Slideshow
Biography All Media Guide Wikipedia
In the strictest sense, Steve Earle isn't a country artist; he's a roots rocker. Earle emerged in the mid-'80s, after Bruce Springsteen had popularized populist rock & roll and Dwight Yoakam had kick-started the neo-traditionalist movement in country music. At first, Earle appeared to be more indebted to the rock side than country, as he played a stripped-down, neo-rockabilly style that occasionally verged on outlaw country. However, his unwillingness to conform to the rules of Nashville or rock & roll meant that he never broke through into either genre's mainstream. Instead, he cultivated a dedicated cult following, drawing from both the country and rock audiences. Toward the early '90s, his career was thrown off track by personal problems and substance abuse, but he re-emerged stronger and healthier several years later, producing two of his most critically acclaimed albums ever.
Born in Fort Monroe, VA, but raised near San Antonio, TX, Earle received his first guitar at the age of 11 and, by the time he was 13, had become proficient enough to win a school-sponsored talent contest. Despite his talent for music, he proved to be a wild child, often getting in trouble with local authorities. Furthermore, his rebellious, long-haired appearance and anti-Vietnam War stance was scorned by local country fans. After completing the eighth grade, Earle dropped out of school and, at the age of 16, left home with his uncle Nick Fain to begin traveling across the state. Eventually, he settled in Houston at the age of 18, where he married his first wife, Sandie, and began working odd jobs. While in Houston, he met singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt, who would become Earle's foremost role model and inspiration. A year later, Earle moved to Nashville.
Earle worked blue-collar jobs during the day in Nashville; at night, he wrote songs and played bass in Guy Clark's backing band, appearing on a cut on Clark's 1975 album Old No. 1. Steve stayed in Nashville for several years, making connections within the industry and eventually landing a job as a staff writer for the publisher Sunbury Dunbar. He eventually grew tired of the city, however, and returned to Texas, where he assembled a backing band called the Dukes and began playing local clubs. A year later, he returned to Nashville, where he married his second wife, Cynthia. The marriage was short-lived and he quickly married Carol, who gave birth to Earle's first child, a son named Justin Townes Earle. Carol helped straighten Earle out, at least temporarily; for a while, he cut back on substances and concentrated on music.
Publishers Roy Dea and Pat Clark signed Earle as a songwriter in the early '80s. Dea and Clark brought "When You Fall in Love" to Johnny Lee, who took the song to number 14 on the country charts in 1982. Additionally, Carl Perkins cut a version of Steve Earle's own "Mustang Wine," and Zella Lehr recorded two of his songs as well. With his reputation as a songwriter growing, Earle express a desire to become a recording artist in his own right. Dea and Clark had recently formed an independent record label called LSI, and the pair signed Earle to their roster.
Earle's first release was an EP, Pink & Black, issued in 1982. The record featured a formative version of the Dukes and found a warm reception among critics, one of whom -- John Lomax -- sent the EP to Epic Records. Impressed with the songs, Epic signed Earle in 1983; meanwhile, Lomax became his manager. After releasing the Pink & Black track "Nothin' But You" as a single, however, Epic sat on the song and refused to promote the record. They concentrated on their new signing instead, and relations between Earle and his label began to sour. Earle then entered the studio and cut an album of neo-rockabilly songs that the label was reluctant to send to radio. They refused to release the record, suggesting instead that Earle reenter the studio with a new, more commercially oriented producer, Emory Gordy, Jr. The pair cut four more songs that were released as two singles, but the records failed.
With his recording career quickly going nowhere, Earle lost his publishing contract with Dea and Carter. He moved over to Silverline Goldline, where he met Tony Brown, a producer at MCA Records. When Epic dropped Earle from their roster in 1984, Brown persuaded MCA to sign Earle instead, and the songwriter further severed connections to his Epic days by firing Lomax as his manager. He issued his debut album, Guitar Town, in 1986. Although Earle was grouped into the new traditionalist movement begun by Dwight Yoakam and Randy Travis, he also gained the attention of rock critics and fans who saw similarities between Earle's populist sentiments and the heartland rock of Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp. Guitar Town became a hit, with its title track becoming a Top Ten single in the summer of 1986 and "Goodbye's All We've Got Left" reaching the Top Ten in early 1987. Following the album's success, Epic quickly assembled a compilation of previously unreleased Earle tracks; the collection was titled Early Tracks and released in early 1987. Later that year, the songwriter released his second album, Exit 0, which bore a shared credit for his backing band the Dukes. Exit 0 signaled a more rock-oriented direction and, like its predecessor, received critical acclaim, even if it didn't sell as well as Earle's debut.
