Dwight Yoakam with The Mavericks, with special guest Noah Rinker
Friday, March 21, 2025
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Miller High Life Theatre
My well-documented live music drought ended at long-last this past Friday night, as I had the pleasure of attending my first concert of 2025 with my father at Milwaukee’s beautiful Miller High Life Theatre. We were there for the aptly titled Cosmic Roundup & Rodeo Tour, a vibrantly thrilling billing featuring none other than Dwight Yoakam and The Mavericks. Though we’ve shared many live shows together through the years, and have more on the docket, there are few concerts that could be more fitting for he and I to experience together than this. As I’ve mentioned many times before, I credit my dad’s ultra-diverse musical listening tastes as a direct influence on my own, and country music created outside of the typical Nashville boundaries as featured here has always been area where our shared affinity for music was strongest. Records from both of these acts were essential listening staples throughout my childhood in the 80s and 90s, and they remain among favorites in my own personal collection today. Decades later, they still radiate from the speakers with a fresh and adventurous energy that seamlessly married an equal reverence for both traditional roots and creative innovation. I’m very happy to report that thirty-plus years of age, touring mileage, and just the wear-and-tear of general life experience have also done nothing to dim that energy or passion when it comes to either act’s live show.
The festivities began with opening act, Noah Rinker. He delivered an impressive forty-plus minute set that dutifully showcased his thoughtful songwriting, organic Americana style, and a broad understanding of both roots and popular music’s past, present, and future that was impressive for his 22 years of age. Rinker’s music certainly identifies him as an old soul, with a penchant for devastating lyrics and insight that would typically require at least twice the amount of time he’s spent on the planet. Fans of acts like Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan would find plenty to like in Rinker’s budding catalog, and his cover of John Mayer’s “Queen of a California” (from my personal favorite of Mayer’s albums, Born and Raised) was an early highlight of the evening.
While the more hushed intimacy of Rinker’s performance was definitely a pleasant and cozy start to the night, those adjectives were blazed off the concert stage with the kind of blistering arrival you’d expect from The Mavericks and their boisterously passionate melting pot of country, pop, rock, Tex-Mex, polka and virtually any other genre on Earth. The band’s line-up has undergone numerous significant changes over the years, but this current quartet unquestionably holds up the group’s storied legacy, and quickly establishes themselves among the tightest and most accomplished group of musicians to be found anywhere on the road in the present live music scene. The newest member, lead guitarist Freddie Perez himself has twenty years under his Mavericks belt, while keyboardist Jerry Dale McFadden has been on the roster since their heyday in the mid-90s, and drummer Paul Deakin joins lead vocalist Raul Malo as one half of the band’s remaining originals. Each of these three received ample showcases throughout this sizzling set of music, which expectedly focused on the most sweeping and steamy moments from the group’s output of the last decade, with heavy emphasis on 2013’s comeback effort, In Time, 2017’s Brand New Day, and last year’s Moon & Stars. The same can be said for astute road musicians like trumpeter Julio Diaz, sax man Max Abrams, and accordionist Percy Cardona.
As always, the band’s performance was masterfully anchored by the dramatic vocal powers of Malo, who despite a bit less mobility on stage, showed little signs of the current cancer treatments he’s been undergoing for the better part of the last year. The enigmatic and entrancing magic of his inimitable voice certainly didn’t show any signs of weakness. He’s still able to rattle the rafters, whether it be on cinematic Orbison-esque ballads, spicy Latin-tinged romps (“As Long As There’s Loving Tonight” and “Come Unto Me” were prime showstoppers), sweeping romancers, or muscular rock & roll like an encore cover of The Beatles’ “Back In the USSR”. His jovial interactions with both the band and the audience were palpable throughout, and truly suggested that he’s still living his best life, even under his present circumstances. If I could change anything about the Mavs’ set it would be to include more selections from their definitive run in the 90s. I would have died from musical euphoria if they had pulled out something like “Mr. Jones” or “Children” from 1992’s Hell to Paradise, or even a later single like “O What A Thrill” or “What a Crying Shame”, but alas none were anywhere to be found. Which is fine, and indeed what I expected. This is a new and different era for the band that is producing its own fantastic body of work, and it received the prominent spotlight that it deserved on Friday night. With that said, no Mavericks show would be complete without their 1995 signature, “All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down”, and it made for a fantastic encore, with Cardona certainly doing the original accordion solo by the legendary Flaco Jimenez great justice. From top to bottom, this was a magical set of music that served as the perfect appetizer for what Yoakam and his own sizzling band had in store.
Sporting his classically swaggering West Coast cowboy silhouette, and flanked by a band studded out in fully sequined, retro honky-tonk suits, the unassumingly 68-year-old Yoakam gladly took the baton for an electric stage-show from Malo and company, and eagerly ran with it. And if there was a more appropriate adjective than electric to describe Yoakam’s set, efficient would certainly be it. Dwight and his spitfire band of country-rockers segued through his treasure trove of hits and gems at a virtually uninterrupted pace, so much so that you’d be forgiven for thinking he was initially doing an endless medley of songs. In all actuality, this was merely the legend being fully cognizant of the sheer amount of classics that his rabid fanbase were eager to hear, with this sweltering pace allowing him to cover a generous twenty-three songs in less than two hours. So aware of the precise content he wanted to deliver, Yoakam even verbally acknowledged the average concert-goer’s preference for established material over newly released tracks, leaving room for just three numbers from his current album, last fall’s Brighter Days. With that said, these tracks (“I Don’t Know How (Bang Bang Boom Boom)”, “I’ll Pay the Price”, and the already familiar Carter Family standard and concert opener “Keep On the Sunny Side”) had no trouble seamlessly residing against Yoakam signatures, ranging from early catalog chestnuts “Please Please Baby”, “Little Sister”, and “Streets of Bakersfield” and 90s and 00s selections like “This Time”, “Things Change”, and “Blame the Vain”. All of these tracks were magnificently tethered by Yoakam’s timeless charisma, his irresistibly entertaining hip-swinging toe-steps, and a crackling road-band that matched his rapid-fire energy and musical pivots with endless dexterity and aplomb. Lead-guitarist Eugene Edwards proved particularly fascinating to watch as he combined his agile guitar picking, oozing sex appeal, and flashy rock & roll imagery to exude a modern-day Elvis sort of intrigue. In other words, he fully embodied the spirit of a young Dwight Yoakam.
