Preamble: Hey, Steve, if you end up reading this... the photos of Townes and Guy that I was tryin' to point out to you by way of one of your crew (and via the publicists I've been in touch with) are not on this post, but a couple of previous ones. The ones of Guy Clark are under that link; the ones of Townes van Zandt are under this one. They were taken at the Vancouver Folk Festival in the 1980s by a photographer named Bev Davies, who was there to see you the other night, too, and who took all the pics on this blogpost 'cept the last one. Maybe you looked down into the pit and noticed her? (Some nice photos of Bev here). She is best-known for her photos of first-gen Vancouver punk, so if you've ever owned an early DOA album (inquiring minds want to know!), you might have seen her pics before. She never did take photos of Jerry Jeff Walker (and she can't remember which version of "Mr. Bojangles" she has the strongest associations with - it may not be Jerry Jeff's!), but I set up her photo pass so that you would have your photo taken by someone who took photos of Guy and Townes, because I figured that maybe that would matter to you. Seemed a nice thank-you to you for putting out those kickass albums covering their songs; there was nothin' else that I could do that I figured you might care about (tho' if you like I can probably email you a cover of "Mr. Bojangles" recorded by one of Vancouver's best buskers, a guy named "Andre the Gypsy," Andre Girard, who I interviewed awhile back. I have his CD around somewhere, and I think his version "Mr. Bojangles" is on it. It's moving to hear. Andre died of cancer a few years ago and used to tell a story - no one knew if it was true, but it was certainly believable - of having jammed with Willie Nelson once; he was good enough that he might have. I'm not 100% sure where the CD is or if "Mr. Bojangles" is on it, but, like, I could go lookin' if you want. RIP, Andre).
You're excused from reading the rest of this, by the by - it's just another concert review, maybe more digressive than average. Thanks for the show! Bev's best photo is here:
Steve Earle by bev davies, the Vogue Vancouver, August 15, 2022; not to be reused without permission
[Commence actual concert review].
So that was a pretty great night the other night! High points by me were the darker epics, especially "It's About Blood," "Transcendental Blues," and "Fixin' to Die" - three of the least "country" songs of the night, in fact. The buildup to "Transcendental Blues" in particular generated a noisy, droning, Crazy-Horse like wave of sound that engulfed the audience and prompted me to close my eyes, which is usually a good sign, since it means I'm really interested in listening to something in a focused way, without the distraction of seeing it being played. You can listen better with your eyes shut!
Mind you, that was the only time I closed my eyes at any length during the night, but I still enjoyed myself, and emerged with determination to get a few more albums by Earle, starting with The Ghosts of West Virginia, about a horrifyingly recent mine disaster, as soon as I can find it. That "It's About Blood" song is great (you a fan of John Sayles, Steve?).
As I indicated in my previous post on Steve Earle, I did not really know Earle's catalogue - or how far back in Texas music history he goes - very well at all before I began prepping for this show, so in many ways the prep was more exciting than the concert itself, which I mostly just used as a pretext to meditate on the peculiar quality of some of Earle's songs, which are more character sketches capturing a moment in a life and a mood than they are stories having a Syd-Field-approved narrative structure. "Copperhead Road" feels more like an autobiographical introduction to Mr. Pettimore than it does a book or movie, for example, while the narrator of "Ellis Unit One" (not on the set the other night) is telling you about his life and his job - many small stories and observations, like you might get if you were sitting next to the fellow at a bar, but no overarching narrative, no big event, no plot. "Fixin' to Die" is a bit more novelistic, in that we find out what happens before and after the crime that is depicted, but even there, Earle seems mostly interested in the singular moment, the guy sitting in his car with his gun thinking about what he's going to do, and the mood of overall grimness that has overwhelmed his life...
To be clear, that's all right with me - songs are NOT movies, are NOT novels, and they don't have to be. But Earle is better than most at creating characters in his songs, so it's kind of interesting that he's apparently less interested in other aspects of story - plot, conflict, climax, etc. (Maybe he'd disagree?).
