Steve Earle

• Born: January 17, 1955
• Place of Birth: Fort Monroe, Virginia

• AMERICAN COUNTRY SINGER, SONGWRITER, AND GUITARIST

Earle was an early member of the “alt-country” movement based in Austin, Texas, which opposed the rigidity of the Nashville country-music industry. His experimentation with a variety of musical styles and with left-wing politics brought diversity to country music.

• MEMBER OF Steve Earle and the Dukes

The Life

Stephen Fain Earle was born to Barbara Thomas and Jack Earle in Fort Monroe, Virginia. His father, an air traffic controller, was stationed in various parts of the United States, and most of Earle’s childhood was spent in Schertz, Texas, north of San Antonio. Earle dropped out of school in the eighth grade to join his uncle, Nick Fain, in Houston. While there, he met outlaw country singer Townes Van Zandt, who inspired him to move to Nashville, Tennessee, to work in the country-music industry.

Earle arrived in Nashville in 1975. He worked as a backup singer and songwriter for the Sunbury Dunbar division of RCA, meeting other up-and-coming performers, such as Guy Clark and Emmylou Harris. Earle had his first major songwriting success in 1981 with “When You Fall in Love” (recorded by Johnny Lee). In 1986 his album, Guitar Town, was released to critical success and gold-record sales. Exit Zero followed in 1987, and 1990s Copperhead Road also generated successful singles.

Earle’s longtime heroin addiction led to multiple arrests throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and in 1994 he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison for drug possession. After regaining his sobriety in prison, Earle was paroled later that year. His comeback album, Train a-Comin’, was released on an independent label, marking Earle’s reemergence in the “alt-country” movement.

After he left prison, Earle turned to protest music. He became an anticapital-punishment activist, and he contributed to the soundtrack of the antideath-penalty film Dead Man Walking (1995). The invasion of Iraq in 2003 reawakened Earle’s Vietnam-era antiwar sentiments, as heard on Jerusalem and The Revolution Starts…Now. Earle’s political views led to controversy among usually conservative country-music fans. From 2004 until 2007, Earle hosted a program on the liberal talk-radio network Air America. Earle has been married seven times (twice to the same woman), and he settled in New York City with his wife, Allison Moorer, whom he married in 2005 and with whom he has a son. The couple divorced in 2014.

The Music

Earle’s musical output can be divided into two parts: his pre-prison work (from Guitar Town through The Hard Way) and his post-1994 albums. Although his prison term lasted slightly over a year, the experience changed and informed his songwriting. Earle’s pre-1991 output reflects rockabilly and rock styles, while later albums utilize a variety of musical traditions. Earle’s first major success came with Guitar Town, and subsequent albums were critically successful, if not easily categorized into standard genres. Earle’s drug abuse and legal troubles forced a recording hiatus until 1994, when Train a-Comin’ was released. Earle’s post-1994 output is notable for its political content and its debt to protest music singers, such as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

Guitar Town. Earle’s first major success as a performer, Guitar Town, showcases his songwriting abilities. The album’s ten tracks are a fusion of country, folk, and rock-and-roll influences. Widely credited with reviving a dormant Texas-based rockabilly sound, Guitar Town was ranked 489 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003.

Copperhead Road. This album veered toward a harder sound, reminiscent of 1970s Southern rock. While singles from Guitar Town received airplay on both rock and country radio, Copperhead Road was marketed primarily to rock audiences. The title track, “Copperhead Road,” became Earle’s best-known song in mainstream popular music.

Jerusalem. This was the first of Earle’s explicitly political albums, a meditation on the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the US government’s response to them. “John Walker’s Blues,” a song written from the point of view of American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, caused an uproar in conservative circles for seeming to humanize Lindh and condone his actions.

The Revolution Starts…Now. Earle’s Grammy Award-winning album of protest music was one of the first full albums about the Iraq War by a major artist. It is notable for its radical eclecticism, with musical gestures from rock, folk, reggae, and spoken-word. Explicitly topical in nature, the album was a centerpiece in the 2004 Rock Against Bush movement attached to John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

Musical Legacy

Earle’s career as both a songwriter and a performer has been extremely important for Texas-based “alt-country” music. The respect he earned from both the Nashville and the Austin music establishments has paved the way for crossover influence between the two, and his left-wing political views have brought political diversity into country music. Earle’s work has been nominated for thirteen Grammy Awards, and The Revolution Starts…Now and Washington Square Serenade were named Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album in 2005 and 2008, respectively.

Earle’s most important musical works, however, remain the albums Guitar Town and Copperhead Road. The former revitalized country music’s take on the rockabilly sound (undergoing a revival in popular music in the 1980s), while the latter brought Southern rock-influenced country music to mainstream attention. His recent works of protest music will also be remembered as a consistent dissenting voice to country music’s conservative politics of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

In 2015, Earle released Terraplane, an album inspired by classic Texas blues. He collaborated with singer Shawn Colvin on the 2016 album Colvin & Earle, which includes covers of classic songs as well as new songs they cowrote. In 2017, he released So You Wannabe an Outlaw to critical acclaim. Other projects include a memoir I Can't Remember If We Said Goodbye (2018) and a novel I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive (2011), as well as a collection of stories, Doghouse Roses (2001). Earle has appeared in two HBO series: The Wire as the character Waylon, and in Treme, as a street musician.

In 2020, Earle served as musical director for the play Coal Country. He then released several studio albums in the early 2020s, including J.T. (2021) and Jerry Jeff (2022). In 2024, Earle released the live album Alone Again, featuring recordings from his recent tours.

Principal Recordings

ALBUMS (solo): Pink and Black, 1982; Guitar Town, 1986; Early Tracks, 1987; Copperhead Road, 1988; The Hard Way, 1990; Train a Comin’, 1995; I Feel Alright, 1996; El Corazón, 1997; The Mountain, 1999; Transcendental Blues, 2000; Jerusalem, 2002; The Revolution Starts…Now, 2004; Washington Square Serenade, 2007; J.T. (2021), Jerry Jeff (2022), Alone Again (2024).

ALBUMS (with Steve Earle and the Dukes): Exit Zero, 1987; The Hard Way, 1990.

Bibliography

Blackstock, Peter. “Steve Earle: Can’t Keep a Good Man Down.” No Depression 1, no. 3 (Spring, 1996): 33-37.

Earle, Steve. “The Politics of Retribution.” In It’s a Free Country: Personal Freedom in America After September 11, edited by Danny Goldberg, Victor Goldberg, and Robert Greenwald. New York: RDV/Akashic Books, 2000.

Hattenstone, Simon. "Steve Earle: 'My Wife Left Me for a Younger, Skinnier, Less Talented Singer.'" The Guardian, 14 June 2017, www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jun/14/steve-earle-so-you-wanna-be-an-outlaw-interview. Accessed 15 Oct. 2024.

Lewis, George H. “Transcendental Blues.” Popular Music and Society 26 (October, 2003).

McGee, David, and Steve Earle. Steve Earle: Fearless Heart: Outlaw Poet. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2005.

St. John, Lauren. Hardcore Troubadour: The Life and Near-Death of Steve Earle. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

Vaziri, Aidin. "Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2024: Steve Earle Condemns Blue Angels, Tells Fans 'Don't Waste Your Vote.'" SF Chronicle, 6 Oct. 2024, www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/hardly-strictly-bluegrass-steve-earle-19818735.php. Accessed 15 Oct. 2024.