We already knew that Kevin Costner was a man of many talents, but we didn’t expect his Yellowstone contributions to be musical as well.
There’s no doubt that Yellowstone owes a lot of its success to the gargantuan star power of Kevin Costner. As the ranch patriarch John Dutton, he’s been the ruthless and defiant leading man throughout the show’s history. And it turns out the show owes part of its musical backdrop to Costner too.
That’s right, Kevin Costner is in a band. His country rock outfit Kevin Costner & Modern West has contributed a lot of music to the Yellowstone soundtrack over the years and across the Yellowstone timeline. So the various betrayals and battles of the Yellowstone cast have often played out against the backdrop of John Dutton himself warbling his way through a country track.
Costner formed the band in 2007 and embarked upon a world tour, as well as playing gigs at North Carolina NASCAR events, obviously. They’ve since released five albums, with the final one directly inspired by one of the best TV series around. It’s called Tales from Yellowstone, and the songs are written from John Dutton’s perspective. Genius.
In many ways, it’s a mark of how much impact and influence Costner has on any project he takes on. He’s not content to be simply one of the best actors on any given set; he has creative input across the board, all the way through to the soundtrack.
The music is pretty decent stuff as dad-focused country rock goes. We’ve certainly heard a lot worse, especially those of us who spent most of the 2020 lockdowns unfortunately addicted to the questionable music of Joe “Tiger King” Exotic. Next to him, Costner is basically the second coming of Glen Campbell.
Costner explained to American Songwriter that one of his songs, ‘Won’t Stop Loving You’, is about John Dutton mourning his wife, who passed away in a horse riding accident.
“It begins to sum up how he feels,” said Costner. This man is about the land. And when you share the land with your partner, every place you ever go, you see her on it. He’s a man going forward, but you never forget that moment; it’s immovable. I didn’t have to look any further than my own life to find what was the strength of it for me.”
But we don’t yet know whether Costner’s influence will extend to Yellowstone season 5 part 2. It’s not clear whether Costner will show up at all for the concluding chapter of the series, and we’ve come up for some ideas around what will happen to John Dutton. We need to plug the gap somehow.
Whether he returns to one of TV’s best Westerns or not, we know that we’re getting more of Costner in a cowboy hat when the Horizon release date comes around. And finally, you should find out why Kevin Costner wanted to buy his first movie and destroy it.