Q&A with Steve Earle: ‘Pretty much on my own terms’

Singer-songwriter Steve Earle talks about life, legacy and a solo tour wound up in 50 years of songs and stories, ahead of a stop in Lafayette this week. ‘Legacy’s whatever you can get.’

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Q&A WITH STEVE EARLE: ‘PRETTY MUCH ON MY OWN TERMS’

Last time in Lafayette, in 2018 with his band, The Dukes, at Lafayette Theater, songwriter Steve Earle brought a slice of his extensive history, with a cover-to-cover performance marking the 30^th anniversary of his third album “Copperhead Road.”

On Wednesday, Earle will be back with a solo tour, billed as 50 years of songs and stories from a career and a catalogue that sprawls across country – starting with a No. 1 in “Guitar Town” in 1986 – bluegrass, folk and rock, placing him among the early guideposts in alt-country and as the sort of tough-to-fit character that keeps a cult following.

Here are excerpts from an interview in May, as he was preparing to start a tour coming this week to the Long Center in downtown Lafayette, still carving out time to finish a stage adaptation of the movie “Tender Mercies” and fresh from country star Vince Gill surprising him on stage to announce his selection to the Grand Ole Opry, a bit of ambition that eluded him in the earliest part of a story that landed him in Nashville from Texas five decades ago.

Steve Earle (Photo provided)

Question: Congratulations first on becoming a member of the Grand Ole Opry. What was going through your mind when Vince Gill came on stage?

Steve Earle: I campaigned pretty hard for it the last few years. I went and did the Opry once a month when I was off the road. Nine months of the year, I stay here in New York. I'm writing a musical, and I've got a son with autism who’s 15 and keep him in the school he needs to be in. And then the only extensive touring I do is in the summer, Memorial Day to Labor Day. John Henry goes to his mom in Tennessee. I get on the tour bus, which I'm getting ready to do this weekend. So, I'd go once a month and play the Opry – John Henry sees his mom for the weekend – and fly back on Sunday. I wanted to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry. When I made “Guitar Town” (in 1986), I was trying to make credible country records. That record did really good. But unfortunately, my own record label – not the people that signed me, but their superiors – really did not want me to succeed. I verified that with a lot of people that worked there at the time. It was just a very unreasonable phase, because the guy that ran the label didn't think the first record would work, and it did, which it kind of made him look bad. So, he just killed my second record. And “Exit 0” (in 1987) is a pretty damn good record. I'm proud of that and still sing some of those songs every night.

I asked to be moved to the rock division and went to Memphis to make “Copperhead Road” (in 1988) out of survival because it seemed like there wasn’t going to be room for me. I tried to get on the Grand Ole Opry back then, and they wouldn't let me anywhere near the place.

But things have changed, and the beginning of the changes was when me and a few other people came along. So, that’s come around, and country has the youth audience it was always looking for and bigger than it's ever been, and I'm OK with that. That's just part of the deal. But I want to be a member of the Opry, and I kind of almost had given up. I started to think somebody was trying to keep me out of there. But then it was my last show and I wasn't going to be available to do any more until this tour is over. I played my last song, I was walking off, and then Vince ambushed me out there. I was shocked, because I'd given up. I really had.

Question: Besides a guitar strap that goes with it, what are the benefits? I mean, is there cheaper coffee down on Lower Broadway (in Nashville) or anything?

Steve Earle: I don’t go anywhere near Lower Broadway nowadays, Hoss. it's just a lot of people exposing themselves that you don't really want to expose themselves. It's like one of those big wagons full of drunk girls after another.

Question: Now that you’re in the Opry, where does that leave your career? You’re in kind of a legacy moment, even on this tour.

Steve Earle: I'm 70 years old. Of course, it's about legacy, you know? I mean, I don't know. I'm in the National Songwriters Hall of Fame, which I didn't think I would ever get in. That just happened a couple of years ago. I'm in the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame, as well. I vote for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I was invited to be a voter years ago, but I'm never going to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I'm never going to be in the Country Music Hall of Fame. So, legacy’s whatever you can get. And I feel like the Grand Ole Opry is important. I'm glad they've kept it going the way they had and that the younger artists have started playing it again and consider it to be important. The Opry had an unreasonable policy at one point that you had to play so many performances that you had to be back in Nashville basically every Saturday night. And that's what killed it, was the performers made most of their money from touring anyway and that got to be worth more and more money. And the Opry pays scale, you dig? So that's what it's always been, a radio show – they pay what they pay.

Question: So, you’re a Rock and Roll Hall voter?

Steve Earle: I don’t know why they invited me. It’s been 17 or 18 years ago.

Question: Who do you think belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that is not in there and may never get into there?

