Anyone who has even a cursory awareness of Steve Earle as either an artist or person knows the man very much walks to the beat of his own drummer, critics be damned. For a self-described “pinko, slightly to the left of Mao,” Earle has been unbending in defending his First Amendment rights and has logged plenty of years under his belt as a passionate death penalty opponent. As one of the young singer-songwriter Turks (whose ranks included k.d. lang, Lyle Lovett and Dwight Yoakam) who seemingly invaded Nashville in the late ’80s, Earle hasn’t been shy about going his own creative way and being adamant about his beliefs and likes. (As a longtime admirer of his late mentor Townes Van Zandt, Earle once famously said, “Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” Never mind the fact that Earle named one of his sons after Van Zandt, in addition to recording an album made up entirely of his deceased friend’s material.)
So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Earle, whose brand of character-driven narratives have made him a much-beloved figure in the alt-country world, decided to make his latest recording, Terraplane, a blues album.
“The bar is pretty high when you come from Texas and as a songwriter, [recording a blues album is] always interesting,” he explained from a tour stop in Arizona. “I had the band once [guitarist] Chris Masterson came along. So I started writing one song after another and before you know it, I was writing a blues record.”
The resulting platter is made up of 11 self-penned songs and reflect a psychedelicized approach to the blues that comes by way of an education in the genre shaped by teen years spent basking in the sounds of blues-rock boogie masters Canned Heat and fellow Lone Star musician Johnny Winter and his 1968 debut, The Progressive Blues Experiment. Earle goes with the perfect musical bookends for Terraplane—opening number “Baby Baby Baby (Baby),” a loping shuffle garnished with dirty harp riffs and the gloriously filthy dirge “King of the Blues.” In between is a tasty sandwich whose highlights include the Texas troubadour trying on a Stonesy strut (“Go Go Boots Are Back”), getting playful with Duke member Eleanor Whitmore on a fiddle-tweaked duet (a bouncy “Baby’s Just As Mean As Me”) and completely destroying with some help from iambic pentameter on a stream-of-consciousness fever dream retelling of the crossroads myth (an ominous “The Tennessee Kid”).
So while the idea of a blues album being cut by someone who’s often defined as being a country artist might seem a tad radical, it’s a notion that goes back to those aforementioned teen years when Earle moved to the south side of San Antonio from the small town of Schertz when he was 13. (To read about Steve Earle’s blues heroes, click here.)
“I was in school with guys who were in the ninth grade and some of them had become so radicalized I guess—everyone around there was listening to country music and the people that were playing were playing country music—so the way they reacted to it was by starting a blues band,” he recalled. “I was in a blues band when I was 13 and [eventually] got kicked out for wanting to play a Donovan song. But girls like Donovan, so I wasn’t stupid. But we were playing the Butterfield Blues Band version of ‘Stormy Monday’ and we were listening to a lot of Shuggie Otis and Freddie King. I backtrack to a lot of John Lee Hooker from Canned Heat and Howlin’ Wolf from Johnny Winter.”
But if you really want to talk about being an apostate, understand
that Earle has been a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees despite growing up deep in the heart of Texas. It’s been an obsession of his since he was 6 that was passed down to him by his grandfather during the 1961 season when Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were battling to break Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record.
“My grandfather was a Yankees fan and become one while serving in the Army in New York. He went home, grudgingly, kicking and screaming, to run the family hardware store when his stepfather died,” Earle explained. “But he was a Yankees fan and he’s the reason I am. I’m still kind of queer for catchers. He was a Yogi Berra guy and my favorite players are nearly always catchers. There’s a tradition of great catchers with the Yankees. They’re the only guys who get to stay on base all game. They’re the baseball guys.”
Earle moved to Greenwich Village nearly a decade ago; the Bronx Bombers were very much part of the reason why he and then-wife Allison Moorer moved to downtown Manhattan. (“Live theater and major league baseball is why I came to New York,” he laughingly admits.)
An avid Bombers fan, Earle spent $4,000 streaming games in 2009 when New York was on its way to winning its 27th world championship while Earle was stuck touring in Europe. At the time, he was playing shows in the UK. As a die-hard fan, he’s less than impressed with young Yankees fans. He’s not shy about pointing out why, particularly when it comes to Scott Ian of Anthrax, with whom he was on a Rolling Stone music panel recently.
“I’ve come way closer to hitting Yankees fans in Yankee Stadium than I ever have with anybody in Fenway Park. As a Yankees fan all my life that grew up outside the city, local Yankees fans embarrass the f*** out of me sometimes,” he said. “It’s just entitlement—winning—and they don’t even want to watch the team when they’re losing. Scott Ian of Anthrax is boycotting the team until A-Rod retires or gets hurt. You know what? A-Rod is smoking and [Mark] Teixiera is hitting early. When the f*** does that happen?”
Other Ian pronouncements have Earle shaking his head. “[Scott] said, ‘This is the Mattingly era, but it’s worse because it’s A-Rod.’ What does that even mean? Mattingly was a class act. His story is like O.J. Simpson’s when he was in Buffalo. It’s kind of a tragedy and it’s almost Shakespearian. It just pissed me off.” Despite all this, Earle is high on his team and if the Yankees continue to do well in a rather putrid American League East division, Earle is convinced his England scenario will be repeating itself this season.
“Make no mistake. The Yankees are going to the f***ing World Series. I’ll make that prediction right now,” he declared. “I’m 60 years old and I’ve got a 5-year-old son, so I’m an optimist. What can I say?”
