STEVE EARLE
El Corazon
E-Squared/Warner Bros.

by Grant Alden

Artists tend to work over safety nets that appear suspiciously like a charred mattress, hose-soaked at the edge of an unmowed lawn, a crowd on the corner standing and pointing. Reasons to fail, these are. Reasons to quit, to borrow from Willie Nelson. Excuses. There’s safety in that, and a deep hole; if you haven’t the freedom to fuck up, neither do you have the room to succeed. And if the rest of the world doesn’t like your art, well, you can always point to the mattress and remind them where you sleep.

Up to now Steve Earle has always had an excuse for artistic failure, though that has rarely been his lot. In the mid-’70s he came to Nashville an outsider, an angry young man who just ached to be misunderstood so he could bust up the room with his song, or whatever else came to hand. Then he became a drug addict, another caricature in the sad myth of the tortured artist. It is somehow fitting that "Copperhead Road", the most constant musical reminder of those days and his best-selling song, comes perilously close to a parody of Hank Williams Jr.

Then jail, and redemption. Train A Comin’ was a bruised miracle, I Feel Alright a triumph. All right, a Harley, a resounding and uniquely American success, every bit the equal to John Hiatt’s landmark Bring The Family.

But what next?

For the first time in his career Steve Earle stands utterly exposed, naked, with no place to hide his talent and no mercy due were it unaccountably to fail him. Doubtless his latest is not titled El Corazon to fit the needs of this metaphor, but there is a sense in which the years and the living, the writing and the hard looking do force him to the heart of the matter: Whatta ya got, really got?

The goods. Steve Earle has the goods. Faced with what is arguably the most difficult creative challenge of his career (witness: Hiatt, Zevon, et al.), Earle’s third on the comeback trail plays as if it were just that easy.

It’s not that easy, of course, but Earle has – by design or discovery – placed himself at the center of creative foment. The E-Squared hothouse allows him to nurture young bands, to produce, to listen, to teach, to learn, and constantly exposes him to a wide range of musical ideas. And, minus that mattress at last, he is a house afire, writing and producing and playing at a rate that belies his 42 years.

God help him if he ever stops.

Minus the themes of survival and redemption that provided the central images of I Feel Alright, El Corazon is expressly about nothing so much as Earle’s rambling, unquenchable joy in the making of music. (The devil, as promised from the stage last tour, even takes a holiday from his lyrics.) Know him by the company he keeps, which over a dozen songs includes Emmylou Harris, the Del McCoury Band, the Fairfield Four, the Supersuckers, and Siobhan Kennedy. It’s hard to imagine any other artist capable of so naturally knitting each of those disparate sounds to the needs of his own muse.

A colleague argues that this makes of Earle a synthesist, not an innovator. Maybe so, but his is a uniquely American voice, and both thematically and musically he is able to reach down and squeeze hard the core of our synthetic American soul. Kinda like CPR for Music Row, y’know?

El Corazon opens quietly with "Christmas In Washington", just Earle and his collection of stringed friends, with co-producer Ray Kennedy adding a shaker for percussion. Like "Ellis Unit One", it is striking both in its simplicity and – in a time and place of lockstep conservatism – its politics. The angry young man has aged, but not without courage, not without keeping his heart and eyes open (Earle’s vacation in the ghetto probably taught him more about race relations in the South than I’ll ever know), and if he hasn’t found wisdom yet, he at least has the scent of the thing.

Perhaps one must live in the Mid-South to appreciate just how inflammatory Earle’s invocation of Woody Guthrie plays where he lives (and beautifully: "Tear your eyes from paradise/And rise again somehow"). Wishing for the return of notorious communists Emma Goldman and old Joe Hill, civil rights activists Malcom X and Martin Luther King – well, that just isn’t done. Not here. Their dreams have been discredited, we live in a service economy, god bless the child who’s got his own.

The unions have been busted
The proud red banners torn
To listen to the radio
You’d think it all was well
But you and me and Cisco know
It’s going straight to hell

(Cisco, by the way is Cisco Houston, Guthrie’s longtime traveling partner.) The words come in the short, almost weary bursts, Earle’s recent trademark, as if a deep breath would carry him to places he dare not visit.

