Steve Earle Back on the Road Again

The TV seriesNashville and the specter of Waylon Jennings guided Steve Earle's return to the rough-hewn music that brought him to prominence three decades ago.

His 1986 debut album Guitar Town remains a landmark at the intersection of country and rock -- it's listed among Rolling Stone's top 500 albums of all-fourth dimension -- and his latest,So You Wannabe An Outlaw, released June xvi, harkens back to that musical junction.  "I decided to let this record exist virtually me reconnecting with, for lack of a improve term, country music," the iii-time Grammy winner said . "Information technology'southward at least my idea of a country record. Whether it's everyone else's or not, it's based on the country music I still listen to."

In the midst of concluding year'due south bout with Shawn Colvin -- they released the albumColvin & Earle last summertime -- Earle "started thinking nigh what the next record would exist because I have bills to pay."

Ii songs he had already written were vintage country-rock statements.If Mama Coulda Seen Me, came virtually when T Bone Burnett, who served as the executive music manager during the showtime flavor of Nashville, asked Earle to write a song for the show. "They liked it and used it on the show," he said. For the side by side season, Buddy Miller, who took over as music director, asked for a song, likewise. Merely the result,Lookin' For A Woman was not used.

"I looked at these two songs I had and realized they were the same kind of vibe," Earle said.

Another cue came from music he had on rotation at the time including Waylon Jennings' Honky Tonk Heroes and Willie Nelson'due south Shotgun Willie, 2 pillars of the early '70s outlaw land move.

Honky Tonk Heroes, released in 1973 by Jennings, who died in 2002, "was the starting time record (Jennings) fabricated with his whole band and everything was built around his electrical guitar," said Earle, who grew up in Texas but moved to Nashville in 1974, while Jennings and Nelson were in full-diameter outlaw mode. "I accept a really proficient 1955 Fender Telecaster, equally it and so happens, and I only decided maybe this is what the next tape is going to exist and I just started unapologetically channeling Waylon Jennings, to my best ability."

Earle recruited Willie Nelson for the upbeat but cautionary championship runway, Miranda Lambert for the mournful This Is How It Ends, and ex-wife Allison Moorer and niece Emily Earle on News From Colorado, a plaintive song about family unit separation.

He switches gears throughout the album, delivering the songs with a world-weary authority. His guitar is especially prominent on the Helter Skelter-ish rockerFixin' To Dice, while he offers a folk-flavored elegy for Guy Clark in Goodbye Michelangelo.

At 62, Earle is equally busy equally ever. He has just finished a run in an off-Broadway play and after a short solo record shop tour, Earle mentored a five-day songwriting campsite in Big Indian, N.Y.

He volition bout throughout the remainder of 2017, commencement Sat with 5 dates in Texas. A European tour follows in the autumn. His "Hardcore Troubadour" weekly SiriusXM bear witness is in its 10th yr and subsequently this year, he will host his third annual musical benefit for autism (his 7-year-old son John Henry, with Moorer, was born with autism).

Earle is optimistic virtually the increase in autism sensation, but is concerned the syndrome is increasing. "Something is happening. Information technology is environmental," he said. "We demand to figure out what it is because ... we are leaving what could be some of the greatest minds of the next generation locked away where we can't get to that resource and that could exist catastrophic."

Also in the works: his memoir, a musical based on his 2007 album Washington Foursquare Serenade and music for another play based on the 2010 Upper Big Branch coal mining disaster in Due west Virginia (written by The Exonerated playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen). He also recently began talking with The Wire creator David Simon about writing a musical based in Sparrows Point in Baltimore, Md.

Next year, expect some special live concert performances of Copperhead Road, his 1988 album which turns thirty next year. And, well-nigh likely, new politically-charged music that more than directly addresses Earle'south view of life under President Trump -- a longtime political activist, he supported Bernie Sanders and voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

"This record is maybe the least political record I've made. It'southward a very personal record," Earle said. "The adjacent will exist merely every bit country as this one and probably way more political."

Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2017/06/30/steve-earle-road-again-re-embracing-outlaw-sound/103016526/

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