Posts Tagged ‘Steve Earle’

STEVE EARLE – ” Covers Bob Dylan Songs “

Posted: January 17, 2021 in MUSIC
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Stephen Fain Earle (born January 17th, 1955) an American rock, country and folk singer-songwriter, record producer, author and actor. Earle began his career as a songwriter in Nashville and released his first EP in 1982. He grew up near San Antonio, Texas, and began learning the guitar at age 11. His breakthrough album was the 1986 album “Guitar Town”. Since then Earle has released 16 other studio albums and received three Grammy awards. His songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Travis Tritt, Vince Gill, Shawn Colvin and Emmylou Harris. He has appeared in film and television, and has written a novel, a play, and a book of short stories.  These are the best interpretations we can find of Steve Earle singing Bob Dylan’s songs.

“Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)”

Steve Earle with Lucia Micarelli  “One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)” possibily the best Bob Dylan cover ever, such passion and yearning in every line. When Dylan wrote ‘to the valley below’ it was deliberate, he took a prosaic sentence, one more cup of coffee before I go and changed it to a biblical epic with that line,

Steve Earle – guitar, vocal Lucia Micarelli – violin, vocal, From “Chimes of Freedom”: Songs of Bob Dylan Honouring 50 Years of Amnesty International –

“My Back Pages”

“It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”,

Fantastic end to the 1996 live MTV show called “To Hell and Back” of Steve Earle performing with the best Dukes line up and the awesome Custer on drums. With a song written by Bob Dylan that was originally released on his seminal album “Highway 61 Revisited”, and also included on the compilation album Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits 2 that was released in Europe.

“Masters of War” Musician Steve Earle sings Bob Dylan’s “Master’s of War.” Part of a reading from Voices of a People’s History of the United States (Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove,) Berkeley, California on November 11th, 2006.

Steve Earle: “Was Townes Van Zandt Better Than Bob Dylan?…I’m kinda famous for something I said…I was asked for a sticker for a Townes record that came out in the 80s, I said, Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the world and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy-boots and say that. 
It wasn’t that I thought that Townes was better than Bob Dylan. I just knew that Townes really needed the help more.”

Well, I love both Van Zandt and Dylan, and so does Steve Earle. He has done songs by both on several occasions, and he did an entire album with Townes Van Zandt songs. But Steve Earle is the perfect choice to sing any Dylan song.

STEVE EARLE & The DUKES – ” ‘J.T’ “

Posted: January 4, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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One of the first releases of 2021 comes from Steve Earle and has a tragic back story: The album, “J.T.,” is a tribute to his son, the singer and songwriter Justin Townes Earle, who died from an accidental drug overdose in August. “I’ve never loved anything in this world more than him,” Steve Earle said. “I was connected to him in ways that, you know he’s my first born, he did the same thing I did and we both had this disease.” On the evening of August. 20th, Steve Earle spoke to his son Justin Townes Earle for the last time.

In a phone call initiated by Justin, they caught up on family business and Steve, the country-rock singer-songwriter, who struggled with addiction for years, told his son a lauded musician in his own right that he would support him if he was ready to begin his own recovery. “I said, ‘Do not make me bury you,’” the elder Earle recalled in an interview. “And he said, ‘I won’t.’”

That night, Justin, 38, died alone in an apartment in Nashville of an accidental drug overdose; an autopsy found evidence in his blood of cocaine laced with fentanyl, a powerful opioid. For Earle, the death of his eldest son set off waves of grief. He had watched Justin grow from a scraggly teenage hip-hop fan intrigued by Kurt Cobain to a rising star of Americana music the fuzzy intersection in the Venn diagram of folk, country and rock, where Earle has long been a looming presence.

Justin, who released eight albums and an EP over 13 years, had a mordant song writing style that bore the influence of Townes Van Zandt, the fatalistic folk oracle who was Earle’s mentor and the man he named his son after. It also had the unmistakable imprint of Earle himself, whose best songs, whether performed in loud bands or alone with an acoustic guitar, have always had a certain rock ’n’ roll sneer.