That does not make El Corazon a political record any more than it makes Earle a political songwriter suited to sharing the stage with Billy Bragg. He reveals, instead, a continuing instinct for unflinching courage as songwriter, observer, and performer. And, especially in his songs about romance (say, "Poison Lovers", a bittersweet duet with Siobhan Kennedy), he is as hard on himself as anyone.

A couple other songs ("Telephone Road" with the Fairfield Four; "N.Y.C." with the Supersuckers, cut just after Earle toured with Neil Young) return to the ennui and desperation of small-town America, a theme that has served Earle well since Guitar Town. He hasn’t lost a step. "You Know The Rest", written in an English hotel room, is the kind of charmingly veiled rhapsody that made Roger Miller famous, with some of that edge Earle can never quite keep sheathed. But the real treat is Earle’s collaboration with the Del McCoury Band, "I Still Carry You Around". (He also duets with Ronnie McCoury on "You Know The Rest.") Earle said recently that he might next do an entire album with the McCoury Band; here’s hoping he does, because this one song hits the sweet spot dead on.

The concluding "Ft. Worth Blues" brings matters full circle, a simple, short guitars and percussion number that serves as Earle’s homage to Townes Van Zandt. Like the album’s dedication ("To Townes, see you when I get there, maestro"), it is replete with the brusque tenderness that makes Earle such a complicated and compelling singer.

In short, El Corazon is a wonderfully rewarding, constantly engaging album. It is not the best record of Steve Earle’s career (I think that’s still coming, which seems the best sign of all), nor does it seek to be. It is simply proof of Earle’s sustained excellence, in itself a rare virtue and, in this era of one-album careers, a remarkable feat. With or without the net.

THE ORIGINAL HARMONY RIDGE CREEK DIPPERS
self-titled
self-released

Two years after leaving the Jayhawks Mark Olson finally resurfaces, and most inconspicuously, with a 10-song homemade record – and we do mean homemade: Not only was it recorded in the living room of the home in the Joshua Tree desert he shares with his wife, Victoria Williams, but he’s also selling it out of his house as well.

The Original Harmony Ridge Creek Dippers are Olson, Williams and Mike "Raz" Russell, though Olson wrote all the songs. While the Gary Louris-led Jayhawks took a headlong plunge into majestic, esoteric pop on Sound Of Lies, Olson stands in stark contrast by delivering an absolutely unfettered, uncluttered, all-acoustic affair. The mood of this album is obvious just from a quick glance at some of its song titles: "Run With The Ponies", "She Picks The Violets", "Hummingbird".

Indeed, the effortlessness of the music is so disarming that at first it almost seems too easy – until eventually it becomes clear that the sheer innocence is forging an irresistible emotional connection. Williams floats wandering vocals like wisps upon the wind as Olson whistles a tune on harmonica and sings of "wild roses, and flowering trees" on the album’s opening track. Next, he’s reminiscing about the wonder of those early autumn days "When School Begins", days when "miracles are just around the bend." An eerie vignette titled "Mr. Parker" intriguingly poses more questions than it answers, while the tender sketch "Eyes Are The Window" offers a simple yet significant ponderance to consider: "Eyes are the window to your soul/What does it show?"

Gently strummed acoustic guitar provides the instrumental backbone – there are no drums – with minimal touches of piano, mandolin, banjo and fiddle gracefully accenting the melodies here and there. Lazy, laid-back, carefree and utterly devoid of cynicism, the Creek Dippers create a perfect summer day that in your dreams would stretch on forever. It’s the kind of music that’s impossible to strive for, to fashion from careful study or conscious effort; the only way it happens like this is when it flows straight out from the soul.

– PETER BLACKSTOCK

(P.O. Box 342, Joshua Tree, CA 92252.)

TOWNES VAN ZANDT
Last Rights
Gregor

More a documentary project than a musical recording, Last Rights features 10 Townes Van Zandt songs rendered solo acoustic, primarily as part of an interview session with Larry Monroe, a longtime DJ at KUT-FM in Austin. Interspersed between the musical performances are quotes from Van Zandt explaining the background and origins of the songs; at the end of the disc is another half-hour or so consisting solely of dialogue.

