Masterpiece: I Feel Alright

[Today: Steve Earle travels a crooked road to country stardom...]

Steve Earle is not your stereotypical country music redneck. A genuine liberal rabble-rouser, he often takes time in between songs at his concerts to explain the value of labor unions, rail against the death penalty, or lay down a stinging anti-war spiel. Earle was raised in Texas and has worked extensively in Nashville, but while those places inform his style, they don’t define his substance. His musical heroes include both Townes Van Zandt and the Sex Pistols, and that contrast comes through in his music: he plays country songs with the attitude and energy of a rocker.

Soon after he broke onto the country music scene with his 1986 major label debut Guitar Town, Earle slipped into a heroin habit serious enough to eventually land him in court-ordered rehab for most of 1994. He emerged from lockdown artistically re-energized, and began reeling off the best albums of his career. Train A’ Comin (1995), I Feel Alright (1996), El Corazon (1997), The Mountain (1999), and Transcendental Blues (2000) saw him draw on his often checkered past to create literate songs filled with hard-boiled truths.

Earle is a published author and natural storyteller, and his songs feature living, breathing characters that are complex and unpredictable. His music often moves down dark alleys and resonates with the grit and grime and accumulated wisdom of hard times. When he sings “I took my pistol and a hundred dollar bill/I had everything I need to get me killed” in ‘South Nashville Blues’ you can almost taste the humidity and madness hanging in the air, waiting to envelop you.

Listen: South Nashville Blues

Tags: I Feel Alright, Steve Earle