Of Triumph, Tragedy and the Solace of Solitude With Steve Earle
The Hall Of Fame musician, despite enduring more than a lifetime's worth of loss, keeps his artistic edge with new solo album and tour
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[“CCKMP” by Steve Earle, from Alone Again (Live), continuing as bed]
We live in a world with an abundance of pain, suffering and hardship, and it is only natural to wonder why. Why do you think that this is the case, why has it always been so in human history? Maybe that is an impossible question -- perhaps instead I should ask, what purpose does that serve? How could it possibly help us?
Alternately, why do you think that so much art often comes from a time or place filled with hard times, sadness or loss? In music, there is a deep well of songs drawing from a full spectrum of darkness, whether they be about history or society, or family. Loved ones, or about ourselves. From break up records to Woody Guthrie’s guitar with “This machine kills fascists” written on it, there is almost no end to songs you could point to here.
With Steve Earle, you find a person whose life story is punctuated by heartbreak, loss, and pain, and while some of that is self-inflicted, who among us can say that we never made any mistakes? Do you have no regrets? If you do, I certainly want to hear your story.
Most recently, Steve Earle lost his friend and colleague Jeremy Tepper, who was the programmer for the Outlaw Country channel on satellite radio, which features Steve’s show, Hardcore Troubadour Radio. Another close friend and colleague was his long time bass player Kelly Looney, who passed away in 2019. And of course, there is the monumental loss of his son, Justin Townes Earle, in 2020.
All of this is enough to derail practically anyone’s life, enough to stifle any hope for a happy future. But Steve Earle shows the irony of what pain, suffering and hardship can spur, by writing and playing music which transforms it into a kind of poetic triumph.
This is key to understanding some of what is foundational to his art, but as dramatic as all that sounds, it syncs up with the highly charismatic, often acerbic and at times mercurial figure that Steve Earle has personified since he burst onto the charts in 1986 with his debut album Guitar Town. Along with the lows, there have been and continue to be dramatic highs in his life, especially creatively.
I spoke with Steve Earle by video call in June 2024, a conversation which took place after losing Jeremy Tepper just two days before, a conversation where he talks about his rigorous summer tour, his relationship with his music before he became sober, his favorite cover songs from both artists covering his music and vice versa, aspirations to record Irish music and perhaps even a jazz record, and memories of growing up in the midst of musical greats like Doug Sahm. All that and more, including his love of North Carolina trout fishing as well as more music from Steve Earle’s latest album, Alone Again (Live). I am your host Joe Kendrick, welcoming you to our episode on Steve Earle on Southern Songs and Stories.
[SSaS theme song with intro by Joe K]
I spoke with Steve Earle shortly before seeing him live on his Alone Again tour in summer 2024, and after acknowledging the death of his friend and colleague Jeremy Tepper, we begin here with my question about how his tour was going, which by my count booked 69 dates between June and September. Here is Steve Earle:
00:03:21 Steve Earle
Great so far, the shows have been really good. I'm pretty proud of them. This is the continuation of last summer's tour. Basically, I can't play everywhere I play in 30, you know, I mean in 90 days. So this is more like 100. We had a couple extra. Because I I discontinued Camp Copperhead, the songwriting camp that I did this year, so we went ahead. And since we had it blocked up for childcare and everything, and for John Henry my son's schedule, we went ahead and stayed out on the road that extra week that I would have been at camp so. It's, you know, it's a solo tour. You know, it's actually harder work than touring with a band for me.
It's just for some reason physically harder. A lot of it. It's just a lot of finger style guitar and I'm old and you know, you get aches and pains as a guitar player. As you get older and and you know I've we've learned how ways to deal with that and it's like, you know, just in the everything from the way we set the guitars up to all that that changes over the year as you get older, I mean. And I. We're not repeating that many markets, the markets that we are repeating, we went to Europe, which took 30 days away from us last year for for North America, so. We didn't. We only played one Canadian date. We're going to go all the way across Canada from St. John's, NL all the way to Vancouver.
And that's coming up in two. What's? It's actually three different trips across the border to accomplish that with dates in the upper, you know, tier States and the states in between. So we we didn't have the southeast at all last time. So we started in in Philadelphia, Ms. and.
You know the the cool thing about turning solo is I don't. We have 10 or 11, you know, like salaries out here, you know, running out the clock, running on that all the time. So I get to fish a little bit more. I fish on the fly rod. So you know, I've always taken a day here and there. He's like a fish, maybe two or three days over the summer. I'm fishing more like 6 this summer. I already I already caught my first Tarpon in Key West. The other day. So I'm kind of I I just started the salt water thing with a fly ride just a few years ago, but I'm fishing a couple of days. Well, about four days in Idaho, wondering Wyoming and one in color. Brother and one in Montana so.