Though the liner notes don’t list the date of the recording, the context of Van Zandt’s comments (as well as the rough edge to his vocals) suggest it was likely made around 1991. As such, the musical selections not surprisingly focus largely on Van Zandt’s latter-day compositions, among them such dark portraits as "Marie" and "The Hole", though a handful of his best-known numbers also are included ("Pancho & Lefty", "Tecumseh Valley", "If I Needed You").

Though the versions here are reasonably sound, none really demand to be taken home by anyone who owns them in various other incarnations from Van Zandt live and studio albums. "I’ll Be Here In The Morning" is delivered as a duet with largely unknown (and relatively unremarkable) Austin singer-songwriter Barb Donovan; the take is nothing particularly special, but it serves as a kind reminder that Van Zandt didn’t care about star status when he collaborated; he was happy to play with those he considered friends, simply for the sake of the song.

The dialogue, however, is the real treat here. A story about "Pancho & Lefty" involving a couple of Texas highway patrolmen is priceless, while an intro to "Brand New Companion" reveals some of Van Zandt’s thoughts about Lightnin’ Hopkins. The extended conversations at the end of the disc are even more rewarding, shedding a good deal of light on both the basic facts and the inner truths of Van Zandt’s 52 years on this earth.

Though in his dying days his between-song patter onstage often sadly degenerated into aimless rambling, in his prime Van Zandt was almost as entertaining a storyteller as he was a songwriter. In that regard, Last Rights is both a valuable historical document and simply a joy to listen to – especially now that Townes is no longer around to tell the stories himself.

– PETER BLACKSTOCK

(Gregor, P.O. Box 1397, Montclair, NJ 07042.)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Used To Be: Blues From The Pacific Delta For Bill Monroe
Undercover

It is hard to guess what Bill Monroe, by all accounts an irascible gentleman, would make of this homage. The gentleman would doubtless be honored that yet another young generation held him in such esteem; the irascible fellow would wonder what exactly this collection of songs had to do with bluegrass.

This is not, understand, a tribute record in the fashion of the day. That is, these are not Monroe’s songs revived in the hands of postpunk urban devotees. Instead, they are mostly original compositions offered up by a variety of Portland, Oregon, players by way of honoring a musician with whom, in most respects, they have little in common.

Blues From The Pacific Delta is not, then, bluegrass. It is acoustic music, folk perhaps, traditional-style songs recast through the seemingly self-taught ears of a generation who might have come to country music through Beat Happening, the Velvet Underground or Palace – with all the curious and troubling implications of that routing. Like the Weavers and the Ramblers, whose rediscovery of Monroe (and many others) is probably the reason their music is known to a comparatively wide audience, the sound of these songs is filtered through a sensibility utterly alien to Monroe.

All that said, there is a pleasing homogeneity to these 18 offerings, with few of the jagged edges most compilations offer. You could easily imagine this to be a band of talented friends trading vocals and songs and instruments and jugs of cheap red wine. (That’s not how it was recorded, of course.) Some of those friends may be familiar to careful readers, including Fernando, Richmond Fontaine and Pete Krebs/Golden Delicious, but most will be unknown.

On those terms, then, one will stumble upon some fine songs here, including David "Kid" Siegel’s "Cheap Love Affair", Kevin Richey’s "Lamentations" (which could almost pass for a Mark Lanegan track), and Krebs’ reworking of "Shady Grove". The standout is Fernando’s "Edgar Casey Blues", notable not only for the pleasing raw strain of his vocals, but for the couplet "Poor man can live like a rich man/Rich man can’t live like a poor man." What this has to do with the late psychic Casey isn’t altogether clear. Nor is the Dickel Brothers’ reworking of Merle Travis’ "Nine Pound Hammer" (imagine the Violent Femmes with a fiddle, maybe) altogether a clear conception, but then, they do take their name from a sipping whiskey.

Despite those caveats, what endures here is a gentle warmth, a playful caring that one can only hope Mr. Monroe might have understood. His traditional heirs probably won’t, but that’s the problem with living in a box.

– GRANT ALDEN