Steve Earle, Rebel and Renaissance Man

Most people know him as a singer/songwriter, earning two Grammys for Best Contemporary Folk Album. He has also been working on a novel for the past six years. He has published a book of haiku and another of short stories (“Doghouse Roses”). He writes soundtracks for movies and television, and even ran his own record label for a few years. He’s also an actor, appearing regularly in the HBO prison drama “The Wire.”
“There’s not as much difference as people would think between the job of writing and singing a song or acting or writing a book or a play,” Steve Earle said in a recent phone interview. “The jobs aren’t that far apart.” And, indeed, he uses his uncanny ability to walk in someone else’s shoes as a vehicle for writing. “That’s the job. For me, it always has been.”
Earle creates unforgettable characters in his songs. Responding to a rough cut of the film Dead Man Walking, he wrote a gut-wrenching song about a prison guard called “Ellis Unit One.”

“In ‘The Horse Whisperer,’ I wrote a song based on the character as I saw it,” Earle said, referring to the Robert Redford character, “I actually put words into the mouth of one of the characters in the movie.”

However, that ability to get inside a character once made him a target. When “John Walker’s Blues,” a song about they young man who was known as the American Taliban, hit radio in 2002, it sent a shock wave throughout the country, with some radio stations refusing to play it. But Earle wasn’t being un-American. He merely saw a human being in the eyes of John Walker Lindh.
“I have a son that’s exactly the same age as John Walker Lindh,” Earle said. “I was really relating to that as a father. I saw that kid on TV. He was strapped to a board, a skinny 20-year-old kid, and I had a skinny 20-year-old kid of my own at the time.” (That skinny little kid, Justin Townes Earle, is now 26 and he’ll be playing at the Winnipeg Folk Festival this week.)

Earle steeled himself for the onslaught even before he wrote the song, ignoring advice from Elvis Costello and others not to write it. “I knew they were going to freak out,” Earle remembered. “I had to make a conscious decision to write it anyway. I wrote it because I was genuinely inspired to do it.”

Still, he knew that he would not be understood. “There are a lot of people out there who only listen to every third word. At that point in time, most people were reacting to the reaction of a handful of people whose job is to overreact to stuff for the entertainment value of overreacting, the Rush Limbaughs, the New York Post…I mean, if you’re not pissing off the New York Post like I did, then you’re not doing your job.”

Though Earle’s latest recording, “Washington Square Serenade,” doesn’t have a stick-it-in-your-eye song like “John Walker’s Blues,” it is no less stirring. His “City of Immigrants” was written to remind TV pundits who rail against immigration that this country was founded by and continues to prosper because of immigrants. And, “Oxycontin Blues,” which is probably the most rootsy cut on this album, is about the widespread addiction of this painkiller in the South where it’s known as Hillbilly Heroin.

Earle will bring these songs and more to the Fargo Theatre on July 18. He will share the stage with his wife, Alison Moorer, (Mrs. Earle number seven, by the way). And, he will bring along a club DJ to help him mix the show. “The way we arrived at this record was over beats,” Earle explained. “I recorded loops for the most part and played most of the instruments myself. So, we’re trying to put that together. Most of that I could have done solo and that would have been fine. But for ‘Satellite Radio’ and ‘Way Down in the Hall,’ I just couldn’t figure out how I was going to do them live. Then, John King, who produced the record and was also a DJ, suggested that I get a DJ. As it turned out my monitor engineer was a club DJ, and we started experimenting with it, and it works. You just have to see it.”

Seeing Steve Earle live would be an experience in any circumstance, but seeing Steve Earle with a DJ may be a chance in a lifetime.

If You Go

What: Steve Earle
Where: Fargo Theatre
When: Fri., July 18, 8 p.m.
How Much: $25, $30
Info: (701) 239-8385