USA TODAY International Edition
In ‘ Outlaw,’ Steve Earle returns to his country roots
3- time Grammy winner to devote rest of ’ 17 to touring
The TV series Nashville 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- time — and his latest, So You Wannabe An Outlaw, released June 16, harkens back to that musical junction. “I decided to let this record be about me reconnecting with, for lack of a better term, country music,” the three- time Grammy winner says. “It’s at least my idea of a country record. Whether it’s anybody else’s or not, it’s based on the country music I still listen to.”
In the midst of last year’s tour with Shawn Colvin — they released the album Colvin & Earle last summer — Earle “started thinking about what the next record would be because I have bills to pay.”
Two songs he had already written were vintage country- rock statements. If Mama Coulda Seen Me, came about when T Bone Burnett, who served as the executive music director during the first season of Nashville, asked Earle to write a song for the show. “They liked it and used it on the show,” he said. For the next season, Buddy Miller, who took over as music director, asked for a song, too. But 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 says.
Another cue came from music he had on rotation at the time, including Waylon Jennings’ Honky Tonk Heroes and Willie Nelson’s Shotgun Willie, two pillars of the early ’ 70s outlaw country movement.
Honky Tonk Heroes, released in 1973 by Jennings, who died in 2002, “was the first record ( Jennings) made with his whole band and everything was built around his electric guitar,” says Earle, who grew up in Texas but moved to Nashville in 1974, while Jennings and Nelson were in fullbore outlaw mode. “I have a really good 1955 Fender Telecaster, as it so happens, and I just decided maybe this is what the next record is going to be and I just started unapologetically channeling Waylon Jennings, to my best ability.”
Earle recruited Willie Nelson for the upbeat but cautionary title track, 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 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 rocker Fixin’ To Die, while he offers a folkflavored elegy for Guy Clark in Goodbye Michelangelo.
At 62, Earle is as busy as ever. He has just finished a run in an off- Broadway play and after a short solo record store tour, Earle mentored a five- day songwriting camp in Big Indian, N. Y.
He will tour throughout the rest of 2017.
Also in the works: his memoir, a musical based on his 2007 album Washington Square Serenade and music for another play based on the 2010 Upper Big Branch coal mining disaster in West Virginia. Next year, expect some special live concert performances of Copperhead Road, his 1988 album, which turns 30 next year. And, most likely, new politically charged music that more directly addresses Earle’s 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’s a very personal record,” Earle said. “The next will be just as country as this one and probably way more political.”