its subsidiary Epiphone. The term "dobro" is also used as a generic term for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar.
The Dobro was origin ...
, steel guitar, lap steel guitar
The lap steel guitar, also known as a Hawaiian guitar, is a type of steel guitar without pedals that is typically played with the instrument in a horizontal position across the performer's lap. Unlike the usual manner of playing a traditional ...
*Taras Prodaniuk – bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and s ...
, six-string bass guitar
*Amy Ray
Amy Elizabeth Ray (born April 12, 1964) is an American alto singer-songwriter and member of the contemporary folk duo Indigo Girls. She also pursues a solo career and has released six albums under her own name, and founded a record company, Daemo ...
– background vocals
*Don Reed – fiddle
*Bill Ross – strings
*Emily Saliers
Emily Ann Saliers (born July 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and member of the musical duo Indigo Girls. Saliers sings soprano and plays lead guitar as well as banjo, piano, mandolin, ukulele, bouzouki and many other instruments.
Ea ...
– background vocals
*Dwight Yoakam – lead vocals
The lead vocalist in popular music is typically the member of a group or band whose voice is the most prominent melody in a performance where multiple voices may be heard. The lead singer sets their voice against the accompaniment parts of th ...
, acoustic guitar
*Pete Anderson – producer
*Peter Doell
Peter Doell is an American recording and mastering engineer known for his work with Miles Davis, Toto, Céline Dion and The Beach Boys. Doell has been a staff engineer at Capitol Studios, Sunset Sound Recorders and Universal Mastering Studios Wes ...
– engineer
*Kevin Reeves – engineer
*Dusty Wakeman – engineer
*Lori Fumar – engineer
*Leslie Ann Jones – engineer
*Denny Thomas – engineer
*Armando Garcia – recording assistant
*Steve Kades – recording assistant
*Gary White – recording assistant
*David Leonard – mixing
*Stephen Marcussen
Stephen Marcussen is the founder and chief mastering engineer at Marcussen Mastering in Hollywood, California, United States. He has been mastering music since 1979.
Biography
Marcussen's introduction to music recording happened in 1976 when, at ...
– mastering
Chart positions
Album
Singles
References
;Bibliography
*
{{Authority control
Reprise Records albums
Dwight Yoakam albums
1990 albums
Albums produced by Pete Anderson
Albums recorded at Capitol Studios