Steve Earle: The Cosmopolitan Cowboy

Steve Earle: The Cosmopolitan Cowboy

Cynthia Rose

He’s a Texas-to-Nashville transplant and a balladeer with an articulate business sense. But, from the way he assembled his band to his strong reverence for songwriting craft, Steve Earle embodies some of country music’s more venerable traits.

What he’s jettisoned are its anachronisms, yielding a beautifully-balanced, refreshing sound which calls to mind the Everlys’ most classic cuts. Lyrically, Earle leans more toward Tom Petty than Ernest Tubb; his honky-tonk aesthetic is thor-

oughly macho but substitutes a sulk for a spree. Still, Guitar Town, his debut disc MCA, and his new Exit O, are a near perfect synthesis of country and contemporary rock.

Psrfsct enough, in fact, to get him hyped as a country competitor to SpringsteenThis critical conceit—like the big I debate over whether his writing is “country” or “rock”—makes the blunt 32-yearold laugh. “That’s come up from the very beginning. I know I’m a country singer, | it’s clear enough to me. But people in the ' rock press, they hate to admit anything they like is ‘country.’ ”

The Springsteen comparison grates a j little more. “I guess I see where it comes from, though. ’Cause as a performer, I’m far more influenced by rock than by country. When I started in ’83, I was signed to CBS. And they had me playing with a three-piece rockabilly band. We played almost exclusively rock clubs. Now, it’s half and half, but that’s ’cause country venues tend to have lousy sound. And this band’s pretty hi-tech.”

Springsteen’s. “Oh, yeah. The deal with me is I came from folk. My roots ar© sort °*in tbe ’60s acoustic stuff. And *’ve bad access to several really great songwriters: Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark. But no one can say they’re unaffected by Springsteen. He’s continued for six or seven years in a row to be this year’s model. It’s really disgusting how good be is!

“The radio stations in South Texas,’’ says Earle, “are geared to a different They go for a danceable brand of country, people you rarely hear so much elsewhere, like Johnny Bush or Ray Price—-I cut my teeth on real hard country from that kind of radio. Both that and cuts like Creedence Clearwater Revival.”

That’s the side of Earle that surfaces in concert: the hard-drivin*, boogie bandit with motorcycle-macho looks that owe a lot to the longneck beers he faithfully patronizes. But on his own, says Earle, he sought out more sensitive sounds.

Steve Earle’s image was tailor-made ; for country: the tough type with a tender side. The latter is provided less by his i multiple marriages (three last count, but going on four), than by his young off\ spring. (His baby son, says Earle, inspired the first album’s “Little Rock ’N’ Roller.”) It’s fleshed out by a flamboyant past: problems with powders, discipline and :day jobs. Not to mention two tequiladrenched years spent on the lam in Old Mexico.

Through it all, Earle’s one consistent passion and practice was songwriting. For him, each song determines everything: arrangements, instruments, tone. “There’s no reason for me to be a singer,” says the nominee for Best Country Vocalist of ’86, “unless I write the songs. I know where the bodies are buried, I can sing ’em right.” No more, he vows, will he write for others like Waylon Jennings or Carl Perkins—though he has discussed co-authorship with pal T-Bone Burnett.

Earle has an easygoing, good ole boy manner, but 10 years of hard labor in the business have lent his career control a formidable aspect. And, to Nashville’s old guard, his huge success appears as a tangible threat.

“See,” he explains, “the word ‘country’ isn’t exactly relevant anymore. Nashville is now just the state-of-the-art recording center in America. And all my recording is digital—that’s house policy at MCA. Everyone likes to say we’re crazy, but believe me, anyone who learns anything about analog recording these days is really wasting his time.”

“You have to realize,” Earle continues, “that Nashville is a publishers’ town. Publishers are the majority money here, and they don’t want to see singer-songwriters flourish; performers like me, Dwight (Yoakum) and Lyle Lovett. They like it the way it was, with artists dependent on them for material.”

Though Earle cites the “rampant ignorance” he’s seen at many a country music awards shindig, he feels Nashville is undergoing a certain change of the guard. “It’s down to some great players from the ’70s who have now become producers.” His own production team—Tony Brown and Emory Gordy, Jr.—both hail from Emmylou Harris’s legendary Hot Band.

“That was the band I patterned my own outfit after,” Earle asserts proudly. “I want to create careers within the group. All of my players have points in my records and percentages in every show. Not that it’s a democracy; its more like a benevolent dictatorship. But this way, I enjoy a higher degree of loyalty. And the audience hears the real thing.” Nashville session stars, he points out, rarely take their backing on the road.

Earle has been championed by critics for acting on such politically fresh ideas. They also link his lyrical concerns with “blue collar rock.” But, quite rightly, this star demurs at comparisons to Mellencamp and Seger. “It’s not me,” he says. “Still, I think things in America will be changing drastically soon. I think we’ve finally gotten a little more socially conscious.

“I’m no social crusader,” he continues. “My politics are pretty patchwork. And on some issues, I’m to the right of Attila the Hun. But, in this country, there’s no excuse for anyone to go hungry.”

There’s a pause, then a belly laugh. “I mean, just the fact that conservatives could miss the point of ‘Born In The USA.’ That indicates the opposition isn’t as formidable as one might have assumed!”!!