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It doesn't get any better than Dwight Yoakam. The guy releases CDs with regularity, he's incapable of putting out a bad song (well, okay, you have to leave UNDER THE COVERS out of consideration) and even though he says "I don't feel limited by country music because I don't feel limited to country music" he continues to do just fine with country music, his way, by way of Bakersfield, California. His sound is simultaneously 2001 and 1954, as if the 1970s-1990s never happened. Even after 16 years, he continues to surprise and delight by simultaneously sticking to what works and stretching the envelope.
Yoakam's prowess as a musician is slowly coming to be matched by his ability as an actor. His turn as a trucker in Red Rock West is noteworthy in that he almost stole the whole movie in a five minute performance. Now, several acting turns later, he has made a film titled South of Heaven, West of Hell. Yoakam has "made" this movie in every sense of the word: he directs it, stars in it, and (most importantly for our purposes) scores the soundtrack. The movie is a western; similarly the soundtrack, containing music both "from and inspired by the motion picture," is what we have come to expect from Yoakam: first class, and utterly brilliant.

Legend has it that when big band leader Buddy Rich was brought to the hospital with acute appendicitis, he was being wheeled into a surgery when a nurse, attempting to get him medical history, asked him if he was allergic to anything. Rich, in severe pain, looked at her and whispered through clenched teeth, "Yes...country-western music!" If that was indeed the case, there are parts of SOUTH OF HEAVEN, WEST OF HELL which would have put him in anaphylactic shock. Take "What Is Left Of Me" which Yoakam co-wrote with...

Mick Jagger. No surprise here, really, considering some "Dead Flowers" and "Wild Horses" and parts of EXILE ON MAIN STREET. "What Is Left Of Me" is a bona fide country, not warmed-over '70s schlock. If you loved the soundtrack to Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? You'll love Yoakam's updated (to the 1950s) take on the genre. "No Future In Sight" unites countrified guitar and pedal steel picking with funky B3 organ riffs and marries them so wondrously and seamlessly that they seemed to have been made for each other. Then. Oh Mercy.

Then there is "The First Thing Smokin,'" a Dwight Yoakam- Billy (Z.Z.Top) Gibbons collaboration which should set off Blackboard Jungle type riots in theaters.

There are some surprises in here. Yoakam does "Who At The Door Is Standing, The Darkest Hour," and "It Is Well With My Soul," traditional hillbilly spirituals --- and believe me, that term is not pejorative, it's a title of honor --- and then adds "The Last Surrender" his own apocalyptic composition, to the hymnbook. And I'm serious about this. This could be sung, unashamedly and unapologetically, in any Christian church. Yoakam may do a guest shot on "Ellen," but he has never forgotten, as we say in these parts, who he is and where he comes from. The biggest surprises, however, center around two different versions of "Words," which bookend the CD. The first version is sparse, with Yoakam introduced by a long piano solo that his vocals gradually fade into with some brush and drum accompaniment. The second, instrumental version is a jazz interpretation, featuring a trumpet solo that gives the cut more in common with Wynton Marsalis than Waylon Jennings. What is Yoakam going to do next? Perhaps he's been listening to "Blue Yodel No. 9," the seamless collaboration between Louis Armstrong and Jimmie Rogers. His next CD may be jazz standards, who knows. What is a certainty, however, is that Yoakam, well into his second decade of recording, is still making some of his best music, topping himself year by year. He accordingly stands within the hallowed company of Dylan, Young, and Cash, and may someday stand in the forefront of that group. Keep watching. For now, however, SOUTH OF HEAVEN, WEST OF HELL is yet another in a string of indispensable works from the man..