As far as songwriting goes, one of the most authentic and beloved artists of the craft is the one and only Steve Earle. Beginning his musical career in the ’80s in Nashville, Earle displayed his folk-tinge rock songs to the world with his debut album Guitar Town which includes the singles “Hillbilly Highway” and the hit “Guitar Town.” Earle’s songwriting never shies away from hard-hitting issues such as politics and war, garnering him much respect amongst fellow artists such as Willie Nelson and Shawn Colvin. With over twenty albums under his belt, a handful of chart-topping hits, and three Grammy awards, Earle has cemented himself as one of the most consistently brilliant songwriters still working today. Currently on tour, Earle’s latest stop was at the iconic Troubadour in West Hollywood on August 24th.
With the past couple of years bringing a lot of change in the world, and especially in his personal life with the passing of his son and fellow musician, Justin Townes Earle, Steve Earle continuously demonstrates how art can articulate pain when simply talking is impossible to do. Music has proven time and time again to be tool to communicate and honor those special people in his life through beautiful instrumentation and heartfelt lyrics. With his latest album, Jerry Jeff, Earle pays tribute to the late-great Jerry Jeff Walker with a batch of cover songs such as “Mr. Bojangles” and “Gettin’ By.” With Townes, dedicated to Townes Van Zandt, J.T., dedicated to his son, Justin, and now Jerry Jeff, brings the trilogy of tribute albums to a close with Earle saying this was his way to honor his “first-hand teachers, the heroes I was lucky enough to sit across the room from.”
Aside from his North American tour with The Dukes, Steve Earle has been spreading his creative voice into the world of novels, television and Broadway theater. Despite having a busy summer of playing shows, Earle sat down and graciously talked to mxdwn about his songwriting process, his current ventures into the world of theater, and his hopes for the future of folk music.
mxdwn: First off, how are you doing and where are you currently in the world?
Steve Earle: Portland, Oregon. Just came across the border from Canada the night before last, played Seattle last night. We’re off tonight, but play Portland tomorrow. Boise is the night after that, then there’s a four-day break. The guys will go on to LA for a couple days, I’m going to Idaho to fish for a few days. I’m going to stay in Idaho. That’s my spot because Idaho is my favorite place to fish these days. So I’m going to Sun Valley, fish, and then I’ll be in LA for the two Troubadour shows. Then we go down the West Coast and double back across Arizona, New Mexico, back to Texas. There are a lot of Texas dates on this tour, three at the end which are pretty important. This tour was built off of Jerry Jeff Walker songs that we made.
mxdwn: So you’re pretty much everywhere right now?
SE: Yeah, we started June 1st in Decatur, Alabama. All North America. We didn’t go to Florida, we went last summer, but we didn’t get there this year. A few places like the deep south that we didn’t get. Still in Alabama, a few in Tennessee, one in Arkansas, but that was pretty much it. That was with Willie before the picnic. It’s a lot of miles since June 1st and we’re not done till September.
mxdwn: Sounds like a lot, but very exciting.
SE: It is, but I’m just glad to be employed.
mxdwn: With COVID being around the past couple of years and shows finally happening again, do you find that there’s a new type of energy in the crowds at the shows?
SE: No doubt about it. COVID is still a factor. I got COVID, my steel player, the second time for me, but I was triple vaxxed. We would have just played except this latest variant included laryngitis, so I lost my voice. So we had to cancel Memphis and St. Louis, and I couldn’t find a way to make them up. There’s a pretty narrow window we can tour like this, a few dates toward the end of the year. But for the most part, from September to May, I’m in New York concentrating on theater music and trying to keep my son, who is 12 and has autism, in a school that he needs to be in. And then he goes to his mom in the summer, and then I tour like a dog from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
mxdwn: The past few years have brought a lot of change in the world, especially in your personal life. Would you say that your songwriting approach has changed along with all the changes in the world?
SE: I don’t know. My songwriting process is not a mystery. I write other things besides songs. I kinda backed off of one book, started another book just because I was working on a memoir. And it’s a memoir largely about recovery. Then Justin died, and that made it a different book and I just couldn’t do it right now. I talked to my editor and I had this novel already. I had a deal for the two books. And I’m back to working on the novel until I feel like I can go on with the memoir.
I wrote a TV pilot and I can’t really get into details about it, but it’s looking like it actually—at least the pilot—might get made. So I’m waiting to hear about that. My day job when I get back to New York, I’m writing a musical that’s intended for Broadway. I’ve done a lot of theater, but it’s been all off-Broadway the last several years. I’m doing a musical on Tender Mercies. I don’t know if you remember that film or not. It was when Robert Duvall’s won the Best Actor Oscar. Horton Foote wrote that screenplay, and his daughter, Daisy and I are making a musical for Tender Mercies. We’ve been working on it for about a year. The first act is pretty much finished. We’re hoping to workshop that after I get back to New York and have it ready to try out of town by ’23, ’24.
mxdwn: You said that the record you made in honor of your son, Justin, was a way for you to say goodbye. What is it about music that allows you to communicate such difficult messages that other forms of art are unable to do?