00:05:38 Joe Kendrick
We could probably turn you on to some trout fishing up our way if you have a day.
00:05:43 Steve Earle
Ohh no you've got and I've never done it, but I know I'm I'm very much aware of it. It's cause what you've got there. One of the last native brook trout fisheries, you know, in your area and and I'm I am going to get there and try that at some point.
00:05:58 Joe Kendrick
The alone again, a solo and acoustic alone again makes me wonder. It seems like a full circle moment cause you're alone again and it's not solo. It's alone. So there's a connotation to that too. Can you comment on that?
00:06:12 Steve Earle
Well, I mean, it's just one of those. It's to me being you know, unfortunately equitable and a little too cute as usual. You know, I, I I didn't. You know, I just woke up one morning without a band and my band quit by e-mail. You know, after hardly strictly bluegrass like the year before last. So. And you know, they all had different reasons. They gave why? But nobody gave me any sort of reason or anything or had any discussion about that. I got a group e-mail and that's not it maybe. That may be. You know that maybe a younger generation thing and they're all younger than me, but. But that's not how that's done. Where I come from and and at my age. So it's so that was so it hurt and it was, but then I thought. Well, maybe this is, you know.
Maybe this is the crossroads and because I mean it's obvious I make more money if I tour by myself and you know, I've gotta believe that people come to hear the songs. You know, rather than whoever the side men are. And if I don't believe that, then I really shouldn't be doing this. And I started in coffee houses. I played. I never had a band until I was 27, 28 years old. So I know how to do this, and I've always done it. I've always kept my hand in it. I've done solo tours from the beginning of after Guitar Town came out, I made a point of going out solo in between every album cycle to kind of keep that, you know that skill set alive because and it's not just. You know it's the playing and singing part of it, but it's also the connecting with an audience, part of it. And I know how to do it. I just, I had good teachers and and I and I was taught, you know, the the original teachers were like Towns Van Zandt,, Guy Clark and Jerry Jeff Walker. And it was all. And those lessons occurred in coffee houses. So it's not, you know, I know.
It is. It is a trip back to that and you know, and it's sort of a, you know, I'm single too and and I have been for a long time now and I think I'm probably going to stay that way I think. I finally got it. So.
00:08:30 Joe Kendrick
I can kind of understand how you feel about the band because talking with other band leaders it it becomes pretty clear how important the, the, their players are. The people that play with them are. I remember talking with Kev Russell of the band Shinyribs last year and. He has his backup singers and one of them left like mid tour. And he was pretty much reeling from from that at the the onset of our interview. That was top of mind for him. So I kind of got a glimpse into how that dynamic works with band leaders.
00:09:08 Steve Earle
Well, you know what the the the in the 1st place, there's been a Duke since 1982, which was was a three piece rockabilly band original. And the only. The last continuity died with Kelly Looney, who was my bass player from 1988 until he passed away in 2019, so there was no connective tissue between this version of the Dukes and and anything historical and. I tried to do my best to take care of everybody. I went out and got the loans during the lockdown, you know, and and got money to them. Then I I. You know I, everybody got a Christmas bonus every year, you know? And I, I I did the best I could, but I am, you know, there are people that have over the years both crew people and band people that were offered more money than I can pay at my level. And they've left and I'm OK with that. I that I understand. I don't understand getting an. An e-mail and and it's but that's so that's the that's my only issue with it. But do I have I ever thought anybody was indispensable? In one of my bands? Nah.
Not once every it. It's about the songs, you know, and if. You know, just if you want to be indispensable. Write your own songs. That's it's that simple.
[“I Ain’t Ever Satisfied” by Steve Earle, from Alone Again (Live), excerpt]
A sing along if there ever was one, and a prime example of how to be indispensable, as he put it: his song “I Ain’t Ever Satisfied”, originally on Steve Earle & the Dukes’ 1987 album Exit 0. I asked Steve about his relationship with that era of his songwriting, and how it feels to play that song now versus when he first wrote it:
00:10:59 Steve Earle
Everybody sings along in that song, so I like that. I mean, I there's still some of me in all those songs I wrote when I was younger, but there's like, there's basically 4 records that I wrote before I got sober, you know, so and then there's everything after that, which is like, I think it totals 21 studio albums, and I haven't quit writing songs I've just. The last you know the last record of original material was in 2020, but I've been working on a musical since then. That's where the writing's been going, which is a lot of energy, and it's a lot harder.
