#482 – Steve Earle, “Guitar Town”

With Steve Earle, we get our first taste of the genre of country. As we will see (I haven’t actually read Brandon’s review yet, but I can only imagine it will be negative if I know him at all), this is one of the most divisive genres out there. Either you love country or you absolutely detest it – there is no middle of the road. Even those who hate that they love it still love it. (This is the line I’ll have to accept myself one of these days).

I got into Steve Earle a bit backwards, actually. I heard his latest release Terraplane before anything else, and it is not country music in the slightest – at least, not in the usual sense. It’s far more rootsy and bluesy than anything else – certainly bluesy as the name suggests, for those of you into the Robert Johnson deep cuts from the 1920’s. So I dove in, and, lo and behold, he appeared on one of my favorite radio shows, doing some acoustic renditions from the album, and chatting about Townes Van Zandt and how his first two concerts ever were The Beatles in Houston and Canned Heat. Wow.

But the thing that really stuck out to me was his views on spirituality. He believes in a God, but he’s not too preoccupied if it’s the Judeo-Christian manifestation of God. This open-ended thing struck me as fascinating, and he told a story about a chance encounter he had with a person on the streets of Amsterdam telling him about an AA meeting in English, mere months after getting clean. This was beyond luck, he said. It was grace.

The music that he played on that album isn’t too far removed from the stuff he does on Guitar Town. Sure, the latter’s far more soaked in the country stylings than Terraplane is, but it’s still worth a listen in different ways. For starters, nostalgia. For those of you who come from the rural parts of the world, this will speak right to your soul, and I guarantee that you will conjure up some image from your home acreage or a dirt road. For me, it’s the ball diamond. This kind of music (along with such staples as Alabama and Alan Jackson) are the between-innings soundtrack of any Altona Bisons game. Listening to it now is really interesting for me, as this will be the first summer will be my first without baseball playing an active position in my life. Now I’ve got something to listen to as I weep over that fact. Thanks, Rolling Stone.

All the spaced-out drum tracks, pedal steel, uniquely strained vocal intonations, and any other 80’s country hold-steady’s aside, there’s not much left save for the lyrics. And that is the hallmark that will keep anyone coming back. They are earnest stories, told from experience, and there is not an ounce of manure on anything that Earle sings. I especially found that on the last two songs on the album: “Little Rock ‘n Roller” and “Down the Road”. The first song is sung as a lullabye, presumably to the singer’s child. It’s predictably a sweet tearjerker, and Steve delivers on it big time. “So got to sleep little rock ‘n’ roller/Your daddy’s up there knockin’ ’em dead tonight/One of these days when you’re a little older/You can ride the big bus and everything will be alright/Until that day you got your mama to hold you/Don’t be afraid when she turns out the light/Cause I know there’s an angel just for rock ‘n’ rollers/Watchin’ over you and your daddy tonight.”

D’awwwww.

As for “Down the Road”, it’s also predictable in its subject matter, but once again, Steve delivers in the earnestness factor here on the lyrics as well. The tune opens with a plaintive, solo vocal line: “On the blue side of evenin’/When the darkness takes control/You start lookin’ for a reason/To take your lonesome on down the road.” The delivery of the line holds you right from the first word, and it takes you right away to that dirt road you drive down in the farm truck, maybe in between checking on the fields, or maybe driving home from the community hall dance in town.

The album is full of examples like this, and it’s not like Earle pioneered any of this. But all of it is embodied so well on one record – it’s a solid listen. There are outliers in terms of style – that blues streak that I was talking about pops up on the short and sweet “Think It Over”, and there’s a good barbecue backgrounder in “Goodbye’s All We’ve Got Left”. For a solo debut, this is an absolute gem also – the instrumentation behind Steve is superb and layered well (if a bit antiseptic). I look forward to a summer with this occasionally coming up!

 

JK: Steve Earle’s Guitar Town opens with the line: Hey pretty baby, are you ready for me/yeah, it’s your good rockin’ daddy down from Tennessee.

Steve, I’m SO ready.

Growing up in the booming metropolis of Sault Ste. Marie, if the metal heads and country music lovers didn’t get along, there’d be a very limited number of people to drink with in an unsuspecting parents’ basement. Yes, my homies and I did in fact sing Sweet Home Alabama all summer long. You’ve been warned. Bias is real.

God bless the genre of rockabilly. Take a rocking roller and combine with your favorite hillbilly to taste, serve with a cold Bud Light, and there you have it: rockabilly.

The lyrics to Someday (track 6), ring true to me, a girl who lived a stereotypical gas-guzzling yet short highway drive away from 3 of the Great Lakes: There ain’t a lot that you can do in this town/drive down to the lake and then you turn back around. Romanticized ideas of small towns? Sign me up.

Earle’s got some slick licks on this album. I’m really into the fact that this album has a standard rock band featuring tasteful country instrumentals. Country music for the Basics, y’all. There’s a good balance between upbeat tunes, like the title track, and ballads (eg. Goodbye’s All We’ve Got Left). The songs are all well written, smooth, and fit together cohesively on the album. This makes for some easy listening. Earle and the co-writers have managed to keep it country without getting tacky about it. (Save the track Hillbilly Highway, but there’s one in every crowd.) Earle successfully walks the line between country and rock ‘n roll.

As a fan of country music, it’s super refreshing to hear an album you want to tap your toe to, and recommend it to others, rather than groan over the ways in which it is bringing down the whole genre.

Guitar Town can be nicely paired to beers by a fire, preferably off a rural route, doing 2-step, or cursing your home town, even though it has your heart.

 

BL: Oh boy. Let’s start off here by just stating that I cannot stand country music. At all. So rather then this review become a platform for me to rail against an art form that I have absolutely no understanding or appreciation for I will keep this very brief and try my best not insult anyone.

I did not initially know who Steve Earle was when I was told I would be reviewing this album. I had my suspicions that he might be a country singer but I wanted to try and be as open-minded as possible. Once I looked up the album however the album art made it far more difficult to remain optimistic. Then I hit play on Guitar Town and my fears were confirmed.

I listened through the entirety of the album hoping and listening for anything that I could identify with or that would jump out at me as having the slightest non-country-music quality. This was not the case.

My complete and utter distaste for country music as a genre leaves me so blinded that determining the quality or merit of Steve Earle’s Guitar Town is not a thing I am capable of. If you like country music this is probably something you will like, and at this point I would be surprised if you haven’t already heard it. If you are of anything close to the same mind as me, I would advise you to avoid this album as there is nothing here that to my ears falls outside the realm of country.

Grab a tissue box, and get ready for “Little Rock ‘n’ Roller”:

Now, listen to “Someday”. Maybe. Someday.