Steve Earle talks about healing, songwriting ahead of tour stops in PA

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Steve Earle heads back our way in June, ready to entertain with a career-spanning set that will emphasize his most recent album, a tribute to Texas tunesmith Jerry Jeff Walker.

"Jerry Jeff," released May 27, finds Earle putting his country-rock stamp on Walker's influential folk-country work, including the famed "Mr. Bojangles." The album closes out a not-originally-planned trio of Earle albums honoring his late-mentors, including Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark.

A year ago, Earle also released "J.T." a tribute album featuring 10 songs written by his eldest son, Justin Townes Earle, who died from an accidental drug overdose in August 2020, at the age of 38.

If anyone properly can find catharsis in song, it's Earle. So, if you're headed to one of his upcoming Pennsylvania shows ? say Jergel's Rhythm Grille in Warrendale on June 4; or The Colonial Theater in Phoenixville on June 5; or The State Theater at State College on June 19 ? here's the backstory courtesy of Earle himself.

Or even if you're just a music fan, or someone entranced by a storyteller the caliber of Earle, you might enjoy these excerpts from a 30-minute Zoom interview with the "Guitar Town" and "Copperhead Road" singer (wearing a New York Yankees ballcap the whole time.)

Q: Why did you decide to make the Jerry Jeff Walker album?

Earle: In a way, it's like when adults lose the last of their parents. Townes was first and that's been awhile. When I made that first record, I wasn't thinking of making it three records. I was only thinking about that record. Then it was 10 years after he passed. But when Guy died, it was obvious I needed to make the Guy record. I don't remember thinking about it as soon as Jerry Jeff had passed. It was months before there was actually a service because of COVID. And when that happened, I'm there in Austin, I rehearsed and played a couple of his songs I never played before including "Hill Country Rain," because I could never figure out the guitar tuning, and that's when I realized I had to make the Jerry Jeff record. These were the three guys that were my first-hand teachers. And Jerry Jeff was a big deal to me before Guy and Townes were. I didn't know him personally until I had met both Guy and Townes. I was in the same room with him several times. He started paying attention to me when he saw me hanging out with Guy Clark.

Q: Did I read somewhere you were Jerry Jeff's designated driver?

Yeah, I mean that term didn't exist yet. It wasn't a job. When he was in Nashville, I was with Guy's band, and that's when we met. And I signed my publishing deal, because Guy had been bugging his publisher forever. And Guy came over one night after we had done a few tours together, and he said, ''Hey look, you've got a deal now,'' and Pat Carter, who signed both of us, said he wants you to stay here. And besides I need a better bass player.' So I got fired and suddenly I was in Nashville all the time, and, Guy was gone because he kept touring. And Jerry Jeff would pop up in town every once in awhile and Guy wouldn't be there. So we'd run into each other. And Jerry Jeff had somehow accumulated enough run-ins with the police in Nashville and had some trepidation about driving when he was drinking, which was kind of all the time for all of us in those days. But I didn't have any threats to my driver's license. I wasn't missing any points or anything, so I would do it. I got to hang out with Jerry Jeff Walker wherever he went. He did hurt my feelings once. He came over in the middle of the night and woke me up. And my poor first wife. Jerry Jeff would show up, and I'd go off with Jerry Jeff and come back three days later. But he said, 'I want you to play a song for Neil.' I had no idea who Neil was. So we got there, and turns out it was Neil Young. But (Jerry Jeff) didn't want me to play one of his songs, he wanted me to play a song "Illegal Cargo" that David Olney wrote. I turned Jerry Jeff onto that song, and David Olney, on a previous trip. But he didn't know how to get ahold of Olney, he only knew the song, and I didn't live far away. Lived on 16th Avenue, so he came and got me and had me play somebody else's song for Neil Young. It hurt my feelings a little bit. But I loved David Olney so I was glad to do it on one level. And I got to meet Neil Young.

Q: What about Jerry's art inspired you?

He's just a great songwriter. He wrote "Mr. Bojangles'' for one thing. But the reason for this record, and what makes it a little different than the others is during the peak of his career in the '70s after he got to Texas and settled there ? I knew about Jerry way before he got to Texas and got a cowboy hat ? because my drama teacher in high school gave me a copy of the original "Mr. Bojangles" album because he wanted me to do a song in our play. We were doing a production of "The World of Carl Sandburg," and he thought "Mr. Bojangles" would fit in that show, which has all these folk songs. Because Sandburg was a folk song collector. And so I learned it in 1969 from that record. Same guy gave me my first copy of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" record. My first Bob Dylan record was "Highway 61" because of my age. The only song I've been playing longer for audiences than "Mr. Bojangles" is "As Tears Go By," and that was for a seventh grade talent show. I learned it because it had four chords. I learned it off The Stones' version, and had it pretty much right. It's funny, I did a benefit with Marianne Faithfull at Carnegie Hall years ago and I told her, ''You know, the first song I ever did for an audience was 'As Tears Go By' '' and she said, "You know what? Me, too." And I thought, "Oh, yeah, duh."

