On the Shelf 211: Steve Earle

If you know me, you know that I will take any chance I get to talk about Steve Earle.

His first and third albums of his “Nashville” career are essential. I prefer Copperhead Road to Guitar Town, but both are essential records. The second album “Exit 0” is in the shadows of the two landmarks. It is probably the most obvious bid for airplay, but it is also a very strong album- just perhaps too slick for most.

The two albums from his comeback are also genre defining- “I Feel Alright” and “El Corazon”. “Train A Comin” was released a year before the “comeback” on a small label and so didn't get a lot of notice. These three records make a shortlist of required listening.

Earle kept that momentum going. If I have five albums in the top tier, then the next record “The Mountain” immediately goes on the second tier list. It is a collaboration with the Del McCoury Band- a bluegrass album, and a pattern emerges that Earle's best albums have themes (if not, all his albums).

I won't review every album since there are so many good ones, and there is an inevitable trend downward. I am partial to 2004 “The Revolution Starts Now”. Released a couple of months after Micheal Moore's “Fahrenheit 911”, it is a soundtrack for a certain time, and certainly defined that point in Earle's career. There were a couple of songs that got a great deal of attention, though in retrospect, it's the songs like “Home to Houston” and “Rich Man's War” that stand with Earle's best work.

In recent years, Earle seems to be getting his mojo back- the Blues-based Terraplane from 2015, a duet album with Shawn Colvin in 2016, and So You Wannabe an Outlaw from 2017 show a steady upward tick. “Outlaw” wasn't perfect but it did feel like his best album in years.

The new record “Ghosts of West Virginia” hits hard on first listening. It checks off all the marks for a great Earle record. It harkens back to “The Mountain” where the theme is coal mining. Of note, it should be a song cycle since it was written for a play about a 2010 mine disaster.

A couple of things that stand out is that it's a well constructed set of songs. Interestingly, the album wouldn't sound bad on country radio, especially a song like “Union God and Country”. There's no chance of that, of course, but it talks to Earle's strengths as a songwriter. There's nothing overtly subversive about that song – it's just we live in a political environment. “The Mine” is another song that might fit on an early Earle record when he was getting airplay.

The songs “Black Lung” and “Devil Put the Coal in the Ground”) are cut from the same cloth of the Steve Earle who might hang out with the Supersuckers. There is a fury that Earle doesn't always bring to the fore, but he can and certainly will, when needed. They sound like cousins to his earlier “Oxycontin Blues” (and of course, its father “Copperhead Road”) with a Banjo playing the part of say, Johnny Ramone's guitar.

Another facet of a great Earle albums is a mix of songs- there's “Heaven Ain't Goin' Nowhere” (spiritual or gospel), “Fastest Man Alive” (country boogie or rockabilly), and “If I could see your face again” ( a sweet folky ballad sang by fiddler Eleanor Whitmore which recalls Emmylou Harris). “It's About Blood” draws from the same AOR territory (Seger, Springsteen, Mellencamp) that Earle was embraced by back in 1986. It is also a song that lists the name of the deceased miners- a fact I heard before I heard the song. I suspected that would make it resistant to repeated listening. I was wrong.

This album is another highlight in a career of highlights, likely to fall into that second tier of albums to recommend for the new listener. If you know me, you know I think Earle's the best songwriter alive. Objectively, I will at least say he's caught Springsteen and is going after Dylan.

Fun Fact: Allmusic lists of Similar Albums include the Rocky Horror Show by Richard O'Brien. While, I am indeed also a Rocky Horror fan, someone will have to explain how they arrived at that. I suppose “Hot Patootie” might fit if you worked it up with fiddle.

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