Justin, like his father, also spent years as an addict, using heroin since his teens. Alcoholism plagued him throughout his career, and took a hard toll in his later years. Justin was hospitalized with pneumonia over the summer, having aspirated vomit in his lungs, and was told by a doctor that he would die if he did not quit drinking, Steve said. But while Steve eventually got clean after spending time in prison in 1994 on drug and weapons charges his son succumbed to the disease. Among Justin’s survivors are his wife, Jennifer, and a 3-year-old daughter, Etta St. James Earle.

Within days of Justin’s death, Earle, 65, began work on what would become “J.T.,” an album of 10 of Justin’s songs, and one new track by his father, that will be released on January 4th, which would have been Justin’s 39th birthday. Proceeds from the LP will go to a trust to benefit Etta.

“His best songs were as good as anybody’s,” said Earle, whose Greenwich Village apartment is crammed with photos of Justin, including one black-and-white shot on the wall showing his 3-year-old son chomping on a candy apple. “He was a way better singer than I am, a way better guitar player, technically, than I am. His fingerpicking could be mind-blowing.” “He was just one of those people,” Earle added, “that never felt like he was enough.”

“J.T.” — Justin’s childhood nickname is the latest entry in what has become a grim specialty for Earle: the tribute album for a departed musical confidant. “Townes” was released in 2009, a dozen years after Van Zandt died; “Guy,” a homage to the songwriter Guy Clark, came out three years after Clark’s death in 2016. But “J.T.” was made while Earle’s pain was still raw. During recording sessions in October, the official cause of Justin’s death had still not been determined.

Recorded with the Dukes, Earle’s longtime backing band — including Chris Masterson on guitar, Eleanor Whitmore on fiddle, Ricky Ray Jackson on pedal steel guitar, Jeff Hill on bass and Brad Pemberton on drums “J.T.” includes some of Justin’s best-known songs, like “Harlem River Blues,” “Champagne Corolla” and “The Saint of Lost Causes,” the title track of Justin’s final album, released in 2019.

Earle’s craggy-voiced performance underscores dark themes that were there all along. “Harlem River Blues” contemplates a drowning death. (“Tell my mama I love her, tell my father I tried,” it goes. “Give my money to my baby to spend.”) “Turn Out My Lights,” about the phantom-limb ache for a former lover, takes on an eerie double meaning when Earle sings:

Even though I know you’re gone, I don’t have to be alone now
You’re here with me every night, When I turn out my lights

Recording the album “wasn’t cathartic as much as it was therapeutic,” Earle said. “I made the record because I needed to.”

“J.T.” is, in a sense, a double portrait of father and son. Justin was born in 1982, while Earle was a journeyman songwriter in Nashville. He and Justin’s mother, Carol Ann Hunter, split up when Justin was 3, around the time that Earle’s recording career began to take off. For much of Justin’s youth, Earle was touring or lost in the depths of drug addiction.

By Justin’s teenage years once Earle was clean and out of prison he was living with his father, and they developed a close musical bond. Earle recalled a pivotal moment when Justin, still a guitar novice, was stunned by Cobain’s stark acoustic performance of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” with Nirvana on “MTV Unplugged,” unaware of the song’s provenance from the folk icon Leadbelly. Earle pointed his son to the L section of his record collection, where Leadbelly abutted the bluesmen Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb.

“Next thing I knew,” Earle said, “he was playing Mance songs that I had never been able to figure out.”

Justin played in two bands, the Swindlers and the Distributors, before going solo in his 20s. In 2007, Justin’s debut EP, “Yuma,” introduced him as a stylish traditionalist with a hint of punk-rock attitude. Within a few years, he was building a reputation in New York, appearing frequently (as performer or patron) at a bar near his East Village apartment. He developed an irresistible persona for the media, dressing in retro suits and hats, blithely recounting his struggle with drugs while revelling in the notoriety it brought. “There’s really no such thing as bad press,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2010.

Shooter Jennings, the country-rock singer and son of the outlaw country legend Waylon Jennings — recalled Justin during this period as an almost intimidating talent, albeit one who still lived under the shadow of a famous father. “When you get out there, there’s going to be this built-in audience of people that are curious to see what Steve Earle’s son is like, or what Waylon Jennings’s son is like,” Jennings said. “So there’s this bit of distrust with the audience from the very beginning. Are they here because they like my music, or are they here because they like my dad’s music?”