Similar things happen with one of the more political story-songs in his catalogue, "Ben McCulloch," which I didn't know until a couple of weeks ago. I had previously mentioned "Ellis Unit One" and "John Walker's Blues" as the most interesting of his lyrics; you can add this one. Written about an actual confederate general, the lyrics tell a Civil War story from the point of view of a Southern soldier, a poor grunt who signs up with his brother for the promise of pay, good rations, and a free rifle - what a deal! Again, there's not much of a plot: initially impressed by McCulloch's bearing, the soldier endures shitty conditions, including, besides being shot at, ample bad weather and illness; watches his brother die in battle; grows increasingly miserable and disillusioned, and eventually deserts (presumably keeping his free rifle, because fuck y'all y'all, you promised me it and I'm takin' it - tho' Steve leaves that detail to your imagination). You can't tell at the end if, when news reaches our protagonist that McCulloch has fallen to the Yankees, he is happy that it happened or sad that he wasn't around to see it. Are there consequences for his desertion? What happens next? Again, you'd have to invent quite a bit more "action" if you were to develop the story into a movie - but it's a powerful character sketch, to be sure, and there is one hell of a couplet, one of those rhymes that can bring tears to your eyes, if you're an emotional type: "I killed a boy the other night who'd never even shaved / I don't even know what I'm fighting for, I ain't never owned a slave."
I mean, it can bring tears to MY eyes, a line like that. A lot going on under the surface, there. The best songwriting does that - taps into emotions that run so deep that you can't even name them, but you still feel them. So yeah, I'm glad to climb on board the Steve Earle train.
One wonders though, if there are Confederate flag-waving yahoos out there, "southern pride" yokels, who like this song? Would be interesting to know how Earle feels about the removal of Confederate statues, or what his own associations with that flag are [EDIT: asked and answered, so thanks, Heath: see comments]. "Copperhead Road" also kind of dovetails with that problematic aspect of the south, that "rebel spirit." I have no plans to talk to Steve Earle (unless someone wants to pay me an amount of money commensurate with the work involved, which has generally not been my experience of music journalism), but it'd be interesting to know what he makes of all these things, or, say, Harry Crews, Flannery O'Connor, snake handling, "Southern Man" vs. "Sweet Home Alabama," all of that. The South (I suspect) is, relative, to the North in America, what the whole fuckin' United States is to us up here, even further north, in Canada; you can't but peer down with voyeuristic fascination, and it gets a lot more fascinating the further south one gets. Is geography an actual factor, there - do things just get more decadent, fucked up, intense the closer you get to the equator? Do the Inuit look down at us in Vancouver and shudder in horror? No idea.
Anyhow, those songs didn't draw the biggest whoops. The biggest whoops came for the biggest hits - "Guitar Town," "So You Wanna Be an Outlaw," and of course, "Copperhead Road," nicely placed smack in the middle of the set, which saw plenty of people up on the floor dancing. It's a fine song, which for me (and possibly for the guy who has to sing it every show?) suffers only from over-exposure, because the degree to which it is known (more than, say, any of the songs I mention above) is not really an index of how much "better" it is than anything else in Earle's catalogue. The popularity of that song has more to do with the conditions of the marketplace, the radio, and the circumstances of his fandom and career than it does with the inherent qualities of the song. One wonders if he gets tired of playing it, or is he like Eric Bloom and "Don't Fear the Reaper?" (I realize that's Buck's song, but I didn't talk to Buck; but Bloom, when I went there during an interview a couple of years ago, was sort of - what are you talking about, why would we be sick of playing that, it's a huge hit, people like it, and we want to play it for them, next question...). I once chatted with Rodney DeCroo - who ain't Steve Earle, as he himself has observed - about just this sort of phenomenon, the song in the artist's catalogue that everyone wants him to play ("War Torn Man" is his), that he's played too many times and no longer connects with and would dearly love to retire. Bison and "Wendigo Part II" is another example; I often tell my Lou Reed story in this context, too, of seeing him do an amazing set of mostly new songs in Tokyo, on the Ecstasy tour, followed by a bored, rushed, obligatory encore of his "hits," which he clearly did NOT want to have to play.