Just because you're writing specific things for specific places in the piece and it's it's the hardest thing I've ever done and I'm writing a musical, Tender Mercies with, with Daisy Foodies, Father Horton Foote wrote the original screenplay, and it's turning out great. We're really proud of it so far, but it's really hard work and but I, you know. “Goodbye” was the first song that I ever wrote, sober, and that's also on this record, and I wrote it during my one hour that I got a guitar at a treatment center. I was furloughed out of jail into a treatment center, and I got they wouldn't let me have the guitar at first. And when they finally let me have it, I wrote that song. After not writing anything for four years. So. The relationships are now. They're different. You know, sometimes it doesn't feel like me, but I know it was me. And and and they're nights when I'm up there singing them and I and I find myself in that place. And sometimes that is uncomfortable. If those things don't occur, then you're mailing it in. You know it. I I try to stay in the songs when I'm performing them. You know I you when you do this for a long time, you can catch yourself like trying to figure out something about what you're going to eat the next day, you know, or or baseball or, you know, and I'm bad. Bad about having scores fed to me off the side of the stage during the playoffs. But. You know, I don't. I try to stay in the song because I'm acting a little bit. I don't think I'm an actor because David Simon decided that I've to put me in a TV show. But I've done some of it now and and been around theater a lot, you know, because that's I'm. I mean, I've done music for two plays in New York now.
Two off Broadway plays to lead up to where I am now. And that's when I moved to New York to do so. That's 20 years of of working around that and I the acting part of it has made me a better performer on stage singing these songs. I can I can inhabit a song even though I'm clean. I can have it a song. I. Wrote before I was. Before, I was spending way better more. I think you know more effectively and more believably than I could when I when I was loaded. So I really didn't go on stage loaded very often. I I tried to wait until after the show till the very end and then I then suddenly I I eventually reached a point where I had to do something or I. Would be sick. And you know, that's when the wheels came off. That's when the wheels always come off.
00:13:58 Joe Kendrick
I wonder if you have any favorite covers of your songs. A ton of artists have covered your songs, and there's also just the songs that you've written for other artists. But I'm thinking specifically about covers of your songs and any.
00:14:12 Steve Earle
It's mostly covers. It's mostly people that have covered something. I haven't really written much of anything specifically for anybody -- so Joan Baez, I wrote four songs because she asked me to, you know, I was producing the record and I said, well, here's these songs. She goes. I'm not listening to any more songs. I said, Joan, you've only given me 7 songs. That's not enough for the record. She goes, you're going to write the rest of it. So I wrote.
You know, I wrote “God Is God” for Joan. You know, it's like. I, I wrote like 4 songs for that album and I don't. You know, I I the ones that my favorite cover probably is, is Emmy's version of “Goodbye”. That's that's pretty easy. She, she covered. But that's just a musical call, also an Emmy, and it's sort of a tie between Shawn Colvin and Emmy because they both recorded songs of mine. When I was in trouble when I was on the street and they were these tiny glimmers of light at the end of the tunnel.
And it it took me a while after that to, to come back, but I think they had something to do with it. Me thinking that, you know, that maybe that was worth doing with. Shawn recorded “Someday” on the Cover Girl record and Emmy recorded “Guitar Town”. It opens the Nash Ramblers at the at the Ryman Auditorium album.
[“Goodye” by Emmylou Harris, from Wrecking Ball, excerpt]
An excerpt of Emmylou Harris’ version of Steve Earle’s song “Goodbye” from her 1995 album Wrecking Ball here on Southern Songs and Stories. Coming up, Steve muses over what is on his bucket list, after this question about what covers he has recorded are his favorites:
00:15:37 Steve Earle
I've done the best ones I've done. My favorite probably of all the covers I've done. And and some of them are really obscure. I'm really proud of my cover of “My Back Pages”, which is actually a track that I I produced. I recorded the track for Jackson Browne and Joan Osborne to do as a duet, and I did it. I did it without them present, you know, and got them to agree on the key. And I cut the track. So I sang the Guy vocal and it was too high for me. So like my head was about to blow off. But I became sort of enamored of the vocal. So a couple of years later, when we put together a record called Sidetracks, we released that.
And so that I'm I'm I love that cover. I've just covered, you know, the the Petty cover that's out in the record that's out right now. You know, I'm pretty proud of the whole. The whole Guy and Jerry. Jeff records. You know, I'm. I'm proud of all that stuff. But I I just recorded it and you're not going to sit for a little while. But Lucinda's band. I recorded Neil Young was just putting together a a a tribute record. They're put it's it's going to benefit the Bridge School and so I. I did “long may you run” and which I've always loved that song I love. I'm a big fan of that. That Stills Young band record anyway and I'm pretty proud of this cover of “long may you run” that, you'll probably see sometime. Within the next year.