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To record “J.T.,” Earle, with the help of his son Ian, 33, winnowed Justin’s work to a list of 10 songs — two of them, “Turn Out My Lights” and “Far Away in Another Town,” Justin wrote with Scotty Melton and booked a week at Electric Lady Studios in New York. He worked fast, sending his band preparatory notes by text message. By the time they began recording, Justin had been dead for less than two months. (They began sessions before October 20th.) Earle, who had largely avoided speaking publicly about Justin’s death, wanted the album to be his statement.

He was also wary of being roped into anyone else’s memorial. “I did not want to be asked to be on a tribute record with several people that I thought absolutely were enablers and helped kill him,” Earle said, his words flecked with expletives. “So I thought the way to nip that in the bud was to make a record of my own.”

At this point in his career, Earle bespectacled, with a long salt-and-pepper beard is a Renaissance man for whom mortality and addiction have been perennial subject matter. In addition to his many albums, Earle has written a play about a woman on death row and a novel about the spector of Hank Williams, and contributed music to a recent play about a mining disaster in West Virginia. Lately he has been writing a science-fiction story intended for television.

The night before the first session for “J.T.,” Earle gathered the band at his apartment for a sushi meal. Ray Kennedy, Earle’s longtime engineer, recalls the time in Electric Lady as being celebratory but focused. They began each day at 10 a.m. and finished by 4 p.m., so that Earle could take care of his youngest son, John Henry, 10, who has autism. “It felt positive,” Kennedy said. “It felt like we were taking an expression of somebody’s art and creativity and giving it back to the world in a different package.”

Earle, slouching on his sofa with a green bandanna as a face mask, seemed almost bemused by the question of whether recording his dead son’s songs was difficult to get through.

“I inoculated myself to some degree,” he said. “I was prepared for it to be horrific. But the truth is, it was kind of business as usual in a lot of ways.”

Justin’s catalogue, with its frequent themes of the entanglements and disappointments of family, might seem a minefield for Earle. He did not record anything from his son’s albums “Absent Fathers” or “Single Mothers.” He also avoided one of Justin’s best-known songs, “Mama’s Eyes,” which begins: “I am my father’s son/I’ve never known when to shut up.”

Those songs, Earle said, simply didn’t hold up as well as others he chose, which showcase Justin’s economical storytelling voice. The choices also contrast the two men’s styles. “J.T.” opens with “I Don’t Care,” a jaunty, fingerpicked ditty from “Yuma.” The Dukes play it as a rollicking hootenanny, with Earle growling its sardonic twist on a folk cliché: “I don’t know where I’m going no more/I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

Steve Earle and Justin Townes Earle in 1999.

Other songs reveal an interplay between the two men and their music. Justin’s “Lone Pine Hill,” a Civil War ballad with a Townes Van Zandt-style guitar part, Earle sees as indebted to his “Ben McCulloch,” about a disillusioned Confederate soldier. For two of Justin’s earliest tunes, “Maria” and “Ain’t Glad I’m Leaving,” Kennedy dug out tapes of Justin’s original arrangements with the Swindlers, which he and Earle recorded in 2001, when Justin was just 19.

Earle said that in writing “John Henry Was a Steel Drivin’ Man,” from his most recent album, “Ghosts of West Virginia” (2020), he “deliberately emulated” Justin’s guitar part on his song “They Killed John Henry.” “It always made me incredibly jealous that Justin had a John Henry song and I didn’t,” he said.

The song that was the most painful to record is also the album’s most powerful: “Last Words,” a heartbreaking synopsis of a father’s journey, from holding his newly born son to speaking to him for the last time. Earle wrote it less than a week after Justin died, and he described it as “maybe the only song I’ve ever written in my life that every single word in it is true.”

“Last thing I said was ‘I love you,’” Earle sings, over acoustic guitar and ominous, droning feedback. “Your last words to me were ‘I love you too.’”

Steve Earle – Guitar, Mandolin, Octave Mandolin, Harmonica and Vocal
Chris Masterson – Guitar, Mandolin, 1 Finger Piano and Vocal
Eleanor Whitmore – Fiddle, Mandolin, Organ and Vocal
Ricky Ray Jackson – Pedal Steel Guitar, Dobro and Vocal
Jeff Hill – Acoustic and Electric Bass, Cello and Vocal
Brad Pemberton – Drums, Percussion, and Vocal
All songs written by Justin Townes Earle

Recording the album “wasn’t cathartic as much as it was therapeutic,” Steve Earle said. “I made the record because I needed to.”

