Dwight Yoakam Tours Sin City’s Honkiest Tonks

Blasting off with a swamp thang version of Dave Alvin’s “Long White Cadillac,” country maverick Dwight Yoakam and his punchy little guitar-fiddle-bass-drums outfit took Friday’s near-capacity Universal Amphitheatre crowd on a nearly two-hour tour of Sin City’s honkiest tonks.

Along with the ability to get away with wearin’ a pair of jeans-sotight he must’ve put ‘em on with an air wrench, Yoakam packs a classic country voice, and that’s what’s got him a six pack a hits ever since he busted out of the El Lay club scene several years back.

Doin’ everything from his own numbers (“Guitars, Cadillacs”) to the King’s “Little Sister” and even saving a taste for ole Buck (“Streets of Bakersfield”), Yoakam fleshed out the evening’s entertainment with a loose but lucid rap about “what women mean when they say ‘nothing’ ”) before closin’ ‘em down with several two-fisted rounds of back-to-the-joints Merle/George/Ray Price/Johnny Horton standards. There wasn’t a dry beer in the house.