I saw Dwight Yoakum a couple nights ago. He was great. I highly recommend his show. Non-stop hits, and he's really cool and funny.

As most of us know, Yoakum has a very small part in the Paisley Park legacy. Prince used to say that he was tired of showing up somewhere to play and having to deal with sound systems that were set up for Dwight Yoakum, so he wanted to build his own his own place.

On the way to the Yoakum show, we were listening to some of his stuff and up popped his version of "Purple Rain". Yoakum did a bluegrass cover of it. Whether you like his cover or not, I think you'll appreciate the story behind it:

http://www.dwightyoakam.com/about

So where does “Purple Rain” fit into that, anyway? It’s the odd song out, certainly, though Yoakam and Prince share something in common as far as having been mentored to some extent by Lenny Waronker at Warner Bros.

“We had finished two days of recording the tracks, and I woke up at the hotel in Nashville and heard the news. I was thinking about him and thinking about how uniquely he impacted the culture, so when I got to the studio and everybody was talking about the shock of it, I said ‘I feel like I want to sing “Purple Rain,”’ because I’ve always felt that was one of the more beautiful melodies. We cut it, and I didn’t think about it again, because I thought the emotion of it just got everybody wanting to express something. I didn’t think it was going to be on the record. But months later, I put it on and realized how those guys really played with their hearts that day. And Lenny Waronker, who signed Prince, came over and said ‘You’ve got to.’ You know, I still remember where I was when I first heard ‘Purple Rain’ on the radio, in my car on Yucca (in Hollywood) — still driving air freight, working on my (independent) EP at the time — right in front of Palermo’s No. 2 around the corner from Capitol. And hearing that come on stopped my in my El Camino right there. That melody was so simplistically haunting — hopefully we did justice to it.”




And here he is performing it live in Minnesota, prior to the album release:

Appreciate Dwight doing the song, it's just not my type of thing. Really, Really strange to hear Purple Rain countryfied.

I love Dwight Yoakam! The King of Country Cool!

Congrats on misspelling his last name six times.

Aww Bert, must be nice to be perfect.

Good ol Bart still has the NPG Misic Club in his sig. I've been waiting over 20 years for him to let go of his persistent Prince related anger. I wonder if it'll take another 20 years.

Thanks for posting - I dig Dwight's cover.

BartVanHemelen said:

Congrats on misspelling his last name six times.

You are free to keep all misspellings.

I'm no fan of country music, but I like it!

Congrats on sullying yet another thread on the 3rd reply.

BartVanHemelen said:

Congrats on misspelling his last name six times.

[Edited 8/10/18 15:52pm]

RodeoSchro said:

BartVanHemelen said:

Congrats on misspelling his last name six times.

You are free to keep all misspellings.

Like bart has never made a spelling mistake in the past.

BartVanHemelen said:

Congrats on misspelling his last name six times.

You can count ?

Lovejunky said:

BartVanHemelen said:

Congrats on misspelling his last name six times.

You can count ?

[Edited 8/12/18 16:48pm]

Lovejunky said:

BartVanHemelen said:

Congrats on misspelling his last name six times.

You can count ?

I don't think he can get past 1996.