|
|
|
Steve Earle - Townes
| Pitchfork |
|
Steve Earle first met Townes Van Zandt in Houston in the early 1970s, when the former was just a teenager and the latter had a couple of well-made, if not especially strong-selling, albums full of dusty melodies, desperate blues riffs, and heartbreaking metaphors. Teacher and student moved (separately) to Nashville, where they attended guitar pulls with the likes of Guy Clark and Steve Young. With his bone-deep intuition of country's potential for clearly and unpretentiously expressing emotional pain, Van Zandt, who died in 1997, taught Earle well, and you can hear the elder's influences in later compositions songs "Goodbye", "Mercenary Song", and "Everyone's in Love with You". In turn, Earle has lionized Van Zandt, naming him a patron saint of barrooms and benders and even naming his first-born Justin Townes. So a full album of Van Zandt covers was inevitable-- the culmination of Earle's three-and-a-half-decade admiration. In fact, it's surprising that Townes, as the album is titled, didn't arrive sooner. The concept may be genuine, but the timing seems calculated: For most of the Bush administration, Earle's career has been in a doldrums, and his last album, Washington Square Serenade, was quite possibly his worst. What should have been his ace, however, is not even a face card. Townes might have been inevitable, but it didn't have to be so dull. Earle keeps things fairly simple, performing stripped-down arrangements with a small group of musicians who function less as a backing band and more as a bunch of friends drinking beer on the front porch. For the most part, it's just Earle alone with these songs, his gravel voice matched to Van Zandt's well-worn lyrics. This approach works well enough on "Pancho and Lefty", which here becomes a headhung lament and thankfully lacks the synths of Willie and Waylon's duet. Likewise, "Colorado Girl" and "Marie" re-create the casual intimacy of a late-night guitar pull. These are, along with melancholy closer "To Live Is to Fly" and the bluegrass-stained "White Freight Liner Blues", the album's brightest spots, as if Earle were emphasizing sentiment and performative spontaneity over all else....full text |
|
|
| Popmatters |
|
In the last two decades, Steve Earle has emerged as a controversial musical hybrid of the protest singer Woody Guthrie and an overhauled version of Jennings-Kristofferson outlaw country. Nashville wouldn’t have him, so he set out on his own (after falling into heroin, then prison), dubbing himself a “hardcore troubadour”, and founding his own indie label E-Squared, as well as recording more recently on indie label New West. A cult music figure like Earle always has inspirations, and for most of his life the self-destructively gifted poet-singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt was the inspiration. Twelve years after Van Zandt’s unexpected death at the age of 52, Earle has made an important tribute album to his friend. At age 18, Earle met Van Zandt in Houston, where the former had moved after leaving home at age 16. Van Zandt was thereafter Earle’s greatest inspiration. Throughout his life, Earle has been loyal to Van Zandt in more than just a musical sense. Earle’s own career and personal life mirrors Van Zandt’s in some key ways, even if they have obvious differences....full text |
|
|
| Folkmusic |
| Steve Earle's tribute to his songwriting hero Townes Van Zandt, appropriately titled Townes, seems to have been a very long time coming, even though it's only been talked about for a little while. Considering Earle's reverence for Van Zandt's extraordinary body of work, it's hardly surprising that this tribute disc is one of the best of the year. Read my full review of Steve Earle's Townes....full text |
|
|
Go to "Steve Earle " lyrics