Maybe all this changes when a song has helped buy you a house? (I don't think any of Rodney's songs have bought him a house). Speaking of which, my favourite of Earle's between-song anecdotes involved his buying an apartment in New York, which he never figured he'd do, choosing a location close to the water for the benefit of his water-obsessed autistic son. That was by way of an encore to "City of Immigrants," which I had to muse is "the Steve Earle song I'm saddest that Joe Strummer never got to hear." Joe would have dug it.
But back to that rebel whoop for a second: there was a guy behind me who annoyed me with his loud, ceaseless mansplaining to his wife through one song, who I finally turned to and mimed the universal ear-pointing message for shut the fuck up and listen to the music, or at least let ME listen to the music. Mansplain on your own time, buddy! As my wife will tell you, I'm a pretty active mansplainer myself, but there's a time and a place for it, and - take heed, fellow mansplainers - that time and place is never during a concert. When people have paid good money (or done a shit-ton of writing) to be there... it's prolly not you they want to be hearing.
Anyhow, one of those whoop-drawing songs got the dude - he was wearing a shirt decorated with sharks - to his feet to go dance, and he turned en route, pausing there on the stairs to the dance floor, made eye contact with me and gave a loud, defiant "woo!" which made me think of just those Southern-pride yokels, that "rebel spirit." It was a fuck-you-buddy disguised as a cheer. To that end, let me just observe for the benefit of this fella, even though he will never read it: I have no problem with people whooping or cheering or dancing. These are concert-appropriate behaviours, for the most part. What I don't want to hear is someone showing off his erudition (or whatever) to his wife at length while a song is playing. You can do that at home. You can start a fuckin' blog of your own, even (tho', news flash, your wife prolly won't read it; she was prolly as much of a trapped audience as I was). I realize that we have been conditioned, as men, all our lives to show off our knowledge and facility in speech, rewarded for our skills at doing such, graded on it, often paid commensurately with our skill at it, and that it kind of rankles to then be criticized for mansplaining. As I say, on that front, I'm no different. I can remember drawing my Mom aside from a bridge game to tell her something important, when I was about six, bringing her into the stairwell to explain that the brachiosaurus was the tallest dinosaur that ever lived. I can only criticize the act of mansplanation so far before I become a raging hypocrite. But as I say, there's a fuckin' time and a place for it and CONCERTS AREN'T IT. Mansplain before or after. Take fuckin' notes, if you have to (I do!). But unlike your wife, who made promises to put up with a certain amount of your bullshit - in sickness, health, and during the act of mansplanation (...shoulda written THAT into our vows), I have no obligations, here. If you are in a circumstance where other people paid a few hours' wages to listen to something, unless you're the person they're paying to listen to, just shut the fuck up! Not doing so doesn't make you a REBEL. It makes you discourteous, a nuisance. It is fair game for me to bust you in the act. Get over it, grow the fuck up, and Woo! to you too.
End rant (PS., I liked your shirt).
Anyhow, I enjoyed myself, overall. I actually thought Earle and his band did a poorer-than-average job of concealing the exhaustion of touring, the stress of getting across the border, and so forth - they looked a bit road-worn at times, up there - but they did a fine job regardless, even if the strings showed at times - for example, when a flustered Eleanor of the Whitmore Sisters, out in the lobby, inscribed a CD to "Anika" rather than "Erika," mishearing me through my mask, and then had to "fix" her own handwriting, her inner self-grumbling was practically audible as she did so: "the guy has a mask and some sort of speech impediment, how the fuck am I gonna hear him, damn I wish I'd been able to get to the washroom, where the fuck is Bonnie, I can make this A look like an E if I add a bump here, who the fuck is named Anika anyhow, okay, good enough, next!" (She SAID none of this, of course, was most patient and polite but still... note that Bonnie popped up soon thereafter, too, btw!). But I loved that Earle introduced the Whitmores and plugged their merch, appearing onstage before their opening set, at the very beginning of the show, to call out somethin' like, "Hey, you fuckin drunks out at the bar" to come in and hear them (I am actually not sure whether he said "fuckin'" or not but I enjoy remembering it thus). And big kudos to Eleanor Whitmore and Chris Masterson for playing in both bands - that's gotta be pretty exhausting...!
