Pop Music Review : The Dwight Is Right : Yoakam’s First-Rate Concert Reveals the Sun Theatre’s Assets, as Well as Its Liabilities

The Sun Theatre on Thursday hosted Dwight Yoakam in the swanky new Anaheim venue’s first concert by a creatively thriving artist, this after three shows last week by acts running on the fumes of nostalgia.

Yoakam fulfilled all expectations that come with being that rarity of the past 15 years, a country artist who consistently has reaped large commercial rewards without sacrificing song quality or tradition-steeped integrity.

The 1,200-capacity Sun raises great expectations as well, but it has its limitations. Call it the MiniPond: it is not a club done large, like the marvelous, 650-capacity Galaxy Concert Theatre in Santa Ana, but an arena done small. Spaciousness abounds in this carpeted, hangar-like hall with gently tiered seating, Art Deco design touches, and a bar located away from the listener and in the foyer, where customers waiting for drinks could watch the show on any of four TV screens and listen to piped-in concert sound.

Inside, exposed pipes, ducts and house lights hang from a lofty ceiling, just like they do at the Sun’s down-the-street sister venue, the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim. Large video screens flank the stage, giving close-up views that came in very handy.

I divided my time between a relatively close seat, and one in the very last row. From both vantage points, the surrounding vastness was palpable; I felt as if I had a good floor seat in an arena but missed the more intimate aura of a club.

For that, the Sun can’t match the Galaxy and the 492-capacity Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, sister clubs that have dominated the Orange County small-venue concert scene since 1986. But any competitive clash between the old guard and the newcomer already is settled. The Sun’s early bookings strongly suggest that, by providing a good medium-size venue, it will soak up all the prime acts interested in playing Orange County that are too small for a big arena or an amphitheater.

The Galaxy and the Coach House will forage for what’s left, and their significance will depend on how well owner Gary Folgner can cultivate the grass-roots of the local scene and the national touring circuit. Folgner conceded this in an interview Thursday. “It’s strictly a game of economics,” he said, and the numbers favor the Sun.

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The Sun’s upcoming schedule skims quite a bit of cream that used to nourish the Coach House and Galaxy: Ozomatli, Young Dubliners, Squeeze, Los Lobos, Paul Rodgers, Ten Years After, Lucinda Williams, Peter Frampton and Joe Strummer have played Folgner’s clubs.

This is not entirely a good thing. Seeing them in a truly intimate club probably beats seeing them in a mini-arena, although every ticket sold beyond 492 or 650 does mean more folks get to enjoy them without having to drive to Los Angeles to an even less-intimate venue, or to that sardine-packing, stand-on-the-floor endurance test, the House of Blues.

Thanks to Folgner’s clubs, music fans in Orange County have grown accustomed to what former Pixies leader Frank Black once praised as “a civilized way to see a show” (although the Coach House would be even more civilized if Folgner did something about its flimsy, backside-punishing chairs). With its comfortable seating and the most pleasant climate control imaginable, the Sun nicely upholds that tradition of creature comforts.

But the Sun, owned by Ogden Entertainment, the national company that operates the Pond, will be an overall drain on the Orange County music scene if all it does is divert talent from the Galaxy, Coach House and the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana, Orange County’s previously dominant club for country music talent.

Styx and Lynyrd Skynyrd, who opened the Sun last week, and upcoming nights with Yes and John Michael Montgomery are net-gainer attractions that otherwise probably would not have played in Orange County, except as part of an arena or amphitheater package show. Yoakam is exactly the kind of prime booking that will earn the new place its keep--a popular and critically admired performer who typically plays venues like the 6,200-seat Universal Amphitheatre, where he headlined in July.

The only drawback was a sound mix that often muffled Yoakam’s lyrics and Skip Edwards’ organ and piano. That may well be the fault of Yoakam’s sound crew rather than a sign of flawed venue acoustics; an over-amplified bass was the chief problem.

Still, there was no shortage of audio treats: Yoakam’s distinctive, nasally drawled singing voice came through fine, as did Pete Anderson’s ultra-twangy guitar and Scott Joss’ sweet fiddle and high-and-homey bluegrass harmonies.

Yoakam was chatty, and, without boasting, kept hitting on two themes: that his material has stood the test of time since his 1984 debut, and that his songwriting flows from life experience. As he explained in humorous, low-keyed song introductions, highlights such as the George Jones-style barroom weeper “Yet to Succeed,” the lamenting “A Long Way From Home,” and “Miner’s Prayer,” inspired by his grandfather’s death, all sprang from places he’s been and people he has known. Not many stars in this high-gloss, manufactured-sounding decade in country music can make that claim.

Yoakam and his band also were brilliant interpreters. If Elvis himself had entered the building, he couldn’t have done a better version of “Mystery Train,” taken at a confident, unhurried amble, or of “Suspicious Minds,” which Yoakam turned into the show’s sublime peak. Playing solo on acoustic guitar, he sang with deep hurt and beauty, his phrasing graceful and adventurous without grandstanding (Yoakam has a fine sense of how to be dynamic without being ostentatious), and his guitar accompaniment shone.

It would have been a superb statement if Yoakam had ended on that note--but then we would have missed the show-closing rumble through Dave Alvin’s “Long White Cadillac,” which, along with Yoakam’s own “Fast as You,” showed that this hillbilly can rock ‘n’ roll with sexy thrust.

Sexiness always has been a factor in Yoakam’s stardom, and he repeatedly demonstrated with leg- and fanny-waggling in tight jeans that he has absorbed Presley’s anatomical lessons along with his musical ones: Don’t underestimate the power of a pelvis. Yoakam is no Elvis impersonator on that count; he had his own sly, half steamy, half-winking way of strutting his stuff. He turned Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” into a lark, dancing sexily with a curvy blond--his cream-colored Gibson acoustic guitar.

With masterfully rendered honky-tonk strolls, bluegrass-influenced songs, elegiac country-rockers and lovely ballads--plus some of that steamy rock ‘n’ roll--Yoakam had plenty of ways to make his 90-minute show flow with shifting styles and changing hues of poignancy and playfulness.

It would have been steamier at a packed Coach House or Galaxy; Yoakam played to a less-than-capacity house at the Sun, with some seats and most of the standing room unfilled.

The Sun won’t truly pay off for the musical community unless Folgner’s clubs find a way to prosper.It’s an important juncture in the county’s maturation as a magnet for touring talent.

The Coach House/Galaxy, which ought to rule the youth-oriented rock scene, needs to dig deeper into the rich local talent. It needs to be more adventurous and creative in booking up-and-coming national acts (Sleater-Kinney and Pavement, for instance, never have played Orange County club shows).If that happens, everybody wins--especially the music fans.