Tulsa loves Dwight Twilley, and he loved Tulsa back

By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World
 
In 2001, a Tulsa World reader emailed me, essentially asking, “What’s your deal with Dwight Twilley?” I’d recently mentioned the Tulsa-based pop star in two consecutive music columns, in addition to the reliably consistent coverage I usually afforded him.
 
The choices were defensible. Twilley fit several journalism-school criteria for newsworthiness: prominent figure, timely projects, an audience to match our readership. But truth is: I just liked the guy. I’d been listening to his pop-rock records since I was a teenager, before I was ever fully aware of his Tulsa roots. Later, as the World’s pop critic, I was lucky enough to meet him, interview him, see his shows. He was a funny guy, warm (eventually), personable (once he trusted you). The joy of the features side of newspapers is that you get to write about the good guys, and Dwight was one the best.
 
It’s a drag speaking of him in the past tense. Twilley passed away last week at age 72. Services are pending.
 
Celebrate him home
The first time I saw Twilley is etched pretty deeply: Nov. 13, 1996 at Caz’s, back when tumbleweeds rolled through what is now Tulsa’s thriving arts district. A superlative trio, Buick MacKane, opened the show on the dive bar’s “stage,” barely a corner in the middle of the shotgun space. They were a great band themselves, but they played the bar like a bar, like the gig they booked. Twilley, by contrast, was about to saunter in and play it like it was Wembley Stadium.
 
He had moved back to Tulsa not long before, and this set was billed as a comeback of sorts. With an instinct for what made both Elvis and the Beatles click, Twilley and his pal Phil Seymour had been collared by the record business as young, handsome bucks, and they scored an early hit with a single recorded at the Church Studio in November 1974, “I’m on Fire.” A decade and numerous record-biz struggles later, Twilley scored his second hit, “Girls” (with fellow former Shelter Records mate Tom Petty singing counterpoint). A fiery start, a handful of choice albums in the ’80s, and one of the only “American Bandstand” performances worth watching — you couldn’t call it major stardom, but it was the limelight. More importantly, it was damn great music.
 
By 1994, though, after 15 years in L.A., Twilley saw some writing on a wall. He was booked to be a guest on a cable talk show and got bumped by live coverage of the O.J. car chase. The Northridge earthquake that year shook his house and his nerves, both irreparably. He made the call and came home.
 
“I don't need Los Angeles anymore,” Twilley told me in 1997. “You used to have to be in L.A., but you don't have to anymore with phones and faxes and the Internet. Plus, this way, everything in my entire house won't fall on the floor at 4 a.m. I mean, when you're faced with having to move because your house is too damaged, you don't feel like just moving down the street. So we came back here.”
 
“After the earthquake, the insurance people said we’d have to move out of the house to fix it and then move back in,” Twilley’s wife, Jan, added in 1999. “Dwight looked at me and started singing, ‘Take me back to Tulsa …’”

In the “Behind the Music” narrative arc of a late-20th-century rock career, that’s usually a fade-out. But the ’90s were affording musicians a couple of things that helped keep careers visible and viable. The rise of independent labels meant you could make music outside the coastal power centers and still keep a hand in. The ongoing transition to CDs also meant many artists saw a bump in their income as old titles were reissued in the new format. Twilley’s platters were catnip to second-run labels like Rhino and The Right Stuff.
 
“I don’t know why people keep doing that,” he said of the reissues in ’97. “I think some chick in Indiana has promised to buy one. It’s funny — when I started out, I was a rock ’n’ roll guy. Then I was a new wave guy. Now I’m a power-pop guy. I’ve always been the same guy playing the same music, it’s just that the names for it have changed.”
 
1990s nostalgia slapped the “power pop” label on a made-up golden age of catchy post-Beatles guitar records. Twilley’s singles bookended the target era, and they started showing up on power-pop anthologies, one after another. Each one was a tiny shot in the arm, giving him enough dough and encouragement to keep going. He turned his Brookside garage into a top-notch studio. He made more records. Schmucks like me poured a lot ink about him. The discography grew — peaking in as fine a summation of 20th-century American rock sound as anyone could dream of ahead of Y2K, 1999’s simply but aptly named “Tulsa.”
 
