Q&A: Songwriting legend Steve Earle discusses legacy ahead of Long Center appearance

Yahoo

15-05-2025

Genre-bending, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Steve Earle is coming to Lafayette this summer for the first time.
Earle has included the stop at the Long Center for Performing Arts on June 18 among 49 others on something of a legacy tour called 'Fifty Years of Songs and Stories.'
'I'm 70,' he said. 'You start thinking about that kind of stuff.'
Earle was surprised in late April by an invitation to become just the 76th living member of the Grand Ole Opry. 'This is kind of the biggest thing that has ever happened to me in my life,' he said on stage.
The upcoming solo show will feature Earle's country and rock hits throughout the 50 years since he moved to Nashville from Houston at 19, and all the stories that accompany a career and life of wide-spanning musical accomplishment as well as failed relationships and a drug addiction that once made him essentially homeless.
Though he's never visited, Earle isn't without a Lafayette connection. His fifth ex-wife (there have been six total), Teresa Ensenat, signed Guns N' Roses to its first record deal, discovering Lafayette native and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Axl Rose.
"It was pretty crazy,' Earle said. 'I met (Rose) at a club show in Brooklyn. I run into Slash every once in a while.'
Earle, still making music, has also lent his talents to acting, playwriting and book writing. 'That's what I am,' he says. 'I'm a writer.'
Right now he lives in New York, waking at 6 a.m. to drive his son, who has autism, to school before 'desperately' working on the last three songs of a musical of the 1983 film 'Tender Mercies.' He hopes to have a draft done by the time his tour finishes.
Earle recently discussed his reasons for planning the tour and some of the roads he's travelled along the way. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q. You mentioned thinking about legacy. When and how does that come up for you?
A. The Opry was that. I campaigned pretty hard to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry. I started going, and it's not like you make any money. I'm living here in New York. I lost money every time I played the Opry over the last three years, but I went pretty much once a month, and they were appreciative of it.
By the time I made (1986 hit album 'Guitar Town'), I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to make credible country records, and that's what I did. My second record, 'Exit Zero,' is every bit as good a record as 'Guitar Town' is. There's some great songs on there I still play, songs I'm proud of. By the time I got to (1988's 'Copperhead Road') I consciously made my idea of a rock record, because I was dead at country as long as I was on that label, and I had seven more albums according to my contract. So it was sort of a desperation move and a survival move.
After I got sober and got back (in 1996) I made that acoustic record, and then I made what were essentially rock records, and they were sort of based on Beatles records. And I just missed having steel guitar and fiddle on records. So later I added steel guitar, which I hadn't had in a long time. And I love those instruments. I love those sounds. It was unapologetically a country rock band, which is kind of what I've always been about.
You're talking about country, rock, and all these genres in between. Where do you want your name to fit in?
I'm always going to kind of be in the cracks. I'm never going to be in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Never going to be in the Rock Hall. I'm in the National Songwriters Hall of Fame. I'm in the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame. And those things are more important to me than they probably would have been if this was 20 years ago, I probably wasn't thinking about that. But now I'm 70 and I am.
I'm a writer. I've got some musical talent, but lyrics is what I always did better than anything else. After I got sober, I started writing stuff outside of songs. I started writing some nonfiction stuff, a novel, 11 short stories, some poetry and one play, and now I'm doing the music for the one I'm working on now.
Your tour includes big cities like Chicago and Dallas. Any particular reason for stopping in Lafayette and Anderson, Indiana?
No, your agency lets the word out that you're going to be touring, and you get offers, and you start trying to put together something that you can actually reach. I've toured my bus in the States and Europe. Here, it makes a difference on shows I can do, because we sleep on the bus nearly every night and sometimes we're running 500 miles after a show.
It just came up that was interesting, you know, my ex-wife signed Guns N' Roses. So I've always known (Lafayette) is where Axl Rose was from, right? So I knew those guys before their first record came out, because my ex-wife worked with them.
How much time have you spent in Indiana in general?
A fair amount. I know a lot of that whole Seymour crowd just because John Mellencamp was a thing when I came along, and I played Farm Aid from the beginning. So I played the center of the state, I've also played the Chicago part of Indiana a little bit, too, because Chicago has been a pretty good market for me. And, you know, I spent some time chasing Yank Rachel around, who's the monster mandolin player, originally from Mississippi, but he lived most of his life in northern Indiana.
Do you truly enjoy playing your hits again and again? I know not every artist does.
Look, I don't understand why somebody has a song that's successful, and I've got a few songs that have become important to people.
I've got two that are definitely going to be around after I'm gone. Copperhead Road, a Tennessee State Song now, one of several, because there's about 15 of them. There's a whole generation of people in the Southeast, in the Southwest, that that song is part of their lives. And (2000's) Galway Girl is a very big deal in Ireland, and it's played at every wedding – it's Galway City Football Club's team song, which it took over for 'My Dear Old Galway Bay' after 150 years.
'It's just, I have some songs that people care about; why wouldn't I play those songs every night? Look, it pisses me off when Radiohead doesn't do 'Creep.' Why would they not play that? It's a great track.
To have a song that means so much to people, and being able to see that as you play it, what's that feeling like?
Back to legacy. It makes you feel good. It's as close to immortal as you're gonna get, Hoss.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Q&A: Songwriting legend Steve Earle talks legacy, plans Long Center show