Steve Earle, New York City, 2010
Photo by Frank Beacham
Steve Earle is 67 years old today.
A singer-songwriter, record producer, author and actor, Earle grew up near San Antonio, Texas, and began learning the guitar at age 11. He started his career as a songwriter in Nashville and released his first EP in 1982.
Earle’s breakthrough album was Guitar Town in 1986. Since then, Earle has released 15 other studio albums. His songs have been recorded by Travis Tritt, Vince Gill, Shawn Colvin and Emmy Lou Harris. He has appeared in film and television, has written a novel, a play and a book of short stories.
Earle is reported to have run away from home at age 14 to follow his idol, singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt around Texas. He was "rebellious" as a kid and dropped out of school at the age of 16.
He moved to Houston with his 19-year-old uncle, who was also a musician, where he married and worked odd jobs. While in Houston, Earle finally met Van Zandt, who became his hero and role model.
In 1974, at the age of 19, Earle moved to Nashville and began working blue-collar jobs during the day and playing music at night.
During this period, he wrote songs and played bass guitar in Guy Clark's band and on Clark's 1975 album, Old No. 1.
Earle appeared in the 1975 film, Heartworn Highways, a documentary on the Nashville music scene which included Guy Clark, Townes van Zandt and Rodney Crowell.
He lived in Nashville for several years and obtained a job as a staff songwriter for a publishing company called Sunbury Dunbar.
In the 1980s, Earle worked as a songwriter for the publishers Roy Dea and Pat Clark. A song he co-wrote, "When You Fall in Love," was recorded by Johnny Lee and made #14 on the country charts in 1982.
Carl Perkins recorded Earle's song, "Mustang Wine," and two of his songs were recorded by Zella Lehr. Later, Dea and Clark created an independent record label called LSI and invited Earle to began recording his own material on their label. Earle released an EP called, Pink & Black, in 1982 featuring his band, the Dukes.
Acting as Earle's manager, John Lomax sent the EP to Epic Records and they signed Earle to a recording contract in 1983. In 1983, Earle signed a record deal with CBS and recorded a "neo-rockabilly album.”
Earle released his first full length album, Guitar Town, on MCA Records. The title track became a Top Ten single in 1986 and his song "Goodbye's All We've Got Left" reached the Top Ten in 1987.
That same year, he released a compilation of earlier recordings entitled, Early Tracks, and an album with the Dukes, called Exit 0, which received critical acclaim for its blend of country and rock.
Earle's songs have been recorded by Joan Baez, The Pretenders, The Proclaimers, Eddi Reader, The Highwaymen, Waylon Jennings, Levon Helm, Emmylou Harris, Percy Sledge and Johnny Cash.
Here, Earle performs “Guitar Town” in 1985
Heartworn Highways
In 1976, in Heartworn Highways, producer Graham Leader and director James Szalapski documented the outlaw singer/songwriter scene that extended from Austin and Nashville.
Included were then relative unknowns Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell and John Hiatt, plus their musical mentors Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark.
Born was Heartworn Highways, a cult classic film among fans of the genre. In the relaxed manner of the handmade documentary, we're given a tour of Townes Van Zandt's backyard, where we see dogs running loose while he is chugging whiskey and shooting guns.
Townes picks up a guitar and sings the poignant "Waitin' Around To Die" in his kitchen, an elderly neighbor breaks down in tears. The film follows David Allan Coe to the Tennessee State Prison to watch a performance. Charlie Daniels is shown on a small stage in front of a crowd of near-riotous fans.
A gang of buddies, including Rodney Crowell, gathers around a table at Christmas time to sing and pick guitars, showing some very early work by Steve Earle. The structure of the film is very loose; at times almost surreal, especially viewed through the fish-eye lens of time.
There is no real story to the movie, only the tales which are told in the lives of people who love music and make it not for a living.