It’s six months to May 29, 2025. So why are Dwight Yoakam and The Wharf announcing their concert now? A half-year ahead of time?
The show is expected to sell out and quickly.
The Cosmic Round-up and Rodeo Tour is at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 29. Opening acts will be The Mavericks and 49 Winchester. Better get tickets and hotel accommodations early, as May 29 is during Memorial Day week. Monday, May 26 is Memorial Day, 2025, one of the biggest weeks in Alabama's Gulf Coast tourism.
You can buy tickets now at Ticketmaster.
Yoakam, the Mavericks and 49 Winchester are on a nationwide tour that starts Feb. 25. It carries him to Atlanta; Tallahassee; Baton Rouge; Oklahoma City; San Antonio; Hidalgo, Texas, Evansville, Indiana; Milwaukee; Duluth, Minnesota; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Bloomington, Illinois; New York City; Poughkeepsie, New York; Salamanca, NY; Saint Charles, MO; Louisville; Pikeville, KY; Grand Junction, CO; Colorado Springs; Loveland, CO; Amarillo; Las Cruces, MW; Tucson; Southaven, MS; Camdenton, MO; Indianapolis; La Crose, WI; Mankato, MN; Wilmington, NC; Salem, VA; and Richmond, VA.
Yoakam has been in the country music business — writing, singing and producing — for over 40 years. And it is a business. A big business.
Yoakam has had two number-one singles—"Streets of Bakersfield" (with Buck Owens) and "I Sang Dixie." He has had an even dozen top-10 singles. He has won two Grammy awards and one Academy of Country Music award.
Yoakam is the present face and voice of “the Bakersfield sound,” a distinctive sub-genre of country music that uses his tenor singing voice and the lead guitar of his long-time producer and bandleader, Pete Anderson.
Bakersfield is a California town that became the Western branch of country music, featuring Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Jean Shepard and Susan Raye. Early Bakersfield music started with honky-tonk and later progressed into outlaw country. It was partly a result of the migration of Okies, Texans and Arkansas into California’s central valley. Sort of Nashville West but without a lot of the electronics and orchestras.
Early, early Bakersfield stars included Jimmie Rogers, Lefty Frizzell and Bob Wills.
Yoakam’s opening act at Alabama’s Wharf, The Mavericks, are pure Bakersfield.
Yoakam explained the Bakersfield sound:
"Bakersfield" really is not exclusively limited to the town itself but encompasses the larger California country sound of the '40s, '50s and on into the '60s, and even the '70s, with the music of Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, the Burrito Brothers and the Eagles – they are all an extension of the "Bakersfield sound" and a byproduct of it. I've got a poster of Buck Owens performing at the Fillmore West in 1968 in Haight-Ashbury! What went on there led to there being a musical incarnation called country rock. I don't know if there would have been a John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival had there not been the California country music that's come to be known as the "Bakersfield sound."
Jim ‘Zig’ Zeigler writes about Alabama’s people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former Alabama Public Service Commissioner and State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at ZeiglerElderCare@yahoo.com.
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