MARVIN ETZIONI – ” Marvin Country! “

Posted: November 29, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Marvin Country is Marvin Etzioni’s ambitious fourth album. The two-record set hits the streets on April 17, 2012 and features Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, John Doe, Richard Thompson, Buddy Miller, Maria Mckee, and more. Marvin Etzioni is an American singer, mandolinist, bassist, and record producer, Etzioni is best known as a founder of, and bassist for, the band Lone Justice.

In 2012, Marvin Etzioni released a double album extravaganza: Marvin Country! It featured guest appearances from folks including John Doe, Lucinda Williams, Buddy Miller, Steve Earle, The Dixie Hummngbirds, Murry Hammond, and Richard Thompson. Even old Lone Justice cohorts Maria McKee, Shayne Fontaine, and David Vaught were along for the ride. But, the origins of some of those songs go back two decades.

Marvin issued Marvin Country: Communication Hoedown himself, on cassette in 1992, saying “I was single-handedly trying to bring back cassettes at a time when the industry said they were done. I still liked the analogue sound versus the high glossy digitalness (to coin a new word) of CDs.” It has never had an official release until now.

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There’s country, there’s alt. country, and there’s Marvin Country. It’s a magical place, way off the map, populated by back-porch philosophers, hobos, brokenhearted lovers and spacemen and presided over by the man the L.A. Times called “one heck of a songwriter.” Grammy award winner Marvin Etzioni has been known over the years as producer (Counting Crows, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Peter Case), sideman (T Bone Burnett, Dixie Chicks, Grey Delisle) and songwriter (Cheap Trick, Victoria Williams) Even before there was No Depression, Marvin was a co-founder of the seminal roots-rockers Lone Justice. It’s safe to say Marvin is revered in Americana circles worldwide. “Marvin Country!” is his ambitious fourth album, and first in over a decade. The two-record set hits the streets on 16th April. The mandolin man is back. “(Etzioni’s) material ranges from stark folk-based tunes to raw Stone’s-like rockers.”

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This time around Marvin lacks his mind blowing poetry & almost makes up the CD set with simple repeatable blues refrains. Yet he is his normal playful self with analogue sound effects, inner jokes, & songs about death & salvation. I hear more Blues & a few Cajun songs than the number of any country style of music. Some other songs are beyond categorization. There are many references about past Country greats as with Pasty Cline & Gram Parson, even the death of Bob Dylan. Don’t worry Bob is still around, but Marvin is thinking about that day that all of us shall meet.

STEVE EARLE and the DUKES – ” Harlem River Blues “

Posted: November 18, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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When Justin Townes Earle died in August at the age of 38, the music world mourned the talented singer-songwriter, but none more than his musician-father, Steve Earle. To honour his son, Steve Earle and the Dukes decided to record an album with-songs written by Justin Townes Earle. The new album, “J.T.”, features 10 songs penned by Justin and covered by the band, plus one classic tune from Steve.

That song, “Harlem River Blues,” which was the title track of Townes Earle’s 2010 album, and was re-recorded by his father and his band at New York City’s Electric Lady Studios, the LP will follow on what have been Justin’s 39th birthday, January. 4th, 2021. The record is called “J.T.” because Justin was never called anything else until he was nearly grown,” Steve Earle said in a statement. For better or worse, right or wrong, I loved Justin Townes Earle more than anything else on this earth.

“That being said,” he continued, “I made this record, like every other record I’ve ever made…for me. It was the only way I knew to say goodbye.”. The album is described in a release as “sombre in parts. [but] ultimately a rousing celebration of a life lived with passion and purpose.”