Earle had no merch of his own, mind you - "sold out," was what they said, which is possible. Also possible he just wanted the sisters to have a payday. They sure deserved it, if so!
Another slightly weird note in the night: at one point, close to the encore, Steve said something about not holding it against Vancouverites that their last attempted show in our city was cancelled do to COVID measures, adding something to the effect of "y'all did a better job of taking care of yourselves up here than we did." Fascinatingly, a couple of guys standing off to the right (left, from Steve's perspective) started booing that. It was from the same basic quadrant as the shouted requests for "Billy Austin" - a song I do not yet know, but am going to listen to as soon as I hit publish - were coming from. When these two guys started booing, you could see Steve very briefly glance over and think, "What the fuck?" It was another moment where you could kind of infer the thought processes at work: "They have that here in Canada, too, huh? I guess there's the whole trucker's convoy. Well, fuckit, I'm not gonna get into it... the show must go on...".
But like I say, it was all less about seeing a live show, for me, anyhow, than catching up with Steve Earle's music. I'm glad I did - that I won't be kicking myself, when Steve retires or dies or implodes, the way I do with Guy Clark or John Prine or John Fahey (or the Crucifucks!), all of whom I had great chances to see and didn't. In fact, as far as "see them while you can" shows go, I enjoyed Earle more than I enjoyed my one Bob Dylan show, some 20 years ago in Saitama, Japan, which was so "professional" (aside from the surprising, delightful, and very weird inclusion of "If Dogs Run Free" in his set) as to be almost without character. Earle was a lot warmer and wittier than Dylan between songs, didn't play "edited" versions of his tunes (like a four minute "Desolation Row": what's the point of that, Bob? Do you really think there are fans who want to hear that song who don't want to hear ALL of it?). I doubt it was the best show Steve Earle ever gave, but I sure didn't hear anyone complaining, afterwards, either!
But the most impressive moment of the evening, in fact, had nothing to do with the performance. It involved something that most other venues in town have made a source of annoyance, involving the guy who asked me to check my bag. I don't know if he was an employee of the Vogue or of MRG or the security firm that was working the event - "young Asian fella" is about all I've got, here, sorry - but he handled the task - so often one that puts me in a bad mood from the outset of a show - so skillfully that it was really quite a delightful surprise. Y'see, as a writer - one who often goes to concerts alone - I will often show up with various items in tote: a book I'm reading, a notebook I'm taking notes in, a CD for someone I plan to see, maybe even a record I hope to get signed - and I've gotten very frustrated at, say, the Commodore or the Venue, those times I've gone out of my way to bring the tiniest bag possible, smaller than any purse, and STILL been told I had to check it - because it's seemed very clear that the policy, however it is written, is being enforced on a gendered basis. I've occasionally even stood there arguing: "What the fuck, dude, you didn't pull a mandatory coat-check on her, and her purse is bigger than my bag; so is" - I point - "hers, hers, hers, and hers, or, look at the size of hers! My bag is smaller than all of those, and it has things I need - look, it's got my pen, my notebook, and a book I'm reading, DO NOT make me coat check it." But they never ever ever fuckin' relent, and then I have to pay $5 (tip included) to check a bag that I really do NOT want to check, and be without my book or notebook or whatever for the rest of the evening. Grr! (I even wrote my annoyance about that into my Lucinda Williams show review a few years back, and had it edited out by Mike, but I can mention it now, right?).
