Sunday 18th November

I first came across Steve Earle in the late 80’s.  I was in the habit of trawling certain second-hand record shops, being especially interested in snapping up CD singles, often for only a few pence.  One such purchase was ‘Justice in Ontario’.  Steve Earle comes from the deep South of America and has quite an accent and I couldn’t really tell you what Justice he was looking for or singing or protesting about in Ontario but was hooked on the voice and the music – a sort of hillbilly country rock that resonated with my lifelong love of country tinged Americana.  I later bought an album of his Copperhead Road which was amazing, full of heartfelt ballads and quite heavy rocky numbers all infused with that country twang of his voice.  I struggled to find any of his albums over here, either in high street record shops or the more obscure places I visited in Soho.  And nobody I spoke to had ever heard of him.  In fact I didn’t hear of him for a few years either and that was because he stopped making records and tried to overcome his drug addiction.

He roared back in the late nineties with a series of scorching albums full of anti-Republican jibes and great tunes.  He was at last gaining some recognition and is now attributed with being a driving force behind the resurgence of interest in American music.  He has campaigned tirelessly against the death penalty and his song ‘Billy Austin’ perfectly sums up how those on Death Row feel, and the futile waste of life it entails.  He believes in redemption for everyone, almost an alien concept in modern day America.

So, if you see one of his records, or feel like trying him out on You-Tube I don’t think you will be too disappointed.