{"id":3481,"date":"2011-08-19T00:05:38","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T07:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3481"},"modified":"2011-08-19T00:05:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-19T07:05:54","slug":"steve-earle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/steve-earle\/","title":{"rendered":"STEVE EARLE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

STEVE EARLE<\/h1>\n

How a singer-songwriter, actor and activist learned to be a novelist<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Singer and songwriter Steve Earle will soon release both a new T Bone Burnett\u2013produced album and his first novel\u2014both named for the Hank Williams classic \u201cI\u2019ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.\u201d Earle struggled with drug addiction in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but his high these days is productivity: He\u2019s also writing a play, acting on HBO\u2019s Treme<\/em> and adjusting to life as a new father\u2014he and wife Allison Moorer welcomed a baby boy into their New York home last year.<\/p>\n

How was working with T Bone?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was hugely liberating. My last record [2009\u2019s Townes<\/em>, a tribute to the late singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt] was all somebody else\u2019s songs, so for this one I spent a lot of time writing. T Bone worked on the record a lot longer than I did. He was involved from beginning to end. He wakes up every day intending to make art. That\u2019s what he and I have in common. It was a great experience. There was a time when I would never have allowed anyone else to touch anything with my name on it.<\/p>\n

What changed that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019ve been clean for 16 years. One of the things you have to do in order to stay clean is to not fool yourself about what you\u2019re in control of. Why hire T Bone Burnett and then try to tell him how to put\u00a0the record together?<\/p>\n

Did you know during recording that the album and book would be companions?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not until I sequenced it. I did know the album was about pushing things as far past the decimal point as possible literarily. The book was always going to be called I\u2019ll Never Get Out of This World Alive <\/em>for obvious reasons: Hank Williams\u2019\u00a0ghost is a character in it.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t as political as some of your other albums.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s less political than Jerusalem<\/em> [2002] and The Revolution Starts Now<\/em> [2004], but it\u2019s as political as Copperhead Road<\/em> [1988]. That\u2019s a much more political record than people give it credit for. It was my\u00a0post-Vietnam record.<\/p>\n

How would you compare songwriting to writing a novel?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A book is really hard. This took almost eight years. There\u2019s a lot of feeling around in\u00a0the dark when you\u2019re used to a shorter form. I\u2019m much more old-fashioned, and\u00a0that comes from songwriting\u2014a beginning,\u00a0middle and an end. I had to learn how to get a lot of information out and to develop some sort of narrative in\u00a0three to four minutes.<\/p>\n

Did having a baby influence you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Probably. It\u2019s the ultimate expression of optimism to have a baby in your mid-50s. Now I want to be in shape to throw a baseball in six or seven years.<\/p>\n

Will you encourage your new son to follow in the family business?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have no reason to discourage anybody from doing this. Nothing bad that\u2019s happened to me has had anything to do with what I do for a living. I would have been an addict if I\u2019d been a carpenter.<\/p>\n

Do you feel part of a genre?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I come up three different ways in crossword puzzles: country, folk and country-rock. There\u2019s nothing you can do about it. This is the most country record I\u2019ve made in a long time. But it\u2019s my idea of country music, which has always been different than Nashville\u2019s idea of country music.<\/p>\n

\u2013Jeff Tamarkin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STEVE EARLE How a singer-songwriter, actor and activist learned to be a novelist Singer and songwriter Steve Earle will soon release both a new T Bone Burnett\u2013produced album and his first novel\u2014both named for the Hank Williams classic \u201cI\u2019ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.\u201d Earle struggled with drug addiction in the late 1980s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[1807,970,2417],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3481"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3485,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481\/revisions\/3485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}