In 1974, a 19-year-old Steve Earle arrived in Nashville from San Antonio and joined a circle of songwriters centered around Guy and Susanna Clark that included Rodney Crowell and John Hiatt. He’d written songs before — in Texas, he’d apprenticed himself to the talented but mercurial Townes Van Zandt — but he threw those away, starting over. The next year, he wrote the earliest songs he’d record and still plays today. At The Birchmere recently, he marked the passing of 50 years with a two-hour journey through his career.
Earle has more albums than he had time for songs. At The Birchmere on June 3, he drew mostly from his first 25 years of material, playing just three post-2000 songs, starting with “Tom Ames’ Prayer” (which has been covered by fellow Texan Robert Earl Keen) and “Ben McCulloch,” about the Confederate general. Though written in 1975, he recorded them on his acoustic comeback album Train a Comin‘ nearly 20 years later. (More on the comeback later.) “The Devil’s Right Hand” appeared on his 1988 rock album, Copperhead Road. “I hadn’t accrued enough experience to write a convincing love song,” he said, “so I wrote a lot of historical pieces.”
Earle spent 12 years in Nashville before making his full-length debut. He had several publishing contracts, with mixed success getting his songs recorded by other artists. A supporter, Noel Fox, encouraged him to write an album despite not having a record deal, telling him if he wrote the record, he’d get him a deal. The key inspiration for Guitar Town came from seeing Bruce Springsteen’s Born in The USA tour. Guitar Town’s mix of country and heartland rock became a seminal influence on the emerging Americana genre.
Steve faced opposition from MCA’s head, who said, “Anybody but Steve Earle,” insisting he record a demo to prove he could sing satisfactorily. The title track’s success as a single surprised Earle, who “saw [it] as a way to open the album.” Springsteen reenters the story, buying the album at a record store in Los Angeles, where he was then living, “and the next week, I sold 35,000 records.” Reportedly, the Boss liked the cover, but Steve thinks E Street Band bassist Gary Tallent turned him onto it.
Watch the official music video for “Guitar Town” by Steve Earle on YouTube:
Percy Sledge, Patty Loveless, The Proclaimers, and many others have covered the ballad “My Old Friend the Blues.” “Someday,” an unsentimental look at small-town life, shows Springsteen’s influence channeled through Earle’s unique voice.
Despite the success of Guitar Town, Steve faced continued resistance from his label, which did little to promote the next year’s follow up, Exit 0. Earle’s contrarian ways also have caused him problems; asked to record a demo of “Ben McCulloch” without the word “goddamn,” he replaced it with “fuck.”
“I Ain’t Ever Satisfied” became a nightly singalong at his shows. He dedicated the next song, “No. 29” to Bubba, a football player who, for reasons that remain unclear, protected him from bullies in high school, telling the rest of the team he was “off limits.” Steve was not on the football team; he describes himself as “the least athletic person in my bloodline.” (As a world-class klutz, I relate: I knocked myself out by smashing forehead into my knee trying to imitate the Harley Race high knee lift. But most of my family is similarly clumsy. My sister broke seven bones a kid, once breaking another bone when she was already in a cast. I’m not sure how many side mirrors my mom destroyed by hitting the side of the garage.) “My hobby in high school was turning cowboys on to LSD,” he said. “They seemed like they needed it.” He and Bubba did psychedelics and gazed at the stars, though Bubba never seemed to grasp that Earle didn’t share his hallucinations.
After Exit 0, Earle moved to the Los Angeles-based Uni division of MCA, deciding to write a rock album: Copperhead Road. The title track, a loud, heavy outlaw tale of a descendant of moonshiners who comes back from the Vietnam War to become a marijuana grower remains one of his most popular songs. As he moved from Copperhead Road to The Hard Way, things “became darker” because his life was moving into darker territory. He’s openly shared his struggles with substances, having first used heroin in his early teens. His circle in Nashville wasn’t a positive influence: “They were trying to get cocaine declared a vegetable.”
Earle stopped using heroin for many years after moving to Nashville because he couldn’t afford the habit and the junk there was low quality. Achieving success made it financially viable, and he developed a severe addiction. In the ’90s, he went four-and-a-half years without making or record or writing a song. Arrested for possession of a tenth of a gram of “really shitty” heroin, he blew off his court date and ended sentenced to prison, serving four months. He decided to try rehab, and was sent to a facility in Lewis County, so named because the early American explorer Lewis Merriweather committed suicide there. The county was also home, he noted, to an elephant sanctuary.