Steve Earle: MC5 has been a struggle, and people campaigning for that for a long time. I think they absolutely deserve to be there. There's other people. I mean, look, rock and roll, if you want to be a purist about it, didn't last that damn long. I had somebody giving me shit because I told them that I voted for Depeche Mode. For one thing, Dave (Gahan)’s is a friend of mine, and I've known them a long time. But the idea that Depeche Mode’s not rock and roll, that's coming from somebody that never saw a Depeche Mode show. It's huge, and it's powerful, and live it's rock and roll. Trust me. … It’s as loud and big as anything out there. But I don’t know. They’re going to run out of people to induct, eventually. I don’t know what they’ll do.

Question: As you’re putting this legacy tour together, where do you even start with a set list?

Steve Earle: The way this started was, I was interviewing John Hiatt for my radio show, and we realized we'd known each other 50 years. There's only three songs I still play from that first year I was in Nashville. I got there in November of ’74 and threw everything away. So, the earliest songs that I still play were written in 1975. And there's only three of those – “Tom Ames’ Prayer,” “Ben McCullough,” “The Mercenary Song” – that I still ever play. I'll play at least two of those three. It'll change a little bit every night. It's sort of chronological, but it was just the idea that there were lots of songs that I wrote before I started making records. Some of those kind of came along later, like on the “Train A Comin’” record (in 1995), I've got “Tom Ames’ Prayer” and “Ben McCullough,” those are on that. Also, “Sometimes She Forgets,” which was written in ‘82 or ‘83 around the time Justin (Townes Earle) was born, because I was panicking and trying to get songs recorded. Then they told me my songs were too country. It was just one of those deals. It's just a way to put together a narrative for a show. This is the third solo tour in a row this summer, so trying to find something a little bit different to hang it on.

Question: Elvis Costello has done things like the Spectacular Spinning Songbook wheel on tours. Even spinning the wheel, you’ve got to come up with the songs you’re going to include. How did you cull what you were taking on the road and what you weren’t for this one?

Steve Earle: It’s just kind of finding stories that interconnect with each other and sort of tell a story about the last 50 years for me, you know? There's some things I'm going to play, no matter what. I'm going to always play “Copperhead Road.” I'm always going to play “The Galway Girl.” I always play “Guitar Town.” I nearly always play “Someday.” There's been maybe one tour I didn't play “Someday,” and I think I probably broke it out on a few encores. You just kind of figure it out. And you please yourself a little bit – you dig up stuff you want to play just because you want to play it. Covers always come about because of that. But I don't do as many covers on solo tours. It’s usually special occasions when I do a cover on a solo tour. But, you know, it's just, it's just one of those things. Going out and doing this as long as I have, you have to find different ways to put a show together and some kind of narrative that'll make sense to people when they buy a ticket and come see the show.

Question: The last time you were here in Lafayette was a bit of a legacy show, around 2018 when you were doing the “Copperhead Road” 30th anniversary shows. I told people the next day, I was saving my money for the “El Corazon” 30th. I mean, you could play a record, cover to cover, and I’m guessing your fans would probably say, yeah, let’s do it.

Steve Earle: If that happens, if I ever did “El Corazon” as the whole album, again, it would probably be with Reckless Kelly, because they know the stuff. They play my stuff better than any of my bands have. And we've been doing some shows together, and it's a lot of fun. They're with us all in Oklahoma this tour and in the mountain states, because that's their strong area. But we're going to try to get that into some places where not as many people will see Reckless Kelly sometime in the future.

Question: As you put this tour together and things happening for you finally with the Grand Ole Opry, has this played out the way you thought it would back in 1975?

Steve Earle: Not one bit of it. But also I get to do something that I really love to do, and make a living at it. And I made a pretty good living at it, and it ended up pretty much on my own terms. So, you know, I can't get away with bitching. I fish with a fly rod, and I get to fish some pretty cool places. I used to just fish places I went to on the tour because I was there, but then I got into the salt water thing. So now I'm going off in the winter and spending a lot of money on fishing on purpose in the middle of the winter sometimes, too. It’s just that's the only thing I do besides this. I collect guitars and I fish with a fly rod.

Question: Have you plotted out where to fish on this tour?

Steve Earle: Yeah, I’ll be in Idaho. Idaho has been my favorite spot for freshwater fishing for a long time. I'm going to fish a couple days out of Ketchum and three days that are not necessarily connected in the South Fork of the Snake River. There's a lodge there that a friend of mine owns. He's a guide there, and I'll go fish with him some.

Question: You mentioned covers. Anybody that you’ve heard on record that you would recommend people go find who have done your songs that you like best?

Steve Earle: Covers of my songs? I got cuts where publishing companies were pitching my songs to people. I got a few of those early on. But, The Proclaimers version of “My Old Friend the Blues,” that was the very first time anybody just heard one of my records and liked the song and covered it. They've still done it in recent years, a few times. What else? Emmylou Harris, her version of “Goodbye,” that's probably my favorite cover of all of all the ones. And I played on a lot of that record, “Wrecking Ball.” I played on the Dylan song (“Every Grain of Sand”). I played on the Lucinda (Williams) song, too (“Sweet Old World”). That was my 40th birthday when we were making that record.

