An American flag hung from the back wall of the Taft Theatre stage Tuesday. It didn't look out of place among the lava lamps and the rest of Dwight Yoakam's retro set. But as he said, dedicating his full-tilt, 95-minute show to the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it was in “defiant respect for all those who lost their lives.”

        He never mentioned it, but the tragedy hit close to home for the post-modern country singer and his Babylonian Cowboys band.

        When the plane struck the Pentagon, they were staying at a hotel just a few blocks away. And among those killed on American Airlines Flight 11, which struck the World Trade Center, was Carolyn Beug, director of several of Mr. Yoakam's music videos.

        He returned to the tragedy later in the concert, performing the Stanley Brothers' bluegrass gospel classic, “The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn.”

        But those were rare, solemn moments in a non-stop barrage of songs from 17 years of recording.

        Playing to an adoring crowd of around 1,000, Mr. Yoakam led his six-man band through an encyclopedia of country music styles. Along with bluegrass, his concert featured the Tex-Mex polka of Buck Owens' “Streets of Bakersfield” and Johnny Horton's '50s classic, “Honky Tonk Man.”

        His other covers, however, were pure Yoakam, from Elvis' “Little Sister” to Queen's “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” to Cheap Trick's “I Want You to Want Me.”

        In the hands of the innovative traditionalist and his longtime producer/guitarist Pete Anderson, the last song was transformed into pure Buck Owens Bakersfield twang, complete with fiddler/harmony singer Scot Joss' Don Rich-style tenor.

        For many women in the crowd, the music came second, after Mr. Yoakam's so-tight-they-must-be-surgically-implantedjeans. With every shake of his knees, every shuffle of his cowboy boots, there were female shrieks of 'NSync proportions.

        No matter what you came for, Mr. Yoakam and company delivered. There was the title cut of his 1984 EP, Guitars, Cadillacs, and several from his best album, This Time, including “A Thousand Miles From Nowhere, “Ain't That Lonely Yet” and his rocking finale, “Fast As You”

        The prolific songwriter also had a batch of new songs from his soundtrack, South of Heaven West of Hell, including one he wrote with Mick Jagger, a slow weeper called “What's Left of Me.”

        But his old songs cut the deepest, as in his first encore, a solo “South of Cincinnati.”

        Mr. Yoakam grew up in Columbus and the concert was given even more of a Buckeye edge with Rob McNelley, lead guitarist for opening act Allison Moorer. The son of the late Bobby Gene McNelley of Columbus country-rock band McGuffey Lane, he was recently here with former V-roy Scott Miller and is on his way to become country's next guitar hero.

        His playing may have overshadowed most female country singers, but not Ms. Moorer, younger sister of Shelby Lynne. Her rich, soulful voice more than held its own through a superb 40-minute set, from the slower “Send Me an Angel” to the uptempo title track of her second CD, The Hardest Part, including the Stones' “Sweet Virginia” chorus.

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