The new album ‘J.T.’ is available January 4th , J.T., Steve Earle & The Dukes pay tribute to Steve’s late son, Justin Townes Earle (J.T.), who passed away on August 20th, 2020 in Nashville. The album will be released digitally on what would have been Justin’s 39th birthday, January 4, 2021, via New West Records. J.T. finds Steve Earle & The Dukes covering 10 of Justin’s songs – from “I Don’t Care,” which appeared on his 2007 debut EP, Yuma, and a trio of selections from his full-length debut album, The Good Life (“Ain’t Glad I’m Leaving,” “Far Away In Another Town” and “Lone Pine Hill”) to later compositions like 2017’s “Champagne Corolla” and 2019’s “The Saint Of Lost Causes,” which was the title track of Justin’s eighth and final studio album. J.T. closes with “Last Words,” a song Steve wrote for Justin.

100% of the artist advances and royalties from J.T. will be donated to a trust for Etta St. James Earle, the three-year-old daughter of Justin and Jenn Earle. While sombre in parts, the album is ultimately a rousing celebration of a life lived with passion and purpose. The recording features the latest incarnation of Steve’s backing band, The Dukes – Chris Masterson on guitar, Eleanor Whitmore on fiddle & vocals, Ricky Ray Jackson on pedal steel, guitar & dobro, Brad Pemberton on drums & percussion, and Jeff Hill on acoustic & electric bass.

STEVE EARLE – ” Times Like These ” Acoustic Version

Posted: June 10, 2020 in MUSIC
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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 and the DUKES – ” Guy “

Posted: February 10, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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There are songwriters and then there are storytellers, and Steve Earle is very much the latter. His songs, such as “The Devil’s Right Hand,” “Copperhead Road” and “Guitar Town,” have been sung by Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Vince Gill, Patty Loveless and many, many more.

Steve Earle’s inspiration came from two main storytellers: Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark. In 2009, Steve Earle made an album of Townes Van Zandt songs called TOWNES and now he’s paying tribute to his other hero, Guy Clark by releasing GUY. This album by Steve Earle & The Dukes covers 16 songs by the great Nashville-via-Houston artist and leans toward some of the earlier tunes. Steve Earle left San Antonio, headed to Nashville, met his hero, Guy Clark (who was playing pool) and quickly became his bass player.

The band playing with Steve Earle on this album is The Dukes: Kelley Looney on bass, Ricky Ray Jackson on pedal steel guitar, Eleanor Whitmore on fiddle and mandolin, Chris Masterson on guitar and Brad Pemberton on drums. And the record wouldn’t be complete without a load of friends, including Rodney Crowell, Jerry Jeff Walker, Emmylou Harris, Shawn Camp, Terry Allen and more.

Written by Guy Clark. From the new album ‘GUY,’ available March 29th:

STEVE EARLE and the DUKES – ” Dublin Blues “

Posted: January 9, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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There are songwriters and then there are storytellers, and Steve Earle is very much the latter. His songs, such as “The Devil’s Right Hand,” “Copperhead Road” and “Guitar Town” have been sung by Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Vince Gill, Patty Loveless and many, many more.

Steve Earle’s inspiration came from two main storytellers: Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark. In 2009, Steve Earle made an album of Townes Van Zandt songs called Townes and now he’s paying tribute to his other hero, Guy Clark by releasing Guy. The album by Steve Earle & The Dukes covers 16 songs by the great Nashville-via-Houston artist and leans toward some of the earlier tunes. The song, “Dublin Blues” is about the day he left San Antonio, headed to Nashville, to meet his hero, Guy Clark (who was playing pool) and quickly became his bass player.

The first new song from the album, “Dublin Blues,” has the band playing with Steve Earle on this album is The Dukes: Kelley Looney on bass, Ricky Ray Jackson on pedal steel guitar, Eleanor Whitmore on fiddle and mandolin, Chris Masterson on guitar and Brad Pemberton on drums. And the record wouldn’t be complete without a load of friends, including Rodney Crowell, Jerry Jeff Walker, Emmylou Harris, Shawn Camp, Terry Allen and more.

STEVE EARLE – ” Mississippi, It’s Time “

Posted: September 11, 2015 in MUSIC
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Hardly a stranger to addressing thorny political issues in a song, Steve Earle has tackled the Confederate flag controversy with the tune “Mississippi, It’s Time.”

Steve Earle’s song, released in partnership with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy organization for civil rights, calls for the removal of the Confederate flag likeness from the Mississippi state flag. The Magnolia State is currently the only state that retains the image of the “Stars and Bars,” the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War, on its state flag.