[“My Back Pages” by Steve Earle, from Sidetracks, excerpt]
A Bob Dylan song that Dylan refused to play live for decades after writing it, finally debuting his own live rendition in 1988, that is a bit of “My Back Pages” from Steve Earle, which rounds out his 2002 collection, Sidetracks.
As a Nashville Hall of Fame songwriter and three time Grammy award winner, Steve Earle’s career would be the envy of most any music artist. But add to that his work as a music producer, as well as a novelist, short story writer, and even an actor, I wondered what, if anything, there is left that he wants to accomplish:
00:17:33 Steve Earle
Most of the stuff I want to accomplish has more to do with fishing than it does music when it. Gets right down. To it I I caught my first carp and there that I want to catch a permit now. But that's a whole. That's the whole nother disease. Musically. I don't know. I played Carnegie Hall. I've done my own gig at Carnegie Hall. Might be cool, but I don't think that will ever happen.
I mean, I played Carnegie Hall on. Concerts that featured a lot of people. These things that these tribute concerts that that Michael Dorff does there, I've done several of those. They did the Bruce Springsteen one. We did one for Shane and Sinead recently. I did the crossing skills in Nashville. And so I played Carnegie Hall five or six times, you know stuff like that.
I don't know. I I want to make an, umm, a music, a record of Irish music with the the players that I know there and I've talked to Donal Lunny about that. He's going through some health things right now and he's. He's determined to recover and and and us start on that. So we we talked about that the other day and. I I want to do that before I die. I I've actually. Somebody just because of a dare. A friend of mine, Tom Little Bill he when I made the bluegrass record, he knew quite a bit about it because his mother had was one of the founders of the Station Inn in Nashville. And when I he's kind of a ***** *** anyway and he's a dear friend of mine. But he's his. When he said his his his grandfather. Is Woody Herman, you know, was Woody Herman. So he.
He he he basically when I made the blue guy said cause now you I I said and it did take a lot of you know phones to make that record I I I watched bluegrass it's my favorite kind of music for a long time before I got the nerve to do it and I made it with the best bluegrass band in the world so I was punching way above my weight and I and he said you did that you pulled it off.
I'm proud of it. Just don't ever try to make a jazz record. And I kinda that's been gnawing at me as a as a my, my jazz, my idea of jazz is pretty archaic, but it's also pretty deep. I mean, my favorite jazz records are my favorite jazz records, probably Birth Of the Cool. And you know, I like pretty hard bop and and and I I just I I kind of but I don't know I know some guys, I mean I I know Brian Blade and and I I you know I I could start right there he's he's Max Roach nowadays. You know I could probably ask him and and put something together but. But but I I and and an idea of jazz songs of writing songs that are that. That sort of deserved that, sort of that sort of treatment. It would be definitely something more melodic than than a lot of modern jazz is. It'd be archaic to some degree, but I think I've learned I can do a lot with my voice if I sing softer. That was my sort of Chet Baker moment that happened after I got clean. And that's when it changed to a lot of the way that I performed cause in the 80s. Everything I did was just full blast all the time and and I learned how to sing soft and. And so there's there's some I might do that if I, you know, if I live long enough.
00:20:36 Joe Kendrick
Well, we'd love to hear it. Wonder, if you have, I wonder if you have a comment, Steve, about how place is often so central to so many kinds of roots, music and in style in the lyrics. I wonder if you have any observations about how Texas or how any. Other places in the South especially, might have shaped your music.
00:21:01 Steve Earle
Yeah, I mean, I grew up in South Texas, which is a pretty great place to grow up musically just because. I mean I I'm. I'm about The Beatles as much as I am, or more than anything else, because I was an Elvis fan as a small kid, and we saw all those movies and and then The Beatles happened. When I'm eight and my uncle who was five years older, said don't miss the Ed Sullivan show tonight and I watched it and that changed everything. That was when I decided that's what I wanted to do, and that's what I wanted to be.
And I started trying to learn to play guitar, but I couldn't have one for a while. And you know my dad had a ukulele, and I'm messing around with that. I played the mean tennis racket when I was, you know, singing with records. But I. It just became everything. But I also lived in an area where #1 AM radio in those days in Texas, you heard Buck Owens right after The Beatles. Sometimes. I mean, he crossed over from “Tiger by the tail” was on the radio at the same time as I can remember hearing very vividly hearing tiger by the tail. And I feel fine. One right after the other on the radio on. On a local radio station in San Antonio.
