Thought I'd post this over from the Steve Earle list (maybe cos I just
love interviewers who don't try to hide what great fans they are...)
Sophie
STEVE EARLE INTERVIEW
Steve Wildsmith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From �The Mountain,� Steve Earle reflects on making records, writing
stories, international affairs and his next album
By Steve Wildsmith
What do a couple of journalists do with a day off and a couple of
press cards? When you�re a huge fan of Steve Earle and you hear he�s
playingthe Nashville Music Awards, you go hunting, of course.
On Feb. 10, thanks to a phone call to Wortman Works � the
agencyhandling press for the Nashville Music Awards, also known as the
Nammies � wewere in. We went prepared to work � notepads, tape
recorder, camera � but it wasn�t really work. After all, we weren�t
operating under a deadline; we weren�t under orders to bring back a
story. Anything we got was puregravy, man, because we were there to
see the show.
And what a show it was. The Nammies Awards is one of the few
awardsshows to honor artists who legitimately deserve their trophies �
mostlybecause the winners are decided by fan votes. At this year�s
Nammies, the fans demonstrated they had good taste.Long-time Steve
collaborator Emmylou Harris won the award forindependent album of the
year, picking up the trophy for her live album, �Spyboy.�
Steve and partner Ray Kennedy, collectively known as the Twang
Trust,won as producers of the year. And although �El Corazon� last in
theAmericana album of the year category to Lucinda Williams� �Car
Wheels on a Gravel Road,� Steve won bragging rights on that one for
his help as producer. But with Emmylou and Lucinda both on the road,
for the two of us, therewas only one show at the Nammies that night �
the man himself.
Steve first took the stage to accept his producer award, and he was
infine form. Laid back and looking rested and healthy, he�s slimmed
down fromthe back cover of �El Corazon,� and, doesn�t even look as
heavy as he did on the back cover of �The Mountain.� Ireland must have
done him some good physically. He even sported a gray striped suit and
a tie, a look that surprised and amused his fellow musicians.
�Steve�s wearing A SUIT?� Mavericks lead singer Raul Malo asked at one
point. Of course, he was the same old Steve, cracking jokes
andindulging in one of his few remaining vices, nicotine. It turned
out to be a real thrill for Jim when Steve bummed a cigarette off of
him and the twostepped outside (no smoking in the Tennessee Performing
Arts Center where theshow was held) to hotbox a quick one.
�I�ve gotta do this before I talk to reporters,� Steve
cracked.�Besides,my lungs are too full of fresh air.�
Five minutes later, Steve was led down to the miniature stage in
thepress room, where he and Ray Kennedy talked about a number of
subjects. Here�s their first interview:
REPORTER: You two came to Nashville about the same time, right?
STEVE: No, I got here about �74, when I was playing bass for Guy
Clark.Ray got here in �80, I guess, and I met him just about as soon
as he got to town. We had really good parties at his house, and in
fact, I hiredmost of my original road band at a party at Ray�s house.
RAY: The police used to come a lot. <laughing>
REPORTER: So tell us what this award mean to you.
STEVE: Well, this (producing) is probably our favorite thing that
wedo. We have a little studio, and we make a lot of records for my
label, for E-Squared, but we do some other stuff, too. We did
Lucinda�s record, andwe did Jack Ingram�s record. We do enough to keep
the lights on.
What we�re doing is pretty outside the mainstream here (in
Nashville).We make rock records, for the most part. We�d make a
country record, if we could make the kind of country record that we
wanted to. In fact, I just made a bluegrass record, and we made that
in the studio, and we sort of set recording back out 30 years.
I bought the whole Nashville digital thing at one time. �Guitar
Town,��Exit 0,� �Copperhead,� even, were all digital records and are
prettymuch the way records are recorded here nowadays. But when I
started making records again, Ray was the first person toshow me what
I was missing, because I had never really made an analog record, and I
had been making records since 1986. It was a real revelation forme.
Really what it boils down to is that nothing has been done to
improvethe way records sound since 1963 or �64. Everything since then
has beenabout making it cheaper, making it faster, making it quieter,
editing.Digital,though, is great for editing, and we do use it for
that. And we�ve got a sampler that we turn on every once in a while,
but we usually use it to make things go backwards and stuff <grins>.
ME: Any predictions on whether �The Mountain� might be nominated in
the bluegrass category next year?
STEVE: I don�t know, but that would be really cool if it was. I�m
really proud of this record. Of course, I cheated � I got the best
bluegrassband in the world to help me with it. But it was a labor of
love, and it wasfun to do. We make records relatively fast, but this
was even faster,because it was basically me on one side of the most
ungodly array of microphones that Ray put in the middle of the room.
