Steve Earle

Steve Earle ranks among the most acclaimed singer-songwriters of his era. He first drew listeners in as a country performer, yet quickly showed that this label failed to encompass his broader scope. Across his output he has explored country on the 1986 release Guitar Town, bluegrass on the 1999 album The Mountain, rock on the 1988 set Copperhead Road, folk on the 2007 record Washington Square Serenade, and blues on the 2015 album Terraplane. His lyrics adopt a populist outlook that remains both literate and grounded, addressing the ordinary events of daily existence as well as the larger influences that mold and direct those lives. Earle’s inherently defiant character shaped both his private and professional paths; his most widely embraced and praised recordings carry a pronounced outlaw edge, while his refusal to accommodate record labels along with his battles against addiction and his series of turbulent marriages drew one type of admirer and distanced another. Even so, his range, the power of his material, and steady praise from critics enabled him to build a devoted audience willing to track his stylistic shifts. He secured his place in country stardom via the 1986 album Guitar Town and moved toward a tougher rock approach on the 1988 commercial success Copperhead Road. By the early 1990s personal difficulties and substance issues disrupted his momentum, but he reappeared more robust with two of his most favorably reviewed collections, the 1995 release Train A Comin’ and the 1996 album I Feel Alright. Earle honored his affection for bluegrass on the 1999 record The Mountain, whereas his forward-looking political positions guided his work throughout the 2000s. He turned back to intimate subjects on the 2011 album I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive and delivered a complete-bodied return to country textures with the 2017 release So You Wannabe an Outlaw and the 2020 album Ghosts of West Virginia, the latter recounting the 2010 mining explosion that claimed 29 lives. Earle has also issued several collections saluting songwriters who shaped him, among them Townes Van Zandt on the 2009 record Townes, Guy Clark on the 2019 album Guy, and Jerry Jeff Walker on the 2022 release Jerry Jeff. With the 2024 album Alone Again… (Live), Earle captured a solo acoustic tour in which he stripped his music to its essentials.

Born in Fort Monroe, Virginia, and raised near San Antonio, Texas, Earle obtained his first guitar at age eleven and by age thirteen had advanced enough to claim victory in a school-sponsored talent contest. Despite his musical aptitude he remained a restless youth who frequently clashed with local officials. In addition, his defiant long-haired look and anti-Vietnam War position drew disapproval from area country listeners. After finishing eighth grade Earle left school and at age sixteen departed home with his uncle Nick Fain to journey through the state. He eventually established himself in Houston at age eighteen, where he wed his first wife, Sandie, and took up various short-term work. While in Houston he encountered singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt, who became Earle’s primary influence and source of inspiration. One year later Earle relocated to Nashville.

In Nashville Earle held manual-labor positions by day and at night composed songs and played bass in Guy Clark’s backing band, appearing on one track from Clark’s 1975 album Old No. 1. He remained in Nashville for several years, forging industry ties and eventually securing a staff-writer post with the publisher Sunbury Dunbar. He soon grew weary of the city, however, and returned to Texas, where he formed a backing band called the Dukes and began performing in local clubs. A year later he returned to Nashville and married his second wife, Cynthia. The union proved brief, after which he promptly married Carol, who gave birth to Earle’s first child, a son named Justin Townes Earle. Carol helped stabilize Earle, at least for a time; for a period he reduced his substance use and focused on music.

Publishers Roy Dea and Pat Clark signed Earle as a songwriter in the early 1980s. 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. In addition, Carl Perkins recorded a version of Steve Earle’s own “Mustang Wine,” and Zella Lehr cut two of his compositions. As his reputation as a songwriter expanded, Earle voiced a wish to become a recording artist himself. Dea and Clark had lately established an independent label called LSI, and the pair placed Earle on their roster.

Earle’s initial release was the 1982 EP Pink & Black. The record included an early incarnation of the Dukes and earned positive notice from critics, one of whom—John Lomax—forwarded the EP to Epic Records. Impressed by the material, Epic signed Earle in 1983; meanwhile Lomax became his manager. After issuing the Pink & Black track “Nothin’ But You” as a single, however, Epic shelved the song and declined to promote it. The label instead devoted attention to its newer signing, and relations between Earle and the company began to deteriorate. Earle then entered the studio and recorded an album of neo-rockabilly songs that the label hesitated to send to radio. The company declined to issue the album and instead suggested that Earle return to the studio with a fresh, more commercially minded producer, Emory Gordy, Jr. The pair recorded four additional songs that appeared as two singles, yet the releases did not succeed.