Though his career was taking off, Earle's personal life was becoming a wreck. He had divorced his third wife, married a fourth named Lou, whom he quickly divorced, and then married an MCA employee named Teresa Ensenat. He was also delving deeper and deeper into drug and alcohol abuse. With his third album, 1988's Copperhead Road, Earle's rock & roll flirtations came to the forefront and country radio responded in kind, as none of the album's songs charted or received much airplay. However, rock radio embraced him, sending the album's title track into the album rock Top Ten, which helped make the album his highest charting effort to date. Not only had Copperhead Road been accepted by AOR, but it established him as a star in Europe, as it included a duet with Irish punk-folk group the Pogues that signaled his affection for the area. In the late '80s, Earle frequently toured England and Europe and even produced the alternative rock band the Bible.
Earle's acceptance by the rock community didn't please the country establishment in Nashville. Although it briefly seemed as if Earle wouldn't need Nashville's help anyway, his newfound success quickly began to collapse. Uni, a division of MCA Records, had released Copperhead Road; just before the album went gold, the tiny Uni went bankrupt, taking Copperhead Road along with it. Meanwhile, Earle's addictions and fondness for breaking rules began spinning out of control. On New Years' Eve, he was arrested in Dallas for assaulting a security guard at his own concert. He was charged with aggravated assault, fined 500 dollars, and given a year's unsupervised probation. Sandie, his first wife, sued for more alimony, and he was served with a paternity suit by a woman in Tennessee. The title of his 1990 album, The Hard Way, reflected such problems, as did the record's tough, dark sound. Though the record was critically acclaimed and spawned a minor AOR hit with "The Other Kind," it received no support from the country market and quickly fell off the charts.
The commercial failure of The Hard Way was just the beginning of a round of serious setbacks for Earle. Later in 1990, he recorded an album of material that MCA refused to release. Instead, the label decided to issue the live album Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator in 1991. They terminated Earle's record contract shortly thereafter, and Earle delved deep into cocaine and heroin addiction throughout the following years. He had several run-ins with the law, including a 1994 arrest in Nashville for possession of heroin. Although sentenced to a year in jail, Earle served time in rehab instead, and the treatment worked.
Earle was released from the rehab center in late 1994 and began working again. In 1995, he signed to Winter Harvest and released the acoustic Train a Comin', his first studio album in five years. Train a Comin' received terrific reviews and strong sales, despite Earle's claim that the label botched the album's song sequence. The attention led to a new record contract with Warner Bros., who released I Feel Alright in early 1996, again to strong reviews and respectable sales. Earle had returned from the brink and reestablished himself as a vital artist. In the process, he won back the country audience he had abandoned in the late '80s. The Mountain, a bluegrass record cut with the Del McCoury Band, followed in 1999, and a year later Earle returned with Transcendental Blues, produced by T-Bone Burnett.
While Earle had long displayed a strong political streak (particularly in his opposition to the death penalty), his leftist views took center stage on his 2002 album, Jerusalem. Written and recorded in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Jerusalem dealt openly with Earle's divided feelings about America's "war on terror" and the West's ignorance of the Islamic faith, and included a song about John Walker Lindh, a young American who was discovered to be fighting with Taliban forces, called "John Walker's Blues." Earle's refusal to condemn Lindh in his lyrics quickly made the song (and the album) a political hot potato, but Earle embraced the controversy and became a frequent guest on news and editorial broadcasts, defending his work and clarifying his views on terrorism, patriotism, and the role of popular artists in a time of crisis. Earle's tour in support of Jerusalem was documented in the 2003 concert film and live album Just an American Boy, and in the summer of 2004, as the American occupation of Iraq dragged on and an upcoming presidential election loomed in the minds of many, Earle released The Revolution Starts...Now, an album of songs informed by the war in Iraq and the abuses of the George W. Bush administration.