So you know, Doug Sahm was our local, you know, rock'n'roll hero, and I knew him from the time I was 14. I met Townsend's aunt when I was 17, George Chambers, who had the best local country band in in San Antonio. And Willie used to use his band all the time before he moved back to Texas.
They came through was my history. I mean, my science teacher in high school. And but he just never. He was the only teacher in my high school, drove her Mercedes convertible because he made a lot of money on the weekends and. My I had two uncles, one who had rock'n'roll bands and one who was my dad's older brother, who was the best nine finger piano player in Northeast Texas. And you know, New Moon Mullican was, you know, he was a Great Western swing piano player. And so there was just a lot of great country music. The level of of musicianship. The country bands in South Texas was incredible because it was all Western swing based and there was more of a direct. Linked to rock'n'roll than what was going on in Nashville at the time because the, you know the 1st, the 1st rock'n'roll bands were were like Chuck Berry Fresh out of the Air Force, you know like and you can tell listen to Maybelline he had been listening to something you know maybellines either read yeah it's basically a remake of of of Bob Wills song.
00:23:26 Steve Earle
Or Elvis's man who were both of those guys, most Scotty and Bill were in them. I think they were called the Starlight Ramblers or something like, or wranglers or something like that. That where they were in the Western swing band, Bill Haley and the Comets were a western swing band. So, you know, I just grew up in a place where. And then there were caught. I was too young to get in the bars, so there were coffee houses, and it was the 60s and the Vietnam War was going on. And all those things sort of combined to make me, me and and I'm grateful for that because I it's a pretty rich period of time and place that I grew up in. Then I saw very little bluegrass. I I mean. And I I saw. Bill Monroe and the Opry. When I was seven. But my mom, my mother was born in Tennessee. She's born in Nashville, and she moved to Texas in high school. So we would visit her grandmother, who had raised her from a couple of times. I went when I was seven. I went when I was 12 and went to the Opry. Both. Times I saw Bill Monroe that time. That was the first bluegrass I remember seeing except.
And television. And there was a lot of country music programs and billing was. From then, but then I moved to Nashville in 74 and I started filling in those gaps quickly because the other weirdos besides Guy Clark and and Steve Young and the other long hairs that I hung out with the where the where the long hair bluegrass musicians, because Hartford was already there by that time and he was the center of that scene. And I
John Hartford. His impact. On all the music that everybody that I know made it's it's, I mean it's you can't. There's no way to to to downplay it. It's just like he was a very, very big deal. The guy was the center of 11 circle of people and and and John was the center of another and they they were interlinked to those and that's. You can hear it in Guy’s music. He was being exposed to bluegrass for the first time and that thing, that and it all comes from. Irish and Scottish music and you know, I got to go to. I got to go across the pond. But when I finally started making records and I met the Pogues and backtracks from that and met, you know, some very, very serious Irish traditional musicians and and that's that's the journey. That's what I I'm I'm I'm a folkie. I came out of coffee houses. I'm a musicologist at heart. I always want to know where things came from.
[“Copperhead Road” by Steve Earle, from Alone Again (Live), continuing as bed]
Closing out our episode on Steve Earle with the live, acoustic version of his best-known song, which as you heard him tell the audience, is now the state song of Tennessee.
Thank you so much for listening! We are grateful that you took time to join us, and hope you can help us by spreading awareness of what we are doing. It is as easy as telling a friend and following this podcast on your platform of choice, voila! From there, it takes just a moment to give us a top rating and a review! It makes a great difference because the more top reviews and ratings we get, the more visible we become to everyone on those platforms, which means that more people just like you find musical kinship with artists like Steve Earle. Hopefully you can discover new and interesting things about all of these artists here, even the ones you already know and love. I would love to hear your comments about that sort of thing and all things Southern Songs and Stories -- drop me a line at southernsongsandstories@gmail.com, and I will be glad to reply. Check out the show notes at southernsongsanstories.com. You can also follow me on Substack, where I post transcripts of entire episodes along with updates on the series. Plus, we have an Instagram @southstories and are on Facebook as simply Southern Songs and Stories.
This series is a part of the lineup of both public radio WNCW and Osiris Media, with all of the Osiris shows available at osirispod.com. You can also hear new episodes on Bluegrass Planet Radio at bluegrassplanetradio.com.
.Thanks to Jaclyn Anthony for producing the radio adaptations of this series on public radio WNCW, where we worked with Joshua Meng who wrote and performed our theme songs. I am your host and producer Joe Kendrick, and this is Southern Songs and Stories: the music of the South and the artists who make it.