Steve Earle and the Dukes are celebrating the anniversary of the release of the album Copperhead Road, including a 30th Anniversary Tour. Uni Records released Earle’s third album on October 17, 1988.
Steve Earle made a conscious effort with the album to reach rock radio. And the songs rocked harder than Earle’s previous two excellent albums, Guitar Town (Remastered)(Bonus Track) (1985) and Exit O (1987).
You can hear Earle making a name for himself from the first chords on the opening and title track. “Copperhead Road” tells the story of a Vietnam vet returning home to grow marijuana.
Copperhead Road also featured one of the greatest songs ever written about guns, “The Devil’s Right Hand,” which was covered by Waylon Jennings.
George Stroumboulopoulos of The Strombo Show from CBC Radio 2 recently talked to Earle about the album. Check out the insightful interview where Earle recounts making the album and the music’s legacy.
What is your favorite song on Copperhead Road? It is hard for me to name one song, but I do love “Even When I’m Blue.” Leave your two cents in the comments.
Merry Christmas to our readers who celebrate the holiday. Today’s Christmas song is “Christmas in Washington” by Steve Earle. The song first appeared on his El Corazón (1997) album, which is one of my all-time favorite records.
As Earle explains in this Austin, Texas performance from 2000, the song is about some of his heroes. Written in the wake of President Bill Clinton’s election in 1996, Earle explains his longing for real progressive change. He invokes the names of people like Woody Guthrie, Emma Goldman, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
It has been more than twenty years since Earle wrote the song. But it seems even more timely this holiday season.
There’s foxes in the hen house; Cows out in the corn; The unions have been busted, Their proud red banners torn; To listen to the radio You’d think that all was well; But you and me and Cisco know It’s going straight to hell.
Happy holidays. Leave your two cents in the comments.
I have probably heard “Sin City” by the Flying Burrito Brothers more than a hundred times. But I never realized that one of the verses is about Robert F. Kennedy until reading an interview with Steve Earle.
In the interview, Earle recounted how the song’s co-writer Chris Hillman explained the Bobby Kennedy connection. The following verse is about Kennedy.
A friend came around, Tried to clean up this town; His ideas made some people mad; But he trusted his crowd, So he spoke right out loud; And they lost the best friend they had.
In another interview from many years ago in The Los Angeles Times, Hillman confirmed the above verse was about Kennedy. Hillman also explained how he and Gram Parsons came to write the song.
Hillman woke up one morning with the opening lines of the song in his head: “This old town’s filled with sin, it’ll swallow you in .” He immediately woke up his roommate Parsons, who soon came up with the melody for the song.
Parsons and Hillman, who both had recently experienced relationship breakups, completed the song in about thirty minutes. And they both ended up singing it on the first Flying Burrito Brothers album, The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969).
Bobby Kennedy was not the only person referenced in the song. Hillman, who still had bad feelings about the breakup of his former band The Byrds, included an allusion to that band’s manager Larry Spector. Hillman considered Spector a thief, and the man lived on the thirty-first floor of a condo. Hence the line: “On the thirty-first floor a gold plated door / Won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain.”
Hillman further explained that they wrote “Sin City” as a cautionary tale to “people like Gene Clark from the Byrds, who came here from Kansas with all that talent and all bright-eyed and talented and idealistic, and the whole thing just swallowed him up.” Unfortunately, that cautionary tale could equally refer to the tragic young death of Parsons.
“Sin City” remains one of the great collaborations between two great singer-songwriters. While the original recorded by the songwriters remains definitive, there have been a couple of nice covers through the years. Below in a performance from 1989, k.d. lang and Dwight Yoakam do the song justice.
Finally, here is a wonderful version by Steve Earle, Gillian Welch, and David Rawlings (Buddy Miller is also there on guitar).
Emmylou Harris recently appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert with her band The Red Dirt Boys and gave a moving performance of Steve Earle’s “The Pilgrim.” The song is my favorite from Earle’s bluegrass album The Mountain (1999), so it was great to hear Harris’s wonderful voice giving it a new interpretation and a new meaning.
In introducing the song, Harris touched upon today’s political culture and the plight of refugees. She noted, “This song is for the over 65 million displaced persons around the world.”
And then she began the song.
I am just a pilgrim on this road, boys; This ain’t never been my home. Sometimes the road was rocky long the way, boys; But I was never travelin’ alone.
Steve Earle & The Dukes will be releasing a new album, So You Wannabe An Outlaw. While I have enjoyed Earle’s recent forays into folk and blues, I am excited to hear that the album will be a return to a focus on his country sound. The album is a tribute to the 1970s Outlaw sound of singers like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
Speaking of Willie Nelson, he also makes a guest appearance on the album, as do Miranda Lambert and Johnny Bush. So You Wannabe An Outlaw will hit stores and the Internet on June 16, 2017.
For a preview of Earle’s Outlaw tribute, you may hear one of the new tracks below. Check out “Lookin’ for a Woman.”
Another track from the new album is “Fixin’ to Die.” It has a harder edge with a rock sound.
Finally, here is a live performance of the title track, “So You Wannabe an Outlaw.” This performance is from a Town Hall performance in New York City in December 2016. Note that Earle jokes about having Willie Nelson singing on the song. He did get Nelson to sing on the album version of the song.
A deluxe version of the album will also include covers of songs by Nelson, Jennings, and Billy Joe Shaver. So keep your ear out for the upcoming June 16 release of So You Wannabe An Outlaw, and watch for Earle in the Dukes, who will be touring this summer.
What is your favorite Steve Earle song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Steve Earle and the Dukes are celebrating the anniversary of the release of the album Copperhead Road, including a 30th Anniversary Tour. Uni Records released Earle’s third album on October 17, 1988.
I have probably heard “Sin City” by 
, which was recently re-issued.
, and watch for Earle in the Dukes, who will be touring this summer.