When Dwight Yoakam finally phones in for his interview, he's more than half an hour late. No doubt he was juggling calls from his Hollywood agent, the president of his record label, and maybe Billy Bob Thornton or some other star of film or song. Or perhaps not. "They were fixing my phone. I have a mini-system in my house, and they're rebooting it or something ..." He apologizes profusely for the delay, then asks for another five minutes so he can apologize to his other backed-up appointments.

He calls back shortly, and apologizes again (polite guy, Dwight), and the interview is off and running. Or rather, off and taking slow, faltering steps. It quickly becomes apparent that interviewing Yoakam is all about patience. Whether he's discussing his solid new album, A Long Way Home, zen and the art of songwriting or his burgeoning film career (Sling Blade, The Newton Boys), the Kentucky boy turned Babylonian cowboy sex symbol takes his sweet time. Edit out the long pauses in his self-described "halting, staccato kind of syntactical articulation," and forty minutes of conversation boils down to about fifteen minutes of insight. It's a display of shy, awkward vulnerability that only makes his assured ease on record, stage and screen all the more impressive. It ain't natural, every-day charisma that comes through in those wild concert performances and film roles -- it's all acting. All of it, that is, except for his winning songs. Some shit you just can't fake.

Congratulations on this frankly excellent new album. Do you know when you've completed a doozy?

Well, I'll tell you what ... 'doozy.' [Laughs] I don't know. The vernacular I would use would be more along the lines of feeling that the work was good [and] a sense of it being something I'm satisfied with ... I'm trying more and more to learn how to give over to the song and let the song write itself. It's a matter of finding the way or ways to be open, as a conduit, and to not have the rest of life interfere with or distract you from it. It's also giving over to -- at the risk of sounding completely new agey -- the unconscious zen of it.

Speaking of songs, Johnny Cash and George Jones recently declared war on the Nashville establishment and country music for not playing their songs on the radio any more. What's your take on their complaint?

Well, I understand their frustration. I grew up in a time when radio was more willing to embrace its heritage. But, at the same time, I don't pretend to know how to tell radio how to best operate their business. Because it is a business, and it's not about music, by the way. Music is a catalyst for what their business is, which is selling air-time. You get in trouble if you try and second guess radio, because it's the public that radio is trying to second guess and respond to. I think it's cyclical and that the artist has to just continue to focus on doing the best work that they can at any given moment in their career and lives and let the rest kind of take care of itself -- or not.

I've experienced times when we've been off the radio, and I've had success on radio. Johnny Cash is actually someone I look at as an example of where it ebbs and flows. If I had my own station, well shoot, I'd probably program it different than most people, and I don't know who'd listen to that, and I know what I'd program would be so perversely eclectic that I don't know that anybody but me could stomach it for very long.

You were first signed at roughly the same time as Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith and Randy Travis. Do still keep a close eye on what they're up to?

No, and I never did. At the time when I was asked, 'Oh you're part of the young-country-new-whatever-they-were-called -- new traditionalists, neo-traditionalist' -- I said, 'Well look, I think that five years from now we'll be able to see very clear distinctions in all of us; ten years and you'll see more distinctions and hopefully everybody will have the ability to see those distinctions ...' And you know, we're all still making records, and I think we're making them as we did to begin with -- kind of on our own terms. It was only the marketeers that needed to categorize us together and pit the artists in sort of a competitive marketing strategy, as competing voices -- when I don't think that has to be the case. I only concern myself with my music at any given time, and I know that's the case with those other people you mentioned.

You've been working with Pete Anderson as your producer and lead guitarist for years now. Do you see that relationship continuing to work, or are you fed up with each other yet?

Oh no, boy I would hope. I'm as proud of the fact that that relationship has continued as I am of anything I've achieved in music in terms of success -- the success that we've realized together as collaborators in making these records. We wanted to work in a shorthand that allows us usually to sidestep anything escalating from frustration to in-each-other's-face arguments. Knock wood, Pete and I really have never succumbed to that. We clearly have a respect for each other, and it works because of that. Do we always see eye-to-eye on everything, and do we and will we? No. That's not healthy. I think that's the nature of what each of us brings to the other one in terms of perspective. Do we respect the other person's right to that difference of opinion? Absolutely.

Shifting gears a little bit, can you tell me a little bit about South of Heaven, West of Hell, the film you're writing, directing and producing?

Actually no. It's just a western. I wrote the original story idea about four years ago with a couple of guys -- we did a draft and we didn't really do anything with it. Then about a year ago, Billy Bob Thornton read it, and he said, 'You know, there's something there, why don't you rewrite it.' So I began again last year on page one and wrote the shooting script. And, knock on wood, it appears that we're going to be able to make it this fall. It's kind of a morality tale.

Last question: Will you be touring soon?

We hope to be touring next year. Not this year. I'm acting in a film titled The Minus Man in June and July in L.A. I play a detective. I don't want to say too much to give away the movie in deference to Hampton Fancher, who wrote it -- Hampton wrote Blade Runner -- but it's an interesting film. I play a supporting role in that, and then I'm off to see the wizard on this western.

RICHARD SKANSE