Steve Earle goes back to ‘The Mountain’

Over his long career, Steve Earle has demonstrated his command as a narrative songwriter in a wide range of American vernacular idioms moving from country to blues to foot-stomping rock ’‘n’ roll.

With “The Ghosts of West Virginia,” Earle returns to the Appalachian acoustic music that he immersed himself in on “The Mountain,” his 1999 collaboration with bluegrass bandleader Del McCoury. And the music is ideally suited to the story he has to tell.

The songs on “Ghosts” were written for “Coal Country,” Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s documentary play based on interviews with the families of the 29 men who were killed in the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion in West Virginia in 2010.

During the drama’s pandemic-shortened run this March at the Public Theater in New York, Earle performed eight songs onstage, serving as a Greek chorus with guitar. He’s up for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music this Sunday.

“Ghosts” draws from the details of the Upper Big Branch tragedy and the righteous fight to hold the mine’s owners accountable. One song, “It’s About Blood,” calls out the names of the dead.

But the album stands wholly on its own, with songs of trouble and strife, heartache and loss. At their best, they sound as if they could have been written decades ago while being utterly timeless.

“If I Could See Your Face Again,” sung by Eleanor Whitmore of the Mastersons (and Earle’s band the Dukes), gives voice to the longing of a coal mine widow, but its understated grief is universal. And “Time Is Never on Our Side” turns the Irma Thomas-Rolling Stones hit on its head, delivering existential gloom with sobering, scratchy-voiced grace.