Tag: Guitars

Buck Owens made the Bakersville sound popular and it’s one of my favorite types of country. My friend deKE mentioned this one on a list and again I’m surprised I haven’t posted it already. Yoakam and Steve Earle came out at around the same time and they were not like everyone else (George Jones has a funny quote about that at the bottom of the page). They were a breath of fresh air in country music and they crossed over genres as well.

It was released in 1986 and was the second single off of his debut album Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. This song was written by Dwight Yoakam. Pete Anderson (producer) was a huge help in the making of the album. He provided some ideas music-wise, played the guitar, and even sang background vocals.

The two of them were surprised that the album had as much success as it did. Country music at the time was geared more toward country-pop and Dwight wrote these honky tonk type songs that weren’t popular at the time.

It originally came out as a six-track EP in 1984 on a small label. Warner Brothers were listening as he made it into a full album and it was released in 1986. The album peaked at #1 on the Billboard Country Charts, #61 on the Billboard Album Charts. The song Guitars, Cadillacs peaked at #4 on the Billboard Country Charts, and #2 on the Canadian Country Charts in 1986.

Rolling Stone magazine ranked this song as number 94 in their list of the 100 greatest country songs.

Dwight Yoakam:  “We were reinterpreting the Bakersfield ‘shuffle sound’ of Buck Owens and what he was doing with that terse kind of shuffle.”

Pete Anderson: “I was a guitar player for hire in the early ’80s in Los Angeles, and I played mostly country music. I played some blues gigs and kind of roots rock Americana gigs. He needed a guitar player to play a gig, and we played together. He was playing some of his original songs and I got to hear the songs and said..Man, these are really good songs.”

George Jones: ‘We spent all these years trying not to be called hillbillies, and Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle fucked it up in one day.'”

Guitars, Cadillacs

Girl you taught me how to hurt real bad and cry myself to sleep
And showed me how this town can shatter dreams
Another lesson ’bout a naive fool who came to Babylon
And found out that the pie don’t taste so sweet

Now it’s guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music
Lonely, lonely streets that I call home
Yeah, my guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music
It’s the only thing that keeps me hangin’ on

Ain’t no glamour in this tinseled land of lost and wasted lives
Painful scars are all that’s left of me
Oh, but thank you girl for teachin’ me brand new ways to be cruel
If I can find my mind now I guess I’ll just leave

And it’s guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music
Lonely, lonely streets that I call home
Yeah, my guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music
It’s the only thing that keeps me hangin’ on

Oh it’s guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music
Lonely, lonely streets that I call home
Yeah, my guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music
It’s the only thing that keeps me hangin’ on
It’s the only thing that keeps me hangin’ on
It’s the only thing that keeps me hangin’ on

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