Initially, Steve didn’t plan to get totally clean — just better. He’d grown up with the Twelve Steps — “my grandfather started most of the meetings in north Texas” — but he didn’t want to quit his habit and commit to them. He realized he wanted to live, though, and he’s been sober since. The rehab facility had a guitar which he wasn’t allowed to play because, as the counselor said, he used it to “get over,” an assessment Earle agrees with. When the counselor felt he’d enough progress, he let Steve have the guitar for a few hours, and he wrote his first song free of drugs: “Goodbye,” which would be covered by Emmylou Harris on Wrecking Ball.
Watch Steve Earle perform “Goodbye” live from Austin in 2000 on YouTube:
When he got out, Earle rebuilt his career starting with the independently released Train a Comin‘, then was signed to Warner Brothers. His next two songs, “South Nashville Blues” and “CCKMP” (“Cocaine Cannot Kill My Pain”) appeared on his next album, I Feel Alright. The problem with the former, he said, is that it “makes that part of my life sound a lot more fun than it was.” As a corrective, he pairs the songs; he introduced the latter with “welcome to my nightmare.”
After that pairing, Steve played what might be my favorite of his songs, the title track from 2000’s Transcendental Blues, his most Dylanesque composition. He jumped ahead to talking about his move to New York 20 years ago, and the “culture shock” that accompanies moving there when at 50. He wanted to write music for the theater, and he’s had a long love affair with the city. He especially likes its convenience store/deli/grocery stores, which have all the normal convenience store stuff, but where you can also buy an onion if you’re cooking in the middle of the night. He described how Italian immigrants started these stores and they’re now mostly run by Koreans — in the next phase, he suggested, the city’s Hispanic population will take over.
With great fondness, Earle spoke of Mr. Kim, the Korean proprietor of the store he frequents. In addition to his native Korean — which Steve described as a “really fucking difficult language,” Mr. Kim “speaks English better than I do,” and, in his 50s, learned Spanish because his employees come from Latin America. He expects Mr. Kim, whose sons attended Harvard and MIT, to sell the store to his employees, funding his retirement. The upshot of this story, he said, is that it captures America, a sentiment he put to song with “City of Immigrants.”
Stepping back in time, Steve talked about how, though he didn’t grow up with it, bluegrass is his favorite kind of music. When he was in Nashville, in addition to the Clark circle, he spent a lot of time with bluegrass musicians, particularly John Hartford, who he credit for the resurgence of this music. During his last few weeks, he’d visit Hartford to read to him. In the late ’90s, he made his own bluegrass album, The Mountain, with the Del McCoury band, and he played the title cut.
While he’s since released two albums of covers — of songs by his late son Justin Townes and his mentor Jerry Jeff Walker — and a live album, his last collection of original songs was 2020’s Ghosts of West Virginia. Written for the play Coal Country, the songs deal with the disaster at the Big Branch Mine, which emphasized was the first in decades without a union to protect workers. The harrowing “It’s About Blood” channels the anger of victims’ families
For his encore, Steve brought out opening act Zandi Holup to sing a duet they co-wrote. He played the gospel-tinged folk tune “Tell Moses,” written with Shawn Colvin, finishing the evening with “The Galway Girl.”
Holup got the evening started with a meaty, 10-song set, beginning with “Gas Station Flowers.” “Dirty Wings,” she shared, is about working on herself and making progress. “Flies with Honey,” a new song, describes how her kindness has not been met with the same, and she wrote “Preacher’s Daughter” with Steve. “Mary Jane” told the story of a friend who was addicted to heroin for 15 years but is clean now. She called “Find Less” her funny song, and she also performed “Mountain Man,” “Hurt People Hurt People,” and “Wildflower.”
Watch Zandi Holup perform “Gas Station Flowers” live on YouTube:
This Birchmere show delivered on incredible songs, along with the often side-splittingly hilarious stories behind them. It was a reminder that, as a singer-songwriter and a storyteller, Steve Earle continues to be one of the best we have.
Here are some photos of Steve Earle and Zandi Holup performing live at The Birchmere on June 3, 2025. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Ben Eisendrath, Insomnigraphic.com!
