Steve Earle released an acoustic version of a new song, “Times Like These” today via SPIN magazine. A full-band rendition will drop on August 29th as the first of three Record Store Day events.
“This is a song I wrote for a moment at the beginning of the Trumpian nightmare that I planned on releasing closer to the election, but I reckon its time has come today,” Earle said of the song.
A full-band rendition of “Times Like These” is out on August 29th as the first of three Record Store Day Drops events. But last Friday, Earle went back into the studio to give us a preview of the song with a stripped-down version.
The bare-bones recording, with Earle unaccompanied on acoustic guitar, stresses the urgency of ending the Trump administration. The song was written early in 45’s reign and was originally supposed to be part of a new full-length before it became the Ghosts of West Virginia concept album. Its lyrics are sadly evergreen and reflect the problems that the country continues to face today.
Steve Earle examines the physical strength and life-risking bravery of Appalachian miners in “Devil Put the Coal in the Ground,” the first preview of the singer’s new album, “Ghosts of West Virginia”. The follow-up to the Texas-born singer-songwriter’s 2019 Guy Clark tribute album, Guy, Earle and his band the Dukes’ Ghosts of West Virginia has roots in the New York theater community.
Earle was approached by playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, with whom he’d worked on The Exonerated, to collaborate on a play about the 2010 Upper Big Branch disaster in West Virginia, which killed 29 men. The finished work, Coal Country, features Earle as a kind of Greek chorus and opens March 3rd, with shows running through March 29th, at the Public Theater in New York. During a production of Coal Country, Earle sings seven of the songs that have been recorded for Ghosts of West Virginia, which also centers on the Upper Big Branch disaster. For composing around this theme, the famously liberal Earle challenged himself to write songs that would embrace and sympathize with people who may not align with him politically.
Steve Earle’s latest release — “Union, God and Country” — from his forthcoming album, Ghosts of West Virginia,
“One of the dangers that we’re in is if people like me keep thinking that everyone who voted for Trump is a racist or an asshole, then we’re fucked, because it’s simply not true,” he says in a release. “So this is one move toward something that might take a generation to change. I wanted to do something where that dialogue could begin.”
Over the course of the album, Earle examines hardship and loss, but also sets his sights on the mining company whose safety violations doomed the miners and the union-busting politicians who eroded their bargaining power. But in “Devil Put the Coal in the Ground,” Earle employs a heave-ho work-song rhythm to conjure the pride of working men as they descend into the mines. With a bluesy, hypnotic musical backdrop of banjo, droning fiddle, and pounding percussion, Earle drawls his lyrics in a way that almost sounds like a taunt: “The good lord gimme two hands/Says is you an animal or is you a man.” It transforms into a psychedelic guitar odyssey, thrilling and anxiety-ridden all at once.
Steve Earle’s latest release his forthcoming album, Ghosts of West Virginia, available May 22nd, 2020
Steve Earle & The Dukes have a new album coming this May. Titled “Ghosts Of West Virginia”, it’s built largely from songs Earle wrote for Coal Country, a new play by The Exonerated’s Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen running throughout March at NYC’s Public Theater. Earle performs the tunes as part of the stage production, which is currently in previews.
Whereas Earle sees his The Revolution Starts…Now album as an exercise in preaching to the choir, he conceived Ghosts Of West Virginia in the hopes of connecting with working people who don’t see the world the same way he does. In a press release, he explains, “I thought that, given the way things are now, it was maybe my responsibility to make a record that spoke to and for people who didn’t vote the way that I did.”
The album’s lead single is called “Devil Put The Coal In The Ground,”
From the album ‘Ghosts of West Virginia,’ available May 22nd, 2020
The Fat Angel Sings 