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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > August > 24 > Entry
Review: Steve Earle at Austin City Limits taping
Steve Earle showed up to tape his Austin City Limits segment at his most unpretentious, and that’s saying something. For at least 15 years, Earle has seemed utterly uninterested in branding, selling or otherwise packaging himself and this admirable non-strategy has worked—if success means playing what you want, with whoever you want, the way you want it played.
Last Friday, Earle focused on songs by his old friend and mentor Townes Van Zandt. Like the recently released Townes, Earle’s long set was a loving tribute to the tortured genius who heckled him at an early gig—yelling “Play the Wabash Cannonball!”—understood why seeing Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb on the same night was “a very big deal” and served as inspiration, for better or for worse.
Earle said he’d had a hellish time picking 16 Townes tracks out of a “28 song short list,” and explained his decision to include the classic “Pancho and Lefty”.
“What you do the first day in jail is pick the biggest guy in the yard and knock him out and then you get to keep your radio,” he said. “On that basis, I recorded this song.”
Irreverent and self-effacing—and looking something like a homeless PhD— Earle kept his mind on Van Zandt and himself in the background. That was his plan, anyway, but real Steve Earle fans remained permanently fascinated by Steve Earle. It’s hard to take your eyes—or ears—off a performer who never lets himself get poignant without running his emotions through a corn detector first.
Case in point: Earle stunned the audience with a sad and unsentimental version of “Fort Worth Blues,” his eulogy for Van Zandt, but then pled guilty to excessive poetic license with its lyrics.
“In point of fact,” he said, “Paris is exactly my kind of town.”
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By Bill Starrett
August 24, 2009 5:00 PM | Link to this
Saw him at Antone’s 20+ years ago. Best guy with a guitar show I ever saw. Still got it.