By Kristin M. Hall
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) --Country music singer, songwriter and actor Dwight Yoakam was honored by performing rights organization BMI for his trailblazing and highly unique style of California country rock.
The organization gave the Grammy-winner the President's Award on Tuesday, as well as honored many of country's top songwriters and artists, during a ceremony in Nashville, Tennessee.
For Yoakam, there wasn't any choice other than creating his own sound.
"I never thought about doing it another way," he said during an interview on the red carpet prior to the ceremony. "I kind of just did what I felt was honest."
Born in Kentucky, Yoakam bypassed the Nashville scene and moved to California, where the Bakersfield-style of country music became one of his big influences. He's had hits with "A Thousand Miles From Nowhere" and "Fast As You," and several platinum-selling albums.
"I was always a little stunned that things have been played 2, 3 million times in the case of some of the albums, you know, some of the songs that are tracks off albums," Yoakam said. "So tonight, this is kind of a culmination of the 34 years of receiving those individual awards."
Country singers Jon Pardi, Margo Price and the group The Highwomen with Jason Isbell performed some of Yoakam's songs during the ceremony.
Other top country songwriters were also honored, including Nicolle Galyon and Ross Copperman. Galyon became the first female songwriter to win BMI's country songwriter of the year since Taylor Swift in 2010.
Galyon co-wrote Lee Brice's "Boy," Keith Urban's "Coming Home," Lady Antebellum's "Heartbreak" and Dan + Shay's "Tequila." Copperman co-wrote Kenny Chesney's "Get Along," Blake Shelton's "I Lived It," Justin Moore's "Kinda Don't Care" and Dierks Bentley's "Woman, Amen."
Review: Writer-Director Aaron Schimberg’s “A Different Man”
Imagine you could wake up one morning, stand at the mirror, and literally peel off any part of your looks you don't like — with only movie-star beauty remaining.
How would it change your life? How SHOULD it change your life?
That's a question – well, a launching point, really — for Edward, protagonist of Aaron Schimberg's fascinating, genre-bending, undeniably provocative and occasionally frustrating "A Different Man," featuring a stellar trio of Sebastian Stan, Adam Pearson and Renate Reinsve.
The very title is open to multiple interpretations. Who (and what) is "different"? The original Edward, who has neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes bulging tumors on his face? Or the man he becomes when he's able to slip out of that skin? And is he "different" to others, or to himself?
When we meet Edward, a struggling actor in New York (Stan, in elaborate makeup), he's filming some sort of commercial. We soon learn it's an instructional video on how to behave around colleagues with deformities. But even there, the director stops him, offering changes. "Wouldn't want to scare anyone," he says.
On Edward's way home on the subway, people stare. Back at his small apartment building, he meets a young woman in the hallway, in the midst of moving to the flat next door. She winces visibly when she first sees him, as virtually everyone does.
But later, Ingrid (Reinsve) tries to make it up to him, coming over to chat. She is charming and forthright, and tells Edward she's a budding playwright.
Edward goes for a medical checkup and learns that one of his tumors is slowly progressing over the eye. But he's also told of an experimental trial he could join. With the possibility — maybe — of a cure.
So... Read More