"After his death, it was the clearest way I could express my love for him and acknowledge the depth of our friendship." --Dwight Yoakam on why he chose to record an album of Buck Owens songs

On March 25, 2006, when Dwight Yoakam got the awful news that his close friend Buck Owens had passed away, it was a shock. Only four days earlier, the honky-tonk compadres had spent four hours on the phone catching up while Dwight was amid a 17-month world tour. "Buck was just full of life," Dwight remembers. "We'd known each other since 1987, and somebody had asked him about me, and he said, 'People think we have dinner together every night.' And I said, 'I know, they act like we're just down the block from one another,' and he said, 'Well, it always will be like that, Dwight.' Ours was a friendship that was a combination of parent, sibling and peer..."