Question: One of the first covers I ever heard of yours was Webb Wilder doing “Devil’s Right Hand” on that “It Came from Nashville” record.

Steve Earle: He recorded “The Devil’s Right Hand” before I did – before anybody did it. I had a three piece rockabilly band at that time, and I played it. But I didn't record until the “Copperhead” record, because I had recorded it with the rockabilly band and I was signed to Epic, and they canned the album. So it did not come out. So Webb got it out before I did.

Question: Does that count as a cover then?

Steve Earle: It was literally a cover. He's heard me play it with my band, and he covered it with his band. We were playing the same joints in Tennessee at the time.

Question: One of my favorite parts of that record is hearing Webb Wilder say, “Thank you, Steve Earle, for writing such a good song,” right there at the tail end.

Steve Earle: I’ve known that guy for a long time. Last of the Full Grown Men. He’s got a new record out. It’s pretty damn good. Check it out.

Question: How do you feel your writing has changed over the years?

Steve Earle: I think I'm better at the nuts and bolts of it. I mean, what I write songs about is kind of all over the map. I do believe in developing characters to tell a story, rather than trying to just tell somebody what I think. People don't care about what you feel and what you think. They care about what you think and what you feel that they can relate to, that they've experienced themselves. It's about the common experience. This job is about empathy. It’s the main thing. And I realized that a long time ago. That's why I've gotten away with some of the stuff I've gotten away with. Some of it I didn't get away with. But, I mean, I wrote “John Walker's Blues” because I saw a 19-year-old kid (John Walker Lindh, known as the “American Taliban” after his 2001 capture in Afghanistan) duct taped to a board. I had a 19-year-old at the time – Justin was 19. And my first reaction was, he's got parents somewhere, and they've got to be sick. And that's why I wrote the song. And it really wasn't political, one way or the other.

Question: Do you feel at this point in your life, being 70 years old, that you’re satisfied that it’s been a good ride? Or that it’s still going somewhere?

Steve Earle: Satisfied is a bad thing for an artist, you know? I mean, I'm not ungrateful at all. I don't have anything to complain about. I was never the label-fucked-me guy. I was grateful to have that money to make records with. Now it's gone – that music business just doesn't exist anymore. I didn't even know what to tell Justin by the time he came along, you know? And nowadays, I see what they do. I know some of the kids that have come up, especially in country music as big as it’s gotten. Until you've got over 100,000 hits on one of those apps, no label’s going to pay any attention to you. You build your own career, and you take it to them, and then they either fuck it up or they don't.

Question: Could you have survived in that mode in the ‘70s and ‘80s?

Steve Earle: I wanted this really bad, so I probably would have figured out what to do.

Question: Who do you see is making it the right way? Anybody you listen to these days?

Steve Earle: I don't listen to as much music as I should. I still listen to a lot of bluegrass and old jazz. I listen to Billy Strings a lot. I listen to all these younger bluegrass acts – Molly Tuttle, there's some great stuff out there. The percentage of stuff that's art and the percentage that’s not is about the same as it's always been. The idea that this isn't really country music, I'm not that guy, because people said that about me. I completely support these kids doing what they're doing. All they did was they figured out how to make records for younger people by applying some hip hop rules to making country records, and it made it sound more like something that kids were listening to. And now they've got it all. It's the biggest thing in music now, and it's bigger than hip hop. Hip hop was the mainstream for several years now. Unfortunately, you know, there's still a lot more white kids out there, and it's one of those things that that's what it ended up being about. The music business is still pretty damn segregated, as hard as they tried to integrate it. It was integrated when I came up, and then all of a sudden we had separate radio stations, again. I grew up with Sly and the Family Stone and the Chambers Brothers and the Allman Brothers Band. And I was like, what happened? I said that out loud in front of Steve Cropper once. He looked at me like I was an idiot. He said, Because Dr. (Martin Luther) King got killed, and he got killed in Memphis, man. And all those guys stopped playing together and started hanging out together at that point.

Question: Are you set for the tour? Is prep easier when you’re doing it by yourself? Or is it tougher?

Steve Earle: It's way harder physically to do that than it is to play with the band. There's nobody to lean back on. I'm probably a little behind them getting into shape for this, but, you know, I'm a single dad, so I'll finally start getting some sleep once I get on this tour bus.

• If you go: Steve Earle performs at 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 18, at the Long Center for the Performing Arts, 111 N. Sixth St. in Lafayette. Singer-songwriter Max Gomez will open. Tickets are $35 and $45, plus fees, available online here and at the Long Center box office.

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