Live at Montreux, recorded at a 2005 show, was released in 2006, followed by Washington Square Serenade (his first release for New West Records) in 2007. He also wrote two songs -- "God Is God" and "I Am a Wanderer" -- for Joan Baez's 2008 album, The Day After Tomorrow, and produced it. Earle remained with New West for his follow-up release, an album of Townes Van Zandt covers entitled Townes, which was issued in 2009 and won a Grammy for Best Folk Recording. Earle spent most of the year's remainder and all of 2010 writing and recording new songs while playing the role of the musician Harley in HBO's acclaimed television series Treme. A song he wrote for the series, "This City," was nominated for both Grammy and Emmy awards. In early 2011, Earle emerged with his first new recording of original material since 2007 with I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive, which found the songwriter re-teaming with producer T-Bone Burnett and New West.
from Wikipedia:
For the drummer Steve Earle, see Afghan Whigs
Stephen Fain "Steve" Earle ( /ˈɜr/; born January 17, 1955) is an American singer-songwriter known for his rock, folk and Texas Country as well as his political views. He is also a producer, author, a political activist, and an actor, and has written and directed a play.
Personal life
Earle was born on January 17, 1955, at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia. He is the eldest son of Jack Earle, an air traffic controller, and Barbara Earle. Although he was born in Virginia where his father was stationed in the military, the family returned to Texas before Earle's second birthday. His ancestry is Irish Catholic on his mother's side and Scots-Irish on his father's side. They moved often during his childhood, primarily within Texas, but spent several of his formative years in and around San Antonio, Texas including East Terrell Hills, Converse, and Schertz. He dropped out of school in the 9th grade to move to Houston and learn more about the music business. Earle released his first album, Guitar Town, in 1986. His sister, Stacey Earle, is also a musician, having toured with her brother in the 1990s and sung on the song "When I Fall" on Earle's 2000 album, Transcendental Blues.
Earle has been married seven times, including twice to the same woman . His wives were Sandra "Sandy" Henderson, Cynthia Dunn, Carol-Ann Hunter (with whom he had his first child, Justin), Lou-Anne Gill (with whom he had a second son, Ian and a stepdaughter, Amy), Maria Teresa Ensenat, Lou-Anne Gill a second time, and finally, in 2005, singer-songwriter Allison Moorer. His first son, Justin Townes Earle, is also a musician, and is named for Townes Van Zandt. Earle and Moorer had their first child together, John Henry Earle, on April 5, 2010.
Career
Musical career
In 1975, Earle moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he met Guy Clark and his wife Susanna. He appears in the 1975 film Heartworn Highways, which documents the songwriting scene in Nashville around Clark, including fellow Texas musicians Townes van Zandt and Rodney Crowell. Earle had already met Van Zandt in Texas, and refers to Clark and Van Zandt as his mentors and teachers. Clark was instrumental in Earle being hired as a songwriter by the Sunbury Dunbar publishing division of RCA. There he wrote songs for the likes of Carl Perkins, Johnny Lee, Vince Gill and Steve Wariner. His song "Mustang Wine" was due to be recorded by Elvis Presley in 1975, but Presley did not turn up for the recording session. The song was released as a single by Carl Perkins. He also wrote the Patty Loveless hit "A Little Bit in Love." Earle did backing vocals on "Desperados Waiting for a Train" (together with Emmylou Harris) on Clark's first album Old No. 1 and toured in Clark's band. In 1981 Earle achieved a top-ten cut with "When You Fall in Love," which was recorded by Johnny Lee. In 1985 one of his compositions "A Far Cry from You" was recorded by Connie Smith, who made the song a minor hit that year.
