If you wannabe…You can never go home…

Occasional Albums Thing 061 - Steve Earle & The Dukes "So You Wannabe An Outlaw"

One of those “the joys of owning your own record shop” items. There’s a guy lives near Shrewsbury who buys a lot of records, a lot, new releases which he appears to listen to once or twice and if he doesn’t like them sells them on to me. I’ve plucked a few items for my own collection from this guys cast-offs and “So You Wannabe An Outlaw” is one of them.

I got this album at the same time that I also acquired Josh Ritter's "Fever Breaks". That was back in March 2024 so I don't know why I didn't write it up at the time, must've slipped my mind in all the excitement. Released in 2017 this is Steve Earle's tribute to the Outlaws of Country music, to Guy Clark, Leon Russell and Steve Young; to Tompall Glaser, Willie Nelson and Waylon-By-God-Jennings, the centre of the Nashville universe in 1975 according to the sleeve notes. In those sleeve notes Steve also says 

“I’ve never been big on looking back. Determindley forging ahead always seemed to be the far better part of valor. But I’ve been attending an awful lot of funerals lately and maybe that, alone, explains my sudden need to acknowledge where I come from, to revisit the solid foundation upon which I have constructed this house of cards of mine”

Steve Earle ran away from home in his teens, a devotee of Gram Parsons, to find and to learn his craft at the feet of another of his heroes, Townes van Zandt. In the 80's as Country music embraced the glitzy Urban Cowboy style, Earle was listening to "Born In The USA" and gritting up his sound. The 90's saw him in jail, learning hard lessons and writing about sobriety. Recently he's been releasing albums at a furious pace, 7 in the last 10 years, both with his road band, the Dukes, solo and additionally in collaboration with others (Shawn Colvin for example). Steve Earle has become an elder outlaw and mentor to some younger Country stars. Along the way he lost several (seven !) wives and a son, Justin Townes Earle, who succumbed to his addictions in 2020 (see "J.T.") Steve Earle has earned his stripes.

So this album is Steve Earle looking back and is dedicated to the memory of Waylon Jennings. To that end it contains as its final track a cover of Waylon’s corruscating takedown of the Nashville hit machine “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way”. Steve & The Dukes do a great job on it but I’d urge you to go search out Waylon’s original. In fact side 4 is all covers of songs written by guys mentioned in the sleeve notes, 2 by Willie Nelson (who also “sings” a verse on the title song) and 1 by Billy Joe Shaver, I think they are bonus tracks for the vinyl and Deluxe CD releases as they don’t appear on the regular CD edition.

Back on side 1 we have likely my favourite song on this album. “The Firebreak Line” loosely tells the story of Ed Pulaski, a US Forest Service Ranger, and the Great Fire of 1910. Steve takes some artistic license with the story but it’s a yee-haw of a tune. BTW Ed was responsible for inventing the Pulaski or fire-axe as a result of that fire, imagine that big axe thingy you always see US firefighters with in movies and that’s a Pulaski.

“This Is How It Ends” is a great duet written and sung with Grammy winner Miranda Lambert and the last of Steve’s songs on this one, here it's on Side 3, “Goodbye Michaelangelo”, is a heartfelt tribute to another of his hero's Guy Clark. “I’m bound to follow you someday. You have always shown the way” Earle sings, before adding at the close “Taught me everything I know”.

Since first realising, and it was a gradual realisation rather than a boom and I knew it moment, I was a Steve Earle fan I continually find great things on every album I hear, especially those of the last 30 years wrapped in these beautiful Tony Fitzpatrick designed sleeves. I see him as one of the great contemporary American songwriters, maybe a step further down the stoop from Springsteen but still looking down onto the next step where we find those he spawned like Jason Isbell and the Drive-By Truckers. Long may he continue making his outlaw Country noise, although now Tony Fitzpatrick has gone I wonder what he’ll wrap ‘em up in in future ?

The Firebreak Line - https://youtu.be/81QQEblc8HQ?si=vfPDKQBTJ1GCsWqo