Steve Earle
Steve Earle
Stephen Fain "Steve" Earleis an American rock, country and folk singer-songwriter, record producer, author and actor. Earle began his career as a songwriter in Nashville and released his first EP in 1982. His breakthrough album was the 1986 album Guitar Town. Since then Earle has released 15 other studio albums and received three Grammy awards. His songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Travis Tritt, Vince Gill, Patty Loveless, Shawn Colvin and Emmylou Harris. He has appeared in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth17 January 1955
CountryUnited States of America
Records are only one-dimensional. Even film is only one-dimensional. That's why music and live theatre is so important, because it's not the same thing. A recording is just a record of part of the experience, but it's not the whole experience.
Or you can be like the Soviet Union, start out with ideals, and end up ceasing to exist.
I'm one of the few people that I know that sings better than they did 20 years ago.
My gift's primarily literary. That being said, I ended up a musician. By the time I made the bluegrass record...I'm more impressed with myself when I push the envelope musically than I am when I push it literality.
You make decisions, and that's what separates art from some other pop music. It doesn't mean that you can't make an embarrassing amount of money, for a borderline Marxist, doing something that you love, but it does mean that this huge pool of money that was out there when I started making records in the '80s is gone.
I wasn't raised to not write about issues, and I'm just living in really politically charged times. You know, I'd rather write songs about girls, but it's just hard to do.
My main area of activism is the death penalty, and it will continue to be once this crisis is over with.
I'm not going to waste a second feeling sorry for myself because I'm not a bigger star than I am. I can walk down the street in most places in the world and I still drive really nice cars.
When you're really bummed out, the last thing you want to hear is up-tempo and positive. And it lets you know that you're not alone, that somebody has hurt before. It works the same way with chick songs as it does with political songs. When you hear somebody singing about these things, you know that you're not alone, that somebody else is suspicious of what's going on around us in the world. So you don't feel like you're crazy, and you feel like you might be able to make a difference.
I'm not a Democrat; I'm something well to the left of a Democrat, but I'm just realistic about the system.
You know, I'm not comfortable with people whose politics are static in a democracy.
Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.
The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn't kick me out of his class. He turned me on to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.' I had picked up Dylan with 'Bringing It All Back Home,' and he turned me on to the first couple of albums, which I hadn't heard.
Becoming interested in poetics got me interested in theater. Theater is supposed to be poetry, you know, before it's anything else. It just doesn't fly if it isn't musical.