Dwight Yoakam wants fans to know he had reasons – good ones -for arriving an hour and a half late for a Lubbock concert last week.

The country superstar was scheduled to take the stage at Buddy Holl Hall at 9 p.m. Thursday. He didn’t show until 10:30 p.m.

While restless audience members waited, an anonymous public address announcer said Yoakam had been held up by a flight delay.

Yoakam heard about that explanation later, and he was not pleased. By his account, “flight delay” didn’t begin to capture what he’d been through. And he wanted his followers to know.

“I want to personally apologize to the fans who bought tickets and attended our show in Lubbock TX this past Thursday evening,” the two-time Grammy winner wrote on X Sunday morning.

“It has only today been brought to my attention that unfortunately the circumstances surrounding my delayed arrival to perform the concert that night were not conveyed clearly by an in person announcement from the stage but rather by a vague anonymous PA announcement about a flight delay.”

Here’s what Yoakam says actually happened: His Lubbock-bound plane was about to take off – he did not say from where – when a cockpit alarm signaled a mechanical failure, and the crew had to abort the takeoff at the last second.

“Fortunately the pilots handled the aborted takeoff with exceptional professional skill and they were able to avoid anything more dangerous or catastrophic occurring,” Yoakam wrote. “After taxiing back to the hangar and concluding that the issue with that aircraft could not be corrected we were luckily able to be moved to a different plane.

“I am very sorry for any frustration and disappointment the delay caused,” said the message, which was signed “Dwight.”

It could hardly have been lost on many in the audience at Buddy Holly Hall that the venue’s namesake, Lubbock native Charles Hardin “Buddy” Holley, a seminal figure in rock’n’roll, died in a plane crash in 1959 while flying from a show in Iowa to his next one in Minnesota. He was 22.

Yoakam, now 69, broke through to stardom in 1986 with the album “Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.” That album and his next two, “Hillbilly Deluxe” and “Buenas Noches from a Lonely Room,” all reached No. 1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. His 1993 album, “This Time,” which went triple-platinum, was his biggest commercial success. He is also an actor, screenwriter and director.

This article originally published at Dwight Yoakam explains why he was late for Lubbock concert. It’s not pretty..