How do you approach doing a tribute album, where you're being faithful to the original songs but putting your own stamp on it?

I don't even worry about that. That just sort of happened. I've been doing this long enough and no matter how hard I try to sound like someone else, I sound like me now. But a lot of this record is songs I played before I knew Jerry Jeff Walker when I didn't have enough songs of original material to fill a whole set. I couldn't get a job doing a set of my own material. I had to sneak my own songs in. I dropped out of high school in 1971, and was playing any place that would let me play. I wasn't technically old enough to play bars for a couple more years. I played coffeehouses mostly, but there were a few bars in Texas that had rules about it. They had food and you'd have to get a note from your parents, but we could play. I had a couple of gigs like that. A place called The Kangaroo Court on the Riverwalk that I played. And also a Pizza Hut because they were franchises. And there was this guy who owned his Pizza Hut and was trying to get his business up and he had a little courtyard in the back and he built a gazebo. He just decided he was going to put live music there. That was a regular gig for me. And I played "Mr. Bojangles" every night and a lot of his songs that aren't on this record. I knew all those early Jerry Jeff records. There's three Texans in my band, and they're quite a bit younger than me, and they literally grew up playing this stuff when they first got gigs in bar bands. So it was fun. It was kind of like fantasy camp for this record.

What are your hopes for putting out a tribute album like this, to shine a spotlight on more of Walker's music?

My mission was that. He was a great interpreter of other peoples' songs, so a lot of people associate him more with songs he didn't write. And some people think he only wrote one song. And I knew that wasn't true because I was there.

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And the Justin (Townes Earle) album ... what was that experience like?

Well, that was the only thing I could do. It was the songs I thought I could do the most justice to, and some I avoided because I just couldn't do them. It was easier than I thought it would be. We had fun making that record. There were moments that were really super emotional but it was also the only thing I could do. Everybody mourns differently. Ram Dass said, specifically about losing children, "Your pain is their legacy." You're not supposed to not hurt. And so I had that in my head from the beginning because Ram Dass was my guru. And I didn't try to not hurt. There's pictures of him all over this room. And it's not easy. We played a chunk of that record on the last tour. I'll probably play one song on this one. It's going to be front-loaded with Jerry Jeff songs, obviously. And then I have to play the stuff I have to play to get out of there alive. I made a lot of records with stuff people want to hear so I have to do that.

Talk about this tour. How big of a band do you have with you?

Same band I've had basically for the last 12 years. Though Kelley Looney who was the bass player from 1988 until 2019 passed away in 2019. "Copperhead" was his first record. He died of a rare lung disease. It was a reaction to a high dose of (prescription drugs) because he had a stroke a few years before. That was hard replacing someone who had been in the band that long. But Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore have been in the band for 12 years now. And we added a steel player.

Got to ask you about a couple of your old songs. "The Revolution Starts Now." Where are we at on that?

That song's not about a revolution where everyone tears everything up and starts over again. I'm a pragmatist. I'm a socialist. But I also don't think there will ever be a socialist revolution in this country. It's not in our DNA. I've never believed that. I do believe we've adopted components of socialism all along when we needed to. That's how we got out of the Great Depression. And ever since then, all the most powerful people in this country have systematically tried to correct that. And they've pretty much done it now. But what that song's about is what you can contribute just by (caring) and showing up and voting in your own backyard in your own hometown. Just to be plugged in. Otherwise it's kind of hard to complain about anything if you're not showing up.

And, of course, "Copperhead Road." Is there a favorite line of yours, or what was the hardest part of that song to write?

That song is weird because the idea sat around for a long time. I read an article in 1975 about a woman who got arrested in Elizabethtown, N.C. She had a big grow in a holler. They asked her where she got the idea. She was 73 or 74 years old. She said "From my boys." Her boys were in prison at that time for other stuff, but they'd come back from Vietnam with a big bag of seeds and started planting them and growing. They were a family of moonshiners who had done what they needed to do for generations to get by in a place where there just aren't any jobs. Same thing with Coal Country. They say people vote their pocket books, that's not true. Rich people vote their pocket books. Poor people vote their hearts. People started thinking of me as a political songwriter when I wrote "Jerusalem". "Copperhead Road" is a political record. So is "Guitar Town." "Copperhead" is my post-Vietnam record. We finally started talking about the Vietnam War and that whole side of that record comes from my experience growing up during the Vietnam War. The first lottery that didn't happen was mine. I was very much in danger. I was draft bait. I was old enough. Some of my friends went. Some didn't come back. Some were never the same when they did come back. It affected all of us whether we went or not. It's who we are, people my age is Vietnam. That's who we are.

Scott Tady is entertainment editor at The Times and easy to reach at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Singer-songwriter Steve Earle talks tour which has three stops in PA