Earle's early work as a recorded performer was in the rockabilly style, and can be heard on his compilation album: Early Tracks. The album was recorded for Epic Records, but the company dropped Earle, only releasing the album in 1987 after he found success with MCA Nashville. Earle had to wait until 1986 before his first album, Guitar Town, was released by MCA. It was a critical success and was eventually certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. The follow-up albums Exit 0 in 1987 and the certified-gold Copperhead Road, 1988, built on this success. With Copperhead Road, Earle moved to MCA Los Angeles and drew increasingly on Rock and roll influences.
Earle had been a substance abuser since an early age and was addicted to heroin for many years. By the time of his 1990 album The Hard Way, it started to become clear that the drugs were seriously affecting him. By 1992, due to his drug problem, he had discontinued performing and recording for two years, a period he refers to as his "vacation in the ghetto." He eventually ended up in jail on drug and firearms charges. Kicking the drug habit while in jail, Earle came out a new man and released two albums within 18 months of his release in late 1994. His comeback album, Train a Comin', was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1996. Train a Comin' was a return to the country blues-influenced folk of Earle's early career and drew on his older catalog of unrecorded material.
Earle's post-jail musical career is more diversified than his early work. He set up his own record label with producer and engineer Ray Kennedy, allowing him increasing artistic control. This has led to experimentation with a range of styles from country and bluegrass music to folk and hard rock music. He has maintained a strict work ethic. Several albums have been released since. Earle also tours often, playing over 200 shows per year. His concerts tend to be either solo acoustic shows or ensemble affairs with one of his two backing bands, the Dukes or the Bluegrass Dukes.
Earle is the subject of the documentary film Just an American Boy, directed by Amos Poe, which explores his political views as well as his music. The film was shot while Earle was touring in support of his 2002 release Jerusalem. In 2005, he caused consternation among his fans by allowing the song The Revolution Starts Now to be used by General Motors in a TV advertisement for pick-up trucks. In 2006, Earle contributed a cover of Randy Newman's song "Rednecks" to the tribute album Sail Away: The Songs of Randy Newman. Earle is also the subject of two biographies, Steve Earle: Fearless Heart, Outlaw Poet, by the noted New York-based music writer David McGee and Hardcore Troubadour: The Life and Near Death of Steve Earle by Lauren St. John.
In September 2007, Earle released his twelfth studio album, Washington Square Serenade, on New West Records. Earle recorded the album after relocating to New York City, and it was his first attempt at using digital audio workstation ProTools, as opposed to traditional analog recording techniques. The disc features wife Allison Moorer on "Days Aren't Long Enough" and "Down Here Below." The album includes Earle's version of Tom Waits' song "Way Down in the Hole" which is featured as the theme song for the fifth season of The Wire in which Earle himself appears as Walon. In 2008, Earle produced Joan Baez's album Day After Tomorrow. (Prior to their collaboration on Day After Tomorrow, Baez had covered two Earle songs, "Christmas in Washington" and "Jerusalem," on previous albums.) In the winter, he toured Europe and North America in support of Washington Square Serenade, performing half the set solo and the other half with a DJ. On May 12, 2009, Earle released a tribute album, Townes, on New West Records. The album contains 15 songs written by his late friend and musical mentor Townes Van Zandt. Guest artists appearing on the album include Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Earle's wife Allison Moorer, and his son Justin Townes Earle. Both Washington Square Serenade and Townes also earned Grammy awards in the contemporary folk category.
Earle released his first novel and fourteenth studio album, both entitled I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive after a Hank Williams song, in the spring of 2011. The album was released on April 26, 2011 and was produced by T-Bone Burnett. Earle describes it as dealing with questions of mortality and having a "more country" sound than his earlier work. He plans a full band tour in support of the album in the summer of 2011.
Since his emergence as a performer, his songs have been covered by various well-known artists, including Joan Baez, The Pretenders, The Proclaimers, Eddi Reader, The Highwaymen, Waylon Jennings, Levon Helm, Emmylou Harris, Percy Sledge and Johnny Cash. Travis Tritt had a #7 country hit in 1995 with Earle's "Sometimes She Forgets."
Writing career
In addition to music, Earle has written a collection of short stories called Doghouse Roses, several of which draw on his personal experiences as a musician and addict. The book was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in June 2001. Earle has also written poetry and wrote and produced a play about the death penalty entitled Karla. The play was produced off-Broadway and focuses on the death of Karla Faye Tucker, who was the first woman excuted by the state of Texas since the death penalty was reinstated.