Dwight’s one-of-a-kind vocal range remains one of the most unique treasures in all of modern music, and that remains as much a fact on stage as it does in the studio. His throaty, California-kissed twang can still get a listener’s blood churning with intense country-rockers like “I’ll Be Gone”, “Turn It Up, Turn It On, Turn Me Loose”, “Honky Tonk Man”, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, and many more. And then, at a moment’s notice, he can still rip your heart out as masterfully as he ever has with the classic honky-tonk heartbreak of mournful jewels like “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere”, “The Heart That You Own” or “You’re the One”. Perhaps much of the resilience of his singing strength can be attributed to the lack of crowd banter that he inserts in between his songs. Though, when he did choose to talk, his dialogue struck as vast of range as his unique body of music. He expressed immense gratitude for the Milwaukee crowd when crediting them as one of the first radio markets to play his early records as he was campaigning for the support of the major label industry. Next, he segued into a long-winded and uttery bizarre story/rant about traveling through Wisconsin with actor Billy Bob Thornton on a trip riddled with concerns about alien abduction. This rambling grandfather’s tale was the rare moment in the show where Yoakam really showed his age, and while you couldn’t help but wish that his stories would be as nimble as his song-segues, you also couldn’t help but feel charmed by Yoakam’s legendary quirkiness. And once the rapid-fire setlist started back up, things were instantly back on track.
By the time Yoakam and his brood brought the house down one final time with a scintillating encore trifecta of “Guitars Cadillacs”, “Fast As You”, and “Suspicious Minds”, the ravenous crowd that ranged in a fascinating yet unsurprising scope from their twenties to their eighties knew that they had just been unified by the type of special concert experience that is slowly and sadly becoming exceeding rare from this era of music. Together, Yoakam and the Mavericks both represent a fleeting period from the late-80s through the mid-90s where this edgy brand of country music could still flourish in the mainstream. And while that rewarding movement proved to have a sadly short shelf-life from an industry standpoint, their work set the stage for today’s vibrant roots and Americana scenes. Scenes where that kind of musical spirit is not only alive, but growingly defining modern music in new era, where mainstream systems like commercial radio and major labels are less relevant than ever before. One only need to look as far as the box office success of acts like Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers or Kacey Musgraves and Brandi Carlile to see that the foundational work of less conventional acts like Yoakam and the Mavs have proven triumphant in the end. But there’s still nothing like seeing these pioneers themselves, and I feel ever-fortunate to have done so on this night. I highly encourage readers to seek out these same special opportunities while they still can; they’re definitive moments in the fandom of a music-lover, and worth every penny.
The Mavericks’ Set List:
- “Come Unto Me”- from In Time (2013)
- “Back In Your Arms Again”- from In Time (2013)
- “And We Dance”- from Moon & Stars (2024)
- “Poder vivir”- from En Espanol (2020)
- “As Long As There’s Loving Tonight”- from In Time (2013)
- “Havana’s Moonlight”- from Raul Malo’s Say Less (2023)
- “Moon and Stars”- from Moon & Stars (2024)
- “Rolling Along”- from Brand New Day (2017)
- “The Name of the Game”- from Moon & Stars (2024)
- “All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down”- from Music For All Occasions (1995) **Encore**
- “Back in the USSR”- *The Beatles cover **Encore**
Dwight Yoakam’s Set List:
- “Keep on the Sunny Side”- from Brighter Days (2023)
- “Please, Please Baby” – from Hillbilly Deluxe (1987)
- “Little Sister”- from Hillbilly Deluxe (1987)
- “Streets of Bakersfield”- from Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room (1988)
- “I’ll Pay the Price”- from Brighter Days (2023)
- “What Do You Know About Love”- from Tomorrow’s Sounds Today (2000)
- “Things Change”- from A Long Way Home (1998)
- “This Time”- from This Time (1993)
- “I’ll Be Gone”- from Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc. (1986)
- “Blame the Vain”- from Blame the Vain (2005)
- “The Heart That You Own”- from If There Was A Way (1990)
- “Always Late With Your Kisses”- from Hillbilly Deluxe (1987)
- “Pocket of a Clown”- from This Time (1993)
- “You’re the One”- from If There Was A Way (1990)
- “Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose”- from If There Was A Way (1990)
- “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”- from Last Chance for a Thousand Years (1999)
- “I Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye (Bang Bang Boom Boom)” from Brighter Days (2023)
- “Honky Tonk Man”- from Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc. (1986)
- “A Thousand Miles From Nowhere”- from This Time (1993)
- “Little Ways”- from Hillbilly Deluxe (1987)
- “Guitars, Cadillacs”- from Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc. (1986) **Encore**
- “Fast As You”- from This Time (1993) **Encore**
- “Suspicious Minds”- from Honeymoon in Vegas Soundtrack (1992) **Encore**
The 706 