Steve Earle: Crafting Aching Yet Uplifting Folk Songs For Five Decades
Over a five-decade career and 15 albums now, Steve Earle's songs have carried the weight of his past struggles with addiction, incarceration and heartbreak. You can hear it in his world-weary voice and his bleak but honest lyrics. But you can also hear a songwriter ruminating over the pain, the demons and frustrations over socio-political issues as a means of telling listeners they are not alone. It's emotional and aching music, yet uplifting simultaneously.
With his latest album, last year's The Low Highway, Earle returns with many new original songs, this time, with his live band The Dukes (& Duchesses). The record also showcases two songs -- "Love's Gonna Blow My Way" and "After Mardi Gras" -- which Earle co-wrote with Lucia Micarelli, his co-star on the HBO series Treme. That song, and a third "That All You Got," were written specifically for the show. All together, it's yet another terrific collection of songs that demonstrates why Earle's become one of the elder-statesmen of alt-country and folk.
Hear Steve Earle -- currently playing a series of all-request shows at New York's City Winery -- perform the title track from The Low Highway, plus a couple older favorites, in the Soundcheck studio.
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For more photos, visit Soundcheck's Tumblr page.
Set List:
- "Steve's Hammer (For Pete)"
- "The Low Highway"
- "Valentine's Day"
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