As his recording career stalled, Earle lost his publishing agreement with Dea and Carter. He moved to Silverline Goldline, where he met Tony Brown, a producer at MCA Records. When Epic dropped Earle from its roster in 1984, Brown convinced MCA to sign him, and the songwriter further distanced himself from his Epic period by dismissing Lomax as manager. He issued his debut album, Guitar Town, in 1986. Although Earle was placed within the new traditionalist wave led by Dwight Yoakam and Randy Travis, he also drew notice from rock critics and listeners who detected parallels between Earle’s populist outlook and the heartland rock of Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp. Guitar Town became a success, its title track rising to a Top Ten single in summer 1986 and “Goodbye’s All We’ve Got Left” reaching the Top Ten in early 1987. Following the album’s performance, Epic quickly compiled a collection of previously unreleased Earle tracks; the set appeared in early 1987 under the title Early Tracks. Later that year the songwriter released his second album, Exit 0, which carried a shared credit for his backing band the Dukes. Exit 0 pointed toward a more rock-leaning direction and, like its predecessor, earned critical praise even though it did not match the sales of Earle’s debut.

While his career advanced, Earle’s private life deteriorated. He had divorced his third wife, married a fourth named Lou whom he soon divorced, and then married an MCA employee named Teresa Ensenat. He was also sinking further into drug and alcohol dependence. On his third album, the 1988 release Copperhead Road, Earle’s rock-and-roll leanings moved to the forefront and country radio reacted accordingly, as none of the album’s songs charted or received significant airplay. Rock radio, however, embraced him, sending the album’s title track into the album-rock Top Ten and helping make the record his highest-charting effort to that point. Copperhead Road not only found acceptance at AOR but also established him as a star in Europe, where it featured a duet with the Irish punk-folk group the Pogues that reflected his affinity for the region. In the late 1980s Earle frequently toured England and Europe and even produced the alternative-rock band the Bible.

Earle’s embrace by the rock community did not sit well with Nashville’s country establishment. Although it briefly appeared that Earle might not require Nashville’s assistance, his recent success began to unravel. Uni, a division of MCA Records, had issued Copperhead Road; just before the album reached gold status the small Uni label collapsed, taking Copperhead Road with it. At the same time Earle’s addictions and habit of defying conventions spun further out of control. On New Year’s Eve he was arrested in Dallas for assaulting a security guard at his own concert. He faced charges of aggravated assault, received a five-hundred-dollar fine, and was placed on one year of unsupervised probation. Sandie, his first wife, sought additional alimony, and he was served with a paternity suit by a woman in Tennessee. The title of his 1990 album The Hard Way mirrored these troubles, as did the record’s hard, somber tone. Although the release earned critical praise and produced a minor AOR hit with “The Other Kind,” it received no backing from the country market and soon dropped from the charts.

The commercial disappointment of The Hard Way marked only the start of further serious reversals for Earle. Later in 1990 he recorded an album of material that MCA declined to release. Instead the label chose to issue the live album Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator in 1991. The company ended Earle’s recording contract shortly afterward, and Earle descended deeper into cocaine and heroin addiction in the ensuing years. He encountered several legal troubles, including a 1994 arrest in Nashville for heroin possession. Although sentenced to a year in jail, Earle served time in rehabilitation instead, and the treatment succeeded.

Earle left the rehabilitation center in late 1994 and resumed work. In 1995 he signed with Winter Harvest and released the acoustic album Train A Comin’, his first studio record in five years. Train A Comin’ earned excellent reviews and solid sales despite Earle’s assertion that the label mishandled the album’s track order. The attention led to a new recording agreement with Warner Bros., which issued I Feel Alright in early 1996 and El Corazon in 1997; both received strong reviews and respectable sales. Earle had returned from the edge and reestablished himself as an essential artist. In the process he regained the country audience he had left behind in the late 1980s. The Mountain, a bluegrass album recorded with the Del McCoury Band, followed in 1999, and a year later Earle returned with Transcendental Blues, produced by T-Bone Burnett.

Although Earle had long shown a pronounced political inclination, especially in his opposition to the death penalty, his progressive positions moved to center stage on his 2002 album Jerusalem. Written and recorded after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Jerusalem addressed Earle’s conflicting sentiments regarding America’s “war on terror” and the West’s lack of understanding of the Islamic faith, and it included a song about John Walker Lindh, a young American found fighting alongside Taliban forces, titled “John Walker’s Blues.” Earle’s refusal to denounce Lindh in his lyrics quickly rendered the song and the album a political flashpoint, yet Earle welcomed the controversy and appeared often on news and editorial broadcasts, defending his work and clarifying his positions on terrorism, patriotism, and the responsibilities of popular artists during crisis. Earle’s tour supporting Jerusalem was documented in the 2003 concert film and live album Just an American Boy, and in summer 2004, as the American occupation of Iraq continued and an approaching presidential election occupied public attention, Earle released The Revolution Starts…Now, an album of songs shaped by the Iraq war and the actions of the George W. Bush administration.

