WESTSIDE/VALLEY : Guitarist’s New Label Out on a Mission

Pete Anderson says he’d be happy just playing guitar, much as he has done alongside country singer Dwight Yoakam over this last decade. But he’s also drifted into work behind the scenes as an acclaimed record producer, arranger and booster for acts as diverse as Buck Owens and the Meat Puppets.

Now Anderson, acting on a conviction that the music industry is abandoning the needs of an entire generation of listeners, is launching his own label, Little Dog Records.

“My age group is kind of being ignored,” says Anderson, 44. “The next James Taylor that comes along, where does he get a record deal? Is it in Nashville or is it in L.A.? Nashville is going great guns because L.A. has ignored a certain generation of the public that still buys records.”

Pop radio may currently be dominated by the hard-rock Seattle sound, urban rap and dance-pop from the likes of Madonna. But Anderson says the commercial viability of that group of listeners now in their 30s and 40s has been proven again by Eric Clapton’s recent successes, Taylor’s continued drawing power at concerts, and the popularity of the VH-1 video channel, which caters to older music fans.

“My age group is still the largest age group,” Anderson says. “And L.A. is just not servicing it because they figure we’re just a bunch of old people, and we don’t want to buy records.”

Anderson’s new label will focus largely on emerging singer-songwriters. The first release from Little Dog Records later this month will be from Anthony Crawford, a singer-songwriter from Tennessee who has worked with such rock and country artists as Neil Young, Steve Winwood and Vince Gill.

“He’s extremely talented, and he’s in his mid-30s,” Anderson says. “It’s music for my generation. It’s intelligent, lyric-oriented stuff.”

Those qualities are common among many of the artists Anderson has worked with as a producer and arranger. Among those projects was the 1989 Grammy-winning duet of “Crying” by Roy Orbison and k.d. lang. But it’s his work with Yoakam that still defines his own musical voice.

They met back in the early 1980s, about a decade after Anderson arrived in Los Angeles via Phoenix and his hometown of Detroit. In those days, the neotraditionalist, or what Yoakam called “hillbilly” country that he was writing and performing, clashed with the slick Urban Cowboy pop that dominated the country scene.

After years of struggling to make a living as a blues guitarist, Anderson slowly gravitated toward country music, the sound he’d grown up hearing on his father’s records. He joined Yoakam’s band, even if “we kept getting fired from clubs because we didn’t play popular country music.”

The two have remained close collaborators ever since. “I think I was someone he trusted because we both had nothing when we started out,” says Anderson, who now lives in Glendale.

He was talking in Columbus, Ohio, Yoakam’s hometown and another stop on their current concert tour. “We just trusted in each other’s talents and abilities. It’s pretty powerful to have two people that are pretty much in sync. You can generate a lot of activity and confidence.”

Anderson’s first significant production work was on Yoakam’s independently released six-song EP that they financed themselves. When Warner Bros. Records ultimately signed Yoakam, the pair merely added four tracks to the original record. That first album, 1986’s “Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc.,” was eventually certified platinum (sales of 1 million). Suddenly Anderson was in demand as a producer and arranger. His next production jobs were with country artists Rosie Flores and George Highfill, but he soon branched out into rock and other genres.

“I enjoy producing, and I enjoy producing other people, but I don’t really enjoy the producer-artist relationship as well as I do with Dwight,” Anderson says. “It spoils you.”

He did appear to be developing a similar arrangement with singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked, whose music spans neo-folk, rock, country and blues. Though that collaboration has dissolved, since Shocked moved into producing herself, the two earned critical attention through her albums “Short Sharp Shocked” in 1988 and “Captain Swing” in 1989.

“I really loved working with her,” Anderson says. “ ‘Short Sharp Shocked’ is as near a perfect magical record as I’ve ever been involved with. And it was like 12 days to make that record.

“She had been preparing her whole life to make that record and to sing those songs.”

Now that he and four partners have created Little Dog, Anderson is talking about finally recording an album of his own. Over the years he’s released a few singles, and he recorded some instrumental tracks for “A Town South of Bakersfield,” an anthology of Los Angeles country music he produced in the late ‘80s.

The album will probably be recorded later this year, filled with more instrumentals, original songs, outside material, elements of electric guitar, tuba and other instruments, as well as guest appearances by some of the players he’s worked with since hitting L.A. in 1972.

It will be “a blend of everything I’ve ever liked,” he promises.

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Guitarist Pete Anderson performs with Dwight Yoakam at 8:15 p.m. June 18 and 19 at Universal Amphitheater. Call (213) 480-3232.