Steve Earle Brings 50 Years of Rebel Songwriting to the Mahaiwe, June 14
Earle raises his voice in song, and indignation.
Steve Earle has spent the last 50 years chasing truth with a guitar, a gravel growl, and a fistful of chords. The hardcore troubadour, author, actor, and recovering outlaw marks his half-century milestone with a solo show at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington on June 14—still singing like his life depends on it. “I had John Hiatt on my radio show recently. We realized we've known each other for exactly 50 years,” Earle says.
Born in Virginia, and raised in Texas, he learned to play guitar as a tween, won a school talent contest at age 13, and ran away from home at age 14 in search of his hero, Townes Van Zandt.
Earle can be seen playing songs around a kitchen table with Van Zandt and another iconic singer-songwriter Guy Clarke in the 1976 documentary Heartworn Highways. “I still play that early stuff including ‘The Mercenary Song,’ ‘Tom Ames’ Prayer,’ and ‘Ben McCullough,’ which were written when I was 20,” Earle says.
Those songs appear on Earle’s excellent album Train a Comin’, which wasn’t released until 1995. Asked how he knows when a song is finished Earle says, “Audiences make the final decision. I think there's different levels of ‘finished’ too. I occasionally change a word in older songs because I'm smarter and got more chops. I'm bigger on meter and alliteration than when I wrote those songs.”
In addition, Earle acts and has appeared as a sage ex-junkie in HBO’s “The Wire,” and as a mentoring musician in the New Orleans-based TV drama “Treme.” Having struggled with addiction himself, Earle knows the dangers of hard drugs, having lost his hero Townes Van Zandt and his son, singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle.
Earle’s stirring rendition of his son’s song “Harlem River Blues” contains meta layers that speak to how mental health struggles can be passed down through generations. Having been married seven times, he has known his share of romantic turmoil. But at age 70, he still tours relentlessly and is regarded as one of America’s great singer-songwriters. He keeps at the craft and teaches songwriting at summer camps.
“I've got an eighth-grade education, but I've figured out how songs work on audiences. The main thing is empathy. They don't really give a fuck about whatever happened to you. They care about what they can relate to,” Earle says. He’s also an author, and has written I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive, Doghouse Roses, and I Can’t Remember If We Said Goodbye. Earle writes like he sings—raw, restless, and righteous—his fiction steeped in redemption, ruin, and the kind of hard-won wisdom you only earn by fucking up first. A huge fan of Tolkien and J. K. Rowling, he also worships The Beatles.
“I just got asked to write a forward for one of the George Harrison biographies that's being republished. George became more of a big deal for me as the years went on. I'm a Beatles guy. You don't wanna play Beatles Trivial Pursuit with me. I will kick your ass,” Earle says.
As the father of an autistic son, Earle has been gathering musicians for the past 10 years to perform at an annual benefit dubbed “John Henry’s Friends” for the Keswell School in Manhattan. Recent guests include Jackson Browne and Graham Nash.
“I have a nonverbal child that may not ever talk. But a 13-year-old with autism figured out how to write a book. It's the only document of somebody with autism that's nonverbal telling us how it feels. And it's incredibly poetic. So, fuck RFK Jr!,” Earle says.
Never one to shy away from politics, Earle sees hope in the current chaos. “I'm a bit of an optimist. Musk is already out of there. That guy's on drugs, I promise you. I know addicts. He’s at least three French fries short of a happy meal,” Earle says.
Having grown up in Texas, Earle understands the complex border situation and how that’s playing out as a major issue for the current political administration. “I was raised to know that I lived in occupied Mexico. I'm patriotic, but we have karma that we're going to be overcoming for about 150 lifetimes, so it makes it really hard to fix,” Earle says.
Travel, heartbreak, substance abuse, history, politics, and more all go into Earle’s distinctive brand of rebel music. Audiences can expect elevated storytelling and musicianship during his performance at the Mahaiwe.