Live at Montreux, captured at a 2005 performance, appeared in 2006, followed by Washington Square Serenade (his first release for New West Records) in 2007. He also composed two songs—“God Is God” and “I Am a Wanderer”—for Joan Baez’s 2008 album The Day After Tomorrow and produced those sessions. Earle stayed with New West for his next release, an album of Townes Van Zandt covers titled Townes, issued in 2009 and awarded a Grammy for Best Folk Recording. Earle devoted most of the remainder of the year and all of 2010 to writing and recording new material while portraying the musician Harley in HBO’s acclaimed series Treme. A song he wrote for the series, “This City,” received nominations for both Grammy and Emmy awards.

In early 2011 Earle surfaced with his first collection of original songs since 2007, I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive, which reunited the songwriter with producer T-Bone Burnett and New West. In spring 2013 Earle rejoined longtime collaborator and co-producer Ray Kennedy and his touring band the Dukes (And Duchesses) to issue The Low Highway. He also signed a two-book publishing agreement with Twelve. The first volume would be a memoir and the second a novel. While pursuing his literary projects Earle did not neglect his musical work; he and his current version of the Dukes recorded a blues-rooted album, Terraplane, released by New West in February 2015. In 2016 Earle partnered with fellow singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin for a joint album. Colvin & Earle presented the friends and colleagues sharing vocals on several new originals and a selection of covers.

In 2017 Earle returned to the major labels with the release of So You Wannabe an Outlaw, which also marked his return to the rugged blend of rock and country that defined his most recognized work. The album, issued by Warner Bros., featured guest appearances from Willie Nelson, Miranda Lambert, and Johnny Bush. Earle’s association with Warner Bros. proved brief, and he rejoined the New West roster for the 2019 album Guy. In the spirit of Townes, Guy presented Earle covering sixteen songs written by mentor and Texas songwriting figure Guy Clark; Emmylou Harris, Jerry Jeff Walker, Rodney Crowell, and Terry Allen contributed vocals to the recordings. That same year brought a somber milestone for Earle and the Dukes when his longtime bassist, Kelley Looney, who had performed with Earle on the road and in the studio since 1988, died at age sixty-one.

When playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen wrote Coal Country, a play about the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster in which twenty-seven West Virginia miners lost their lives, they asked Earle to compose a group of songs to accompany the production. Earle performed his songs onstage during the play’s short 2020 run at New York’s Public Theater, which ended early because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Earle recorded the songs with his group the Dukes, and they appeared on his well-received 2020 release Ghosts of West Virginia. The following year Earle issued the poignant J.T., which honored his son Justin Townes Earle, who had passed away the previous year. In 2020 Earle began an online video series, Steve Earle’s Guitar Town, in which he displayed items from his extensive guitar collection and discussed the distinctive qualities of each instrument. In 2021 he appeared on The Day the Earth Stood Still, an album by veteran songwriter Willie Nile, adding vocals to the track “Blood On Your Hand.” In 2022 Earle released the fourth and, as he indicated, final installment in his series of tributes to songwriters who mattered to him, Jerry Jeff, containing ten selections from the catalog of Jerry Jeff Walker. Earle also acknowledged songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard by duetting with Hubbard on the song “Hellbent for Leather” on the album Co-Starring Too. In 2023 Earle told an interviewer he was composing songs for an upcoming stage musical based on Horton Foote’s novel Tender Mercies.

In 2023, with the Dukes on pause after Kelley Looney’s death, Earle embarked on a solo acoustic tour, and the 2024 album Alone Again… (Live) was assembled from recordings of those performances. That year Earle also appeared on Better Than Jail, a benefit compilation intended to raise funds and awareness for criminal-justice reform. He contributed a cover of the Bobby Fuller classic “I Fought the Law,” while Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires, Bonnie Raitt, and Old Crow Medicine Show, among others, also participated on the album. Earle hosts an annual songwriting retreat, Camp Copperhead, in Big Indian, New York, and supports young people on the autism spectrum (his youngest son received an autism diagnosis).