His very own Tulsa
But Twilley didn’t pick that title to please the mayor. His affection for his hometown was authentic, but also purely sensible, and it taught me a lot about what it means to love where you’re from — to really value it, no matter what they say in the papers.
 
Because the media don’t always make that easy. In a mid-sized city like Tulsa, writers and editors tend to latch onto anything with a local postal code that carries the merest whiff of success, much less stardom. The coverage often comes off as provincial — playing into local boardroom boosterism, blinding the view of the subject with a lot of “ain’t Tulsa grand?!” self-congratulations.
 
Twilley somehow never fell prey to this. Heaven knows we tried — the city booked him to headline its centennial concert, the World even made him the face of our inaugural Spot Music Awards — but hometown hawking didn’t really stick to him, or become his shtick. He never went on about Tulsa pride for pride’s sake. He just went to work. He wasn’t here for the chamber of commerce, he was here for the band.
 
In most of his interviews — around the world — Twilley praised the comparative quality of the local musicianship. What became clear after getting to know Twilley 2.0 was that coming home, while perhaps logistically convenient, was musically necessary.
 
“This is my town,” Twilley said in ’97, with emphasis, directness, ownership. “I know a lot of people here, and I know the caliber of players here. It’s taken me a while to put together this combination, but I’ve got top-notch players. Tulsa’s full of them.

“When I was growing up here, it was hard to get a gig. There weren’t that many, and they were taken up by a cool clique of players. So you had to be better than people in other towns just to
get and hold your ground here. That makes for some talented players around here.”
 
He was talking about drummer Jerry Naifeh and guitarists like Pat Savage, Tom Hanford, and the late, great Bill Pitcock IV (the latter utterly instrumental to the sound and success of the Dwight Twilley Band). After returning home, it was also bassist Dave White and drummer Bill Padgett. These were players who stuck by Twilley, backed him up show after show, project after project.
 
Twilley said of the “Tulsa” album itself: “This record wouldn’t have been possible without the
incredible musicianship in this town. I’ve always said that Tulsa musicians are the best in the world because they have to work so damn hard, harder than anywhere else. That was part of why I moved back. I wanted a band of Tulsa musicians again … and I feel a real sense of accomplishment that I’ve made a new Dwight Twilley record here in Tulsa.”
 
Play the gig you want
The Caz’s show in ’96 previewed some of the “Tulsa” songs. The minute he walked in the joint, everyone could see he was a man of distinction.
 
We were sitting at a table by the door, waiting to catch sight of him. A decade past his last hit, truth be told, our tabloid-trained sense of culture was eager to see how he looked and if this homecoming billing would tip over the rails.
 
Twilley made his entrance through the front door, strutting in with remarkable confidence. The buttons on his lapel. The feathered hair. Skinny jeans aeons before they were cool again. Sunglasses, natch. The good looks were still chiseled. A lot of the flies in the bar had no idea who he was as he swaggered by, but they knew damn well he was a star.
 
Again, the gear’s in the corner of a small bar in downtown Tulsa. The band barely changes over; Buick MacKane’s singer steps aside, Dwight and Pitcock step up. The waitstaff keep taking orders. I wish I could remember the setlist, what he opened with. What I do recall is the way the room changed, lifted, electrified. He started with something soft and crescendoed — a genius move, surely — so that the crowd had to notice him slowly before he made them take notice. He bent slightly into the mic, staring toward the bar but not seeing it, as if Live Freakin’ Aid stretched out before him. His vocals filled that metaphoric space — the trademark reverb helps, of course, but only if the performance meets the intention. His vaunted band of Tulsa players met those illusions of grandeur, propelling riff after riff into the stratosphere. Mouths gaped. Brows furrowed. Whether you knew him or not, you marveled, What is this guy doing here?
 
Fair question, still. Dwight had his reasons, and I’m just glad he hankered for home.
 
 
Thomas Conner is a former writer and editor at the Tulsa World. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Media Studies at The University of Tulsa.