Musical Restlessness Dwight Yoakam’s New Cd Suggests His Refusal To Be Limited By Any Specific Genre Of Music

A lounge-lizard version of a British Invasion classic. A dance rendition of a Glen Campbell ballad. The Clash - bluegrass style.

Is Dwight Yoakam kidding on his new CD, “Under the Covers”? Has he been so busy remaking himself into a movie star - the bad guy in Billy Bob Thornton’s “Sling Blade” - that he hasn’t had time to write his own songs?

Not at all.

“It was an outgrowth of a live radio broadcast we had done … in the summer of ‘95,” Yoakam said. “We did a couple of cover tunes. We did a Merle Haggard thing and we did ‘Goodtime Charlie.’

“The response by the call-in audience was so strong that the label asked if we would do (a CD). As (producer) Pete (Anderson) and I discussed it further, we discovered we had a window of opportunity to record it after we recorded the ‘Gone’ album in the summer of 1995. We did most of it that fall.”

The newly released “Under the Covers” contains 12 tracks. The most unusual is “So Tired,” a Big Band version of the song written by Ray Davies, leader of The Kinks.

“It was important to find our own interpretation of everything we did,” Yoakam said from Austin, Texas, where he recently finished work on his next movie, “The Newton Boys,” starring Matthew McConaughey.

“Under the Covers” also contains remakes of songs by Roy Orbison, Sonny and Cher, Johnny Horton, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Them (Van Morrison’s first band).

There are some misfires, but none of the songs is boring.

Among the highlights:

“Things We Said Today.” Yoakam’s version of the John Lennon-Paul McCartney tune is darker than The Beatles’.

“Wichita Lineman.” Yoakam turns the hit ballad by Glen Campbell into a fast-paced dance tune.

“Baby Don’t Go.” Written by Sonny Bono, who recorded it with then-wife Cher. On Yoakam’s album, Cher’s part is sung by Sheryl Crow.

“Train in Vain.” Originally on The Clash’s 1980 album “London Calling.” Yoakam’s version is hard-country, almost bluegrass-style.

“The Last Time,” written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Yoakam makes a break-neck country tune out of a song that was a bland bluespop offering when the Stones did it in 1965.

While it’s an unusual combination of songs, Yoakam previously has performed many of them in concert. As with his other albums, elements of rock and country are mixed without regard for radio formats.

“I don’t think we had a specific agenda other then the enormous joy we found executing the performances of all these songs for the sake of the song itself,” Yoakam said. “And we always disregard being a prisoner to any specific genre of music.”

Musical restlessness has paid off for the 40-year-old Yoakam, who was born in Pikeville, Ky., raised in Columbus, Ohio, and became famous out of Los Angeles after being spurned by Nashville record companies in 1974.

His 1986 album “Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc.” sold over a million copies and included the hit “Honky Tonk Man,” an old Johnny Horton song. He’s released six CDs and a greatest-hits package since. The 1993 CD “This Time,” produced four hits, including “Ain’t That Lonely Yet.”

Anderson, who has produced all of Yoakam’s records and plays guitar in his band, said financial success was a long time coming.

“I worked with Dwight for 2-1/2 years and never made a dollar,” he said. “We never made money touring until 1991. …

“We made the first EP (‘A Town South of Bakersfield’) ourselves, and when (record companies) came calling we had already built up an audience. We signed with Reprise because they gave us the money and went away. We made the record we wanted to make, not what they wanted.”

And there’s more to come. Yoakam has a Christmas album due out in September, then will begin recording original material for an album in 1998.