When we started recording, we had two mikes on everything, figured out
which ones were working and started weeding (the others) out. It was
recorded in about eight days, really, and there were virtually
nooverdubs.
All the vocals are live. There�s a few harmonies overdubbed,
andthere�s a song called �Pilgrim,� and the idea was to get a lot of
people thatworked with and loved Roy Huskey. It�s a song I wrote for
Roy�s funeral, and I couldn�t get everybody in one place, so that
required a little bit of overdub. I had to carry a tape out to Tuscon
to get Emmy on it, becauseshe was doing a record out there with Linda
Ronstadt.
ME: How far of a departure is �The Mountain� from �El Corazon�?
STEVE: Well ... there�s a bluegrass track on �El Corazon,� which
really sort of inspired this record. This record�s a bluegrass record,
and a pretty hard- core one, but it�s still the next Steve Earle
record.There�s 12 new songs and two instrumentals, and we�re really
proud of it.
REPORTER: Would you guys comment on Lucinda�s victory? It was a
recordyou both worked on.
STEVE: Oh man ... there were a lot of people who talked about what was
going on with that record, maybe because people were so anxious to
getthat record ... but most of the people that talked about it and
wrote aboutit had no idea what was really going on.
It got painful for me at times, because I love that record. I don�t
know how to make records any other way. There�s as much blood and
sweat that goes into the records we produce as the records we make.
Lu�s one of the best songwriters I know period, and I�ve known
hersince I was 17 years old. It was a great batch of songs. Nobody
could have made a bad record with this batch of songs.
RAY: She�s a great singer. Her performances were really good.
STEVE: Yeah, most of her vocals were first takes. She really sang
thebest I�ve ever heard her sing.
REPORTER: Going back to the time frame and given the methods
ofrecording,would you care to share a ballpark figure for how much it
cost toproduce(�The Mountain�)?
STEVE: Oh, God ... �The Mountain� was weird, because it�s hard to say.
I mean, we own the studio.
RAY: It was six days of recording.
STEVE: Six days of recording and six days of mix time. It�s a record
of hard costs you could probably make for $16,000 or $17,000. I paid
theDel McCoury band a lot more than that, though. When I started out
making the record, I was making it for Warner Brothers, and I had a
budget, whichwas contractually guaranteed, for a lot of money. And
halfway through that process, somebody in the business affairs
department of Warner in NewYork decided to tell me I couldn�t make a
bluegrass record, and I told themto kiss my ass, and we ended up off
the label.
RAY: One other interesting thing is that �The Mountain� was all made
ona console that was made in 1962. It kind of supports what Steve
saidearlier that the quality of recording hasn�t really improved that
much.
STEVE: Our records are low-tech, but their not lo-fi.
After that interview, which lasted about 15 minutes, Steve and Ray
disappeared. Hoping for a one-on-one, I bugged the backstage
runners,the press folks for the Nammies, even people I�d seen walking
with Stevedown the hall. The chances for a later interview didn�t look
good. But hey, I took consolation in seeing him perform. I was hoping
he�d debut some new material off �The Mountain,� but I was more than
pleased to hear �IStill Carry You Around� played live. It was a little
more traditional than the album cut, with Ronnie McCoury accentuating
the tenor harmony vocals,his higher-pitched warble making a sweet
counterbalance to Steve�swhiskey-and-cigarettes growl.
As soon as the curtain closed, I dashed back down to the press
room,hoping the group would come through one more time. No such luck,
I was told �until one quiet PR girl, who shall remain nameless but to
whom I�llremain forever indebted, whispered that Steve still had to
come back down tosign a hallway full of posters to benefit MusicCares,
a charity that profited off the posters� auction.
And so I waited, feeling a bit like a stalker. I�m sure I drew
somestrange looks, leaning against the wall in my leather �Serpico�
jacket,completely unfazed as Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines
walked by, followed by Vince Gill. Although I�d speak to them both
later, I was determined not to leave without a few minutes with Steve.
As it turned out, I struck gold. Steve was more than cooperative, not
minding a bit to chat casually while he signed poster after poster
witha silver metallic pen. It was pure gold, stuff every Steve Earle
fan from passing fan to hardcore would like.
Steve, thanks for your time. Jules, thanks for setting it up. And to
my fellow fans, thanks for your interest. Your feedback on my
interviewwould be greatly appreciated.
ME: Steve, I�m Steve. Your four nights at the Station Inn in
Nashvillesold out within a day. That�s got to make you feel good about
the hunger for Steve Earle performances in Nashville.