SE: You can sing things that you can’t say. It’s really that simple. Some people think of me as a political songwriter, I’m not. I have more songs about girls than I do anything else. But I just grew up in an era where songs could be about anything, and it never occurred to me that anything was off-limits. But I do believe it’s true that you can approach subjects that would be way too hard to just talk to someone about or even write drama about without pissing them off.
Sometimes you can sing it and get away with it. It’s what I do. I do a lot of things, I even paint a little. But I know what my homebase craft is. I know what I was put here to do. I do all the other things to strengthen that thing that I was put here to do. I’m a singer, songwriter. I’m not just a songwriter. What I do is write songs for me to go out and sing. If other people cover them, that’s fine. But I never know if a song’s finished or not until I play it for people. But I’m a better performer of my own material since I’ve been acting some. And I’ve done some theater stuff too as an actor. And it’s scary. But all that stuff informs the homebase craft.
mxdwn: Do you think there’s anything off-limits for you to write about in songs?
SE: I don’t think anything’s off-limits, probably things I shouldn’t write about because I don’t know enough about them. Outside of songs, the hardest thing I ever wrote was a sex scene that’s in my novel. That’s a hard thing to write. And just as a writer, it’s the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. I don’t think anything’s necessarily off-limits. Even the way I approach political ideas is different than it used to be. I think we got to a point where we don’t listen enough. My politics are pretty hard left by anybody’s standards. But I also understand that it’s a big country and not everybody thinks like I do. And if you’re not willing to at least listen to somebody that you assume you’re going to disagree with at the beginning of a conversation, there is no democracy. We’re fucked.
And I think we’ve gotten to that point. It’s one reason we got into so much trouble and we can’t solve big problems anymore because nobody wants to hear what anybody else has to say. You can’t expect somebody to listen to someone from a completely different part of the country than you, who makes a living completely different than you to think exactly the same like you do. I know what I think is right and what I think is wrong. And that doesn’t have that much to do with it. Most people are actually pretty good. But they believe what they believe, and some of the things they believe aren’t right in my opinion. Not so addicted to being right can go a long way with all the trouble that we’re in right now.
mxdwn: Do you think it’s become harder to write more political themes in songs nowadays because music has such a short life?
SE: Yeah. I think it’s funny because my audience is mostly people my age, but there are some younger people in my audience. I noticed something in Canada that’s strange. I was bigger in Canada than I was anyplace else in the world the pique of my career. It’s not as generational there. I go places up there where there will be little kids, teenagers, and 20 something’s that know every word to every song because they learned it from their parents. So I guess it’s not an automatic thing where you hate your parents’ music in Canada or something. I can’t figure it out.
Music is pretty much—in my generation—it was damn near the most important thing. Music was a huge deal. I grew up in a time when rock and roll became an art form, and it was great music. It had people trying to clone it and trying to control it in ways they probably shouldn’t because they thought it was going to make more money. Diluted it a little at a time. There’s a lot of great stuff out there. There’s so many different ways to listen to music. And I don’t think the demise of the record business as we knew it is all about downloading and streaming. It’s also about bad songs. I think people got tired of paying a lot of money for an album and it would have two great songs on it, and the rest was just stuff people wrote because they thought they had to write because that’s where the money was. Today’s changed.
mxdwn: There is a lot of heart in the folk community and is very welcoming to everyone, but what do you hope the future of folk music looks like?
SE: I think hip-hop at its best is folk music. I don’t mind being defined as a folk singer, that works as much as anything else. A country singer, I don’t care that much. I think we always come back to these instruments. We always come back to this instrumentation. It’s basically because it is something that you can learn to do yourself. People have been predicting the demise of acoustic guitars for a long, long time and they’re still around.
mxdwn: I know you have a lot of things you are working on like a novel and a play, but what do you think the future of your music discography looks like?
SE: I just try to do all these things because the other things I do inform my homebase craft. I get better at it by doing the other things. And it keeps me from being bored with it and come back. And I know what I was put here to do though. I’m a songwriter. That’s why I’m writing a Broadway musical. It was sort of one of the last things for me to do as a songwriter. I live in New York, so why would I not try to write a musical? I actually went there to do musical theater. Theater’s my favorite art form. As a consumer, I spend more money on theater than any other art form.
mxdwn: Do you have any parting words of wisdom for songwriters to avoid getting bored with songwriting?
SE: It’s just one of those things that songs are a great way to communicate. Any kind of writing. Allen Ginsberg said, “It’s meaningless to break meter until you learn how to write meter in the first place.” That’s probably the best advice I can give anybody.
You can catch Steve Earle on his North American tour with The Dukes or at Outlaw Country West music festival in Los Angeles this fall. And be sure to stream his latest album, Jerry Jeff, available to listen on all streaming platforms.
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