Earle’s WORLD
When it comes to true roots rock and folk music, names such as Steve Earle and Shawn Colvin are no-brainers. Both triple Grammy winners, Earle, 61, and Colvin, 60, are connected by the same musical veins and the blood that makes Americana’s heart pound pr
Q You and Shawn are a story that goes back 20, almost 30 years now?
A We’ve known each other a little less than 30 years. Twenty-two years ago, she recorded a song of mine and that was a bright spot in a very dark period of my life because I was basically homeless when Shawn recorded Someday and Emmy (Emmylou Harris) recorded Guitar Town. Those were two little points of light.
When we met, she was opening for me at the Iron Horse in Northampton (Mass.). It was either late ’80s or very early ’90s. I knew who she was and she knew who I was before that. I knew what I was looking at: The same thing that I am, which is a real-life folksinger. She’s kind of a “girl me.” She came up with the idea of us going on tour together — it’s whitewashing the fence, basically, in the Mark Twain sense. It’s half the work and more money because you
share the expenses. (Laughs.)
It was originally going to be called Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle: Stories and Songs on
Stage Together. We played one song together and then we started swapping songs and stories and halfway we would sing together. What surprised me the most was how well our voices worked together. I wanted to write a record for that duo. And it’s not duets. I’ve made a study of them. Every record I’ve had for years had one on them. This is a group. It’s called
Colvin & Earle on purpose. Q There’s a song on the album called Tell Moses, which tells the story of three heroic figures in different times: Moses, Martin Luther King Jr. and Michael Brown. A: I had the mandolin riff and it felt spiritual — Tell Moses was just a good title that popped into my head. (The first part) turned into Exodus (and the story of Moses). The second verse is mostly Shawn and we said: Martin Luther King. I think the Selma movie was in the theatres at the time. Everybody I knew was going to these Selma anniversaries. So that was part of that.
We talked about who the third one would be in a linear version. We talked about Nelson Mandela. And then it occurred to me one morning that maybe for there to be any real change we needed to outgrow those kinds of iconic leaders. We don’t see any one around right now. There’s a real crisis of leadership in our culture. Maybe the hero is us. Then I thought, “Oh f---: Ferguson, Mo.” We wrote the rest pretty quick after that. Q Why do you think the rise of Donald Trump is seen as some kind of weird populist movement? A Because it is a populist movement. It’s an angry populist movement. I think part of the problem is people who are more fortunate looking down on people who aren’t and not understanding what’s going on with them. But it does have to do with us not taking care of our culture. It’s as broad as not funding music education in schools and thinking arts are an elective; being willing to fund a f---ing football stadium with our tax dollars but not fund music and art schools.
Without thinking that reality television is real and that Fox News is news, Donald Trump is impossible as a serious political candidate. It’s been pervasive for a long time.
I don’t watch reality television on purpose and I don’t want to be condescending to anyone that does. I used to smoke crack and watch Cops and hang upside down on an inversion table in my house in L.A. But when I stopped taking drugs, I stopped watching Cops.
The other outlets are deluded by trying to compete with Fox. The bar’s been slipping lower and lower and lower. And then: F--- me, Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. Like my grandmother used to say, “If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.”