STEVE: Well, it�s sort of a double event, because it�s Del and it�s
atthe Station Inn. I really wanted to play down there because J.T. and
themkind of let me go to �bluegrass boot camp� there for the last year
and ahalf, and they put up with a lot, a lot of me hanging out in
their kitchen.
ME: How did the collaboration come about between you and the
DelMcCoury band?
STEVE: Del recorded one of my songs about 10 years ago, and I�ve
always been a fan. Then I made a record called �Train A�Comin�� with
PeterRowan,Roy Huskey and Norman Blake, and with that record, we did a
lot of festivals that Del and them were on, so we got to know each
other alittle bit. And then Ronnie played on some of my rock records
here and there, since he�s a mandolin player who can really play. We
started seeing each other a lot more, and Ronnie came over and played
on some stuff, and I ended up writing �I Still Carry You Around� for
�El Corazon.� I justsort of dug the idea of sticking a bluegrass track
in the middle of a rockrecord.
ME: You�ve collaborated with a lot of great artists out of Nashville
inthe last several years � Lucinda, Emmylou, now Del McCoury. Is there
anybody you�ve really got a hankering to record with or play with?
STEVE: There�s a few. Most of them I really want to, I�ll probably get
around to it, because I work a lot, and write a lot. The next thing
I�m going to do with another artist is with Sharon Shannon, the
bestaccordion player in Ireland. She and I ... are probably going to
do something together. And here in Nashville, there�s just no telling.
One of these days, I�ll probably put my own bluegrass band together,
because this isnot my last bluegrass record. But the next record is
going to be a rockrecord. I know that simply because I�ve written half
the songs already.
ME: When can we expect it?
STEVE: That�d be hard to say. Maybe around Christmas.
ME: OK, great! You�ve written a book of short stories coming out this
summer, right?
STEVE: Yeah, it should be this summer. I�m working on what�s
probablygoing to be the last story, right now.
ME: What do you find easier to write, songs or short stories?
STEVE: Well, short stories are a lot harder, because I haven�t
beendoing it as long. It requires a lot more discipline. It requires
keeping your butt in the seat a lot longer, and I have to go through
pretty serious temporary lifestyle changes to do it. I write a little
all the time,but to get to the point I needed to be to publish this
summer, I had to go to Galway (in Ireland) for a couple of months and
be by myself and prettymuch live by myself and write seven or eight
hours a day. But it was good. I wrote, like, 19,000 words: two
complete short stories, five poems andfour songs. That�s a good 62 days.
ME: Sounds like Ireland was pretty conducive to your writing.
STEVE: Ireland just is. The greatest poets in the English language
areall Irish, and it�s not even their fuckin� language. It must be
something in the water over there, I don�t know.
ME: Any impressions from your recent trip to Asia.
STEVE: Well, it takes you about two days in Vietnam to figure out why
we got our butts kicked. They�re just survivors, and we were just like
aspeed bump, man. They were like, next!
ME: They�ve been there for 1,000 years and will be there for
another1,000.
STEVE: Yep, exactly. And the Cambodians are in a lot more trouble
simply because what happened there wasn�t the infrastructure that
wasdestroyed, it was the gene pool. They (the Khmer Rouge) were
systematically killing off all of their educated people. And the
leader that�s there now isn�t particularly sane either, so I don�t see
anything stabilizing a whole lot there.
But there�s a lot of good groups, like the Vietnam Veterans
Foundation... they�re one of about 50 (groups) doing work with victims
of land mines, clearing land mines and doing really good work. The
main thing is that the U.S. needs to signs the damn (internationalban
on landmines) treaty. It�s meaningless that the U.S. doesn�t sign it.
Clinton said he�d sign it in 2006, and that�s not good enough.
That�swhy I�m involved, is to bring that message back here. People
need to write their politicians that represent them and tell them that
it�sembarrassing for the U.S. not to be signatory to the landmine
treaty.
ME: Sounds like you have a great interest in international affairs.
STEVE: I have an interest in people. I went there and I saw people. My
interest in international affairs go only so far in that I�ve lived
all over the world, and I meet nice people everywhere I go.
And then he was whisked off � or should I say, he politely
excusedhimself and got the hell out of there.
As Jim and I walked back to the car, elated over our brush with a
hellof a musician we both admire, a girl in front of us dashed across
the streetand stopped a man on the other side. Jim stopped in his
tracks and about swallowed a cigarette. Walking on the opposite side
of the road from us� Steve Earle, once again.
Seems Steve didn�t care much for valet parking. His car � a Cadillac,
by the way � was parked in the same pay lot as my jeep, and Steve got
inand drove himself away. What a guy.
==
To do is to be - Descartes
To be is to do - Voltaire
Do be do be do - Sinatra
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