Anyhow, the guy at the door of the Vogue was much cooler than that: he asked me if I could fold my pack down to about half its size, and I said I could not, because I had records in it I was hoping to get signed. "Sorry, then you're going to have to coat check it." In point of fact, I was fully expecting to coat check it, anyhow - it wasn't a hardship - but that he said that the coat check was required only for bags of a certain size made me glow with admiration for him. He WOULD have let me in with my bag if it had been smaller (ie, the size of all those small bags that I've had to pay to check at the Commodore or the Venue). That's the way to do it, you Commodore/ Venue people: enforce a coat check by the size of the pack, not by the gender of the person holding it!
Maybe it's not that unusual a policy, but sometimes it's just nice to see people being good at their jobs.
Not much else. Erika and I mused about the Vogue a bit, as well; she even looked up the kind of wallpaper (Damask pattern, apparently; Bev's of the opinion that it's actually cloth, but none of us touched it, so...). I mean, considering its age, cool decor, and the relatively comfortable seats - better than the QE or the Orpheum or the other bum-pinchers in town - it's a pretty under-sung space; makes me want to flip open an Aaron Chapman book and educate myself about it. It has a kind of swanky, old-fashioned theatre vibe to it, that makes me wonder if I ever saw a film there back in the 1980's, or perhaps a play? What's most interesting about the space is how mutable it seems. It felt completely different seeing Steve Earle there than it had seeing Lucinda Williams or Sparks or Nick Cave or Motorhead or Ray Davies. Considering that it is full of character, there is a weirdly chameleonlike quality to the room that kind of moulds to the character of the performer playing there, that some people bring out more than others (Nick Cave made best use of it, that I've seen - nothing has filled that room more effectively than his 2013 performance "Stagger Lee" - but I'd still rather see shows there than the QE or Orpheum.)
(The Commodore and Venue, coatcheck be damned, are better, tho', as would the Imperial be if they only had more seats).
Steve Earle and the Dukes plus sound guy's display, by bev davies, not to be reused without permission.
3 comments:
Should answer your question of how Steve feels about confederate statues and flags.
Check out Mississippi It's Time by Steve Earle & The Dukes on Amazon Music
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B014Y2TCEE?trackAsin=B014Y2TFC8&ref=dm_sh_Wa1FAysR8r9YqlH0qBSRBE6nG
Hey, thanks. Yeah, that kinda answers the question, all right! Good song too.
I was always partial to the early stuff (plus Jerusalem) and not just the hits. Bunch of sleepers on Guitar Town and Exit 0 you’re probably familiar with. Have a soft spot for Good Ol’ Boy and the epically gloomy My Old Friend the Blues, but then again I’m a sucker for a weeper. Glad he got through a few bigger songs of those albums, Someday and Fearless Heart and I Ain’t Ever Satisfied but, you know, as I think about it and listen more patiently to the later stuff, I’m realizing those tunes are a bit arrested in the context of Mellencampy 80’s anthemic singalong country and unsurprisingly he got more subtle and complex as he aged, like a fine bourbon.
Train a comin’ is obviously a much overlooked (by me) album. Ben MacCulloch and the shaved/slave line stood out for me, too. Powerful stuff. Also liked the versions of Sometimes She Forgets and Goodbye. He was taking a more trad country line with that album it seems and it rewards patience and calm listening, things I’m much better at in my dotage! And hearing overlooked songs live is sometimes all the kick in the pants you need to give them a proper listen later.
Speaking of emotionally powerful, you’re spot on about “It’s About Blood”. The recitation of all the names at the end was particularly affecting. You’re also absolutely right about Steve’s songwriting strength lying in his ability to evoke characters. Never thought about it in exactly that way before but of course that’s at the heart of our mutual admiration of John Walker’s Blues.
As you point out, energy was a bit lacking onstage but with songs like those a Steve Earle concert is always worth the ride.
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