Dwight Twilley brings acoustic experience to OKC

Tulsa's power-pop prince of the Plains will give a rare unplugged performance Saturday night at Oklahoma City's The Blue Door, a venue known mainly for hosting artists of the acoustic persuasion.

Dwight Twilley, who made his bones in the 1970s and '80s with such slapback-echoing electric hits as “I'm On Fire” and “Girls,” will present his “Look Ma No Band” show at the rustic Oklahoma City listening room with only a hollow-bodied wooden guitar and a microphone to keep him company.

“I've never really been into the whole idea of just being the lone guy, minstrel boy with an acoustic guitar,” he said in a recent phone interview from his Tulsa residence, where he's lived and recorded in his home studio for more that two decades, with his wife, Jan, serving as engineer and co-producer.

“Back in the '80s and stuff they always wanted you to go on the radio and bring your acoustic, which wasn't too bad of a deal,” he said. “But sooner or later, somebody'd ask you to play one of your hits. But there's so many vocals, detailed, overdubbed guitars and things on my records. A lot of them really don't translate that well (to any acoustic format). So I've always really kind of shied away from it. But a couple of years back we were doing a show in Canada, one of those things where they supply their best players in town and I would do my full electric show. But one night — there were three nights, it was like a festival — they asked me to do like three songs, acoustically. I thought, well, what the hell, you know, I'll go ahead and give it a try. They're payin' good.

“And it turned out, it surprised me how much I enjoyed it. And the audience really seemed to enjoy it. And so it just kind of went from there. I was playing three songs, and then somebody else called up and asked if I could do five. Next, I was doin' a half-hour, and then it was an hour, and now I'm doing a full show.”

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Early days

Twilley began his musical journey in the early '70s with then-bandmate and like-minded Beatles fanatic, the late Phil Seymour, in a band called Oister. Their early recordings, which combined Fab Four and Sun Records rockabilly influences, landed them their first recording contract on fellow Tulsan Leon Russell's Shelter Records in 1974.

What followed were years of ups and downs in the so-called major-label record business of Los Angeles, where Twilley's career was severely impeded by an industry in tumult because of shaky management, distribution screw-ups and constant movement from one failed imprint to another. As a solo artist, he churned out albums that were critical successes but, more often than not, commercial duds. Twilley did manage to gain exposure on “American Bandstand” and MTV, and his classic ballad “Why You Wanna Break My Heart” made its way onto the “Wayne's World” soundtrack in 1992.

But too many bouts with bad luck prompted the Twilleys to move back to his hometown in the late '90s, where the couple bought a house and built on a studio, the headquarters of their own Big Oak Records. They've been producing their own work independently ever since. A 40-song, double-disc sampling of Twilley's output during this period can be found on “The Best of Twilley: The Tulsa Years, 1999-2016,” released last year.

Meanwhile, the Twilleys have obtained ownership of their early masters, and plan to remix and rerelease Twilley's 1979 solo debut, “Twilley,” in the near future. But currently there are no plans to release any new original material any time soon.

“We thought we needed to turn off the studio for a while,” he said. “When you listen to this ‘Best of,' we realize how much work we've done over the past 15, 20 years. And we want to concentrate on other things, like going around the country and playing some of these songs.”

Storyteller

As for the acoustic show, "The thing that's actually interesting about it, because there's so much material over the years, is that I'm able to do a lot of songs that I would never have been able to do with the band, some of the things that I know people like a lot. And they've been very popular songs, but they're just not the kind of thing you pop into a heavy rock 'n' roll show like I normally do.

“So it's been kind of fun for me, and I kind of like surprising people with the variety of songs I've done throughout the years that I can just sit up there and play. And it's very intimate. I just tell stories about the songs and things that were happening at that time.”

And after four decades, Twilley has plenty of stories to tell.