Earle's first novel, entitled I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive after a Hank Williams song, was published the spring of 2011. The novel is set in San Antonio in 1963, and tells the story of a defrocked doctor and morphine addict. The doctor makes a living by performing illegal abortions and is haunted by the ghost of Hank Williams, with whom he was traveling when Williams died of an overdose. The novel is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt1.
Acting career
Earle portrayed a recovering drug addict named Walon in several episodes of the HBO television series The Wire, created by David Simon. He appears first in season one where he addresses a 12-step-type meeting with an account of how he lost everything to addiction: "I pawned my pickup, my bike, and my National steel guitar, a stamp collection that my granddad left me; lost a good wife, a bad girlfriend, and the respect of anyone who ever lent me money." His story affects Bubbles and appears to spur him towards recovery. After season one, Walon does not return until Bubbles hits rock-bottom hard in the season four finale. Picking up the thread, he then appears throughout season five as sponsor, as Bubbles attempts to overcome his heroin addiction and its consequences. Earle's song "I Feel Alright" is used in a montage to close out season two. He also performs the opening theme of the fifth season, performing "Way Down in the Hole," a song written by Tom Waits.
Earle also played a supporting role as a drug dealer in Tim Blake Nelson's 2009 movie Leaves of Grass, starring Edward Norton. He also played a musician in the HBO series Treme, set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Earle's song "This City" can be heard over the closing credits of the first season finale. He was also one of several musicians who sang a mock charity appeal in the final episode of Season 3 of 30 Rock.
Radio shows
Earle's radio show on Air America began in August 2004 and last aired on June 10, 2007, and that was a rebroadcast of a past episode. Shortly thereafter, he started DJing on a show on Sirius Satellite Radio called Hardcore Troubadour on their Outlaw Country channel.
Political views
Since early in his career, Earle has been involved in a number of political causes. In his first public performances, Earle was unable to play in bars due to his age and took to playing in coffeehouses alongside anti-Vietnam War campaigners. These experiences had a strong effect on him, evidenced by his opposition to the Iraq War. He is also a regular participant in the "Concerts for a Landmine Free World," benefiting the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.
Earle's mother took part in anti-death penalty vigils, a cause that has been taken up by Earle. He has worked to abolish the death penalty and has recorded several songs about this cause, including "Billy Austin," "Over Yonder (Jonathan's Song)" and "Ellis Unit One" for the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. Ellis Unit, located in Huntsville, Texas, previously housed the Texas male death row convicts, until it was moved to Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas. He exchanged letters with a prisoner on death row named Jonathan Wayne Nobles, the subject of "Over Yonder", and, at the request of Nobles, attended his execution in 1998. In 2010 Earle was awarded the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty's Shining Star of Abolition award.
In the early 2000s Earle's music was more explicitly political. His 2002 album, Jerusalem, was largely inspired by the US-led War on Terrorism. This album featured "John Walker's Blues," which was about the captured American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh. Many accused Earle of sympathizing with terrorists as the song was written from Lindh's perspective. Earle responded that he was simply empathizing with Lindh and attempting to understand his motivation through song rather than glorifying or forgiving terrorism. He said that, as a parent, he was moved by pictures of Lindh bound to a stretcher. "For some reason when I saw him on TV, I related it to my son. That skinny and that age, exactly. I thought, he's got parents somewhere, and they must be sick."
His 2004 album, The Revolution Starts Now, which features several songs relating to the Iraq War, was deliberately released to coincide with the run-up to the 2004 US presidential election, with the aim of encouraging votes for John Kerry. The song "The Revolution Starts Now" was used in the promotion of Michael Moore's anti-war documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11 and appears on the album Songs and Artists That Inspired Fahrenheit 9/11, the songs for which were selected by Moore. The song also opened Earle's weekly Sunday-night show on Air America Radio. He appears in the 2008 political documentary Slacker Uprising.
Use in media
Steve Earle's songs have appeared in many major motion pictures and television as writer and performer.