“I grew up in the South and lived there until I was 50 and I know that I’m not the only Southerner who never believed for one second that the Confederate battle flag is symbolic of anything but racism in anything like a modern context,” Earle said. “This is about giving those Southerners a voice.”

The chorus to remove the likeness of the Confederate battle flag from any official government property has grown steadily since a gun massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, left nine African-American church worshippers dead. After the shootings, pictures surfaced of the assailant brandishing the Confederate flag as a symbol of white supremacy.

“We’re pleased that Steve Earle has added his voice to the growing number of Americans who are demanding that Mississippi and other governmental entities no longer display the Confederate flag,” Morris Dees, founder of the SPLC, said in a statement. “This potent and divisive symbol of white supremacy has no place on the official state flag of Mississippi or in any other public spaces

STEVE EARLE – ” Guitar Town ” Released March 5th 1986

Posted: March 7, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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What I appreciate about Steve Earle is that he writes about a side of humanity that I don’t live. He writes about irresponsibility, about separation by choice, about the rambles of a man who searches but never seems to find. Steve Earle’s tribulations are well known and rather unimportant to mention . With his many great albums behind him, it is important to remember Guitar Town, a terrific piece filled with a variety of styles and the kernal of all the things Earle still seems to represent.

Steve Earle seems to be always questioning why. and with Guitar Town, the questioning has never been more succinctly stated or as catchily written. Inspired by Earle’s attendence at a Bruce Springsteen concert, this singer/songwriter masterpiece lovingly exploits the conflict between the hero’s desire to stay in a small town and the need to leave. Set in 1980’s Reagan-era America and featuring Duane Eddy-style reverberated guitar lines blazing through dangerously infectious melodies, Guitar Town’s dusty, blue-collar vignettes relentlessly engage and tug at the heart strings, and Earle’s stark character development revives desperate (“Someday”) and exhuberantly hopeful (“Guitar Town”) emotions from the listener’s childhood. This ‘Dylanesque-country’ sound inadvertantly awakened a young, rock-loving, college-educated country audience yearning for the disappearing rock sounds of John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen. Earle set the mark on the top rung for this type of new country, and with the public expecting only the best, Nashville delivered its finest and most daring projects of the post-Hank Williams era. Easily the most groundbreaking Nashville recording since Waylon Jennings’ “Honky Tonk Heroes” sessions, Guitar Town was named one of Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Recordings of the 80’s and was praised in the rock press (Robert Cristgau’s “The Village Voice” and Dave Marsh’s “Rock and Roll Confidential”) long before receiving favorable country reviews. Guitar Town continues to exert a massive influence on songwriters 16 years after its release and is widely regarded as a cornerstone of the 1980’s “New Traditionalist” movement in Nashville. Steve Earle may never understand the full impact this recording will continue to have on future generations of songwriters. As his music continues to move towards exclusively political themes, it becomes clear he will not visit Americana territory again, but since he virtually defined the genre with this monolithic MCA debut, he can leave well enough (or, in this case, near perfect) alone.

 

STEVE EARLE and the DUKES – ” You’re The Best Lover I Ever Had

Posted: March 1, 2015 in MUSIC
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Southern roots rocker Steve Earle debuted a brand-new song from his forthcoming album, take a listen to the bluesy ‘You’re the Best Lover That I Ever Had’ .Steve Earle has been recording his upcoming album, ‘Terraplane’ — which was released February 17th supported by his backing band, the Dukes, at the House of Blues in Nashville.

“Most of this was written on the road,” Earle said . “I went through a divorce and I needed the money, so I’ve been touring a lot, just working constantly and writing whenever I can.”
“Everything that happens to me will find its way into my lyrics, which can be an advantage as a writer and a disadvantage as a person,” he said of his songwriting process. “I don’t wanna hurt anybody’s feelings. I’m not trying to be mean. But I’m not gonna not write about what’s happening, so there’s a lot of sad stuff here. It was a good time to make a blues record.”

Earle and the Dukes have taken to recording the songs live after an hour or two of practicing, giving Earle a kind of laissez-faire attitude toward recording.

“Let’s just find a performance where all the weird s–t happens at the right place, and that’s our take,” he said.

Steve Earle and company seem to effortlessly find that sweet spot, which can be heard on the new track

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