Hey Soph,
How goes it?
i just got a message from Todd regarding a review in Beat about the saturday
night show - wouldja send it to me if you can find it?
That'd be great. Thanks for the interview w' SE - the man is a legend. Well,
gotta dash - learning some more Pernice Brothers tunes for saturday night.
I'm trying to tee up a CDR of the saturday night show.
Jase
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sophie Best [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Wednesday, 24 February 1999 15:53
> To: passenger side
> Subject: Steve earle interview
>
> Thought I'd post this over from the Steve Earle list (maybe cos I just
> love interviewers who don't try to hide what great fans they are...)
>
> Sophie
>
> STEVE EARLE INTERVIEW
> Steve Wildsmith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> >From "The Mountain," Steve Earle reflects on making records, writing
> stories, international affairs and his next album
>
> By Steve Wildsmith
>
> What do a couple of journalists do with a day off and a couple of
> press cards? When you're a huge fan of Steve Earle and you hear he's
> playingthe Nashville Music Awards, you go hunting, of course.
>
> On Feb. 10, thanks to a phone call to Wortman Works - the
> agencyhandling press for the Nashville Music Awards, also known as the
> Nammies - wewere in. We went prepared to work - notepads, tape
> recorder, camera - but it wasn't really work. After all, we weren't
> operating under a deadline; we weren't under orders to bring back a
> story. Anything we got was puregravy, man, because we were there to
> see the show.
>
> And what a show it was. The Nammies Awards is one of the few
> awardsshows to honor artists who legitimately deserve their trophies -
> mostlybecause the winners are decided by fan votes. At this year's
> Nammies, the fans demonstrated they had good taste.Long-time Steve
> collaborator Emmylou Harris won the award forindependent album of the
> year, picking up the trophy for her live album, "Spyboy."
>
> Steve and partner Ray Kennedy, collectively known as the Twang
> Trust,won as producers of the year. And although "El Corazon" last in
> theAmericana album of the year category to Lucinda Williams' "Car
> Wheels on a Gravel Road," Steve won bragging rights on that one for
> his help as producer. But with Emmylou and Lucinda both on the road,
> for the two of us, therewas only one show at the Nammies that night -
> the man himself.
>
> Steve first took the stage to accept his producer award, and he was
> infine form. Laid back and looking rested and healthy, he's slimmed
> down fromthe back cover of "El Corazon," and, doesn't even look as
> heavy as he did on the back cover of "The Mountain." Ireland must have
> done him some good physically. He even sported a gray striped suit and
> a tie, a look that surprised and amused his fellow musicians.
>
> "Steve's wearing A SUIT?" Mavericks lead singer Raul Malo asked at one
> point. Of course, he was the same old Steve, cracking jokes
> andindulging in one of his few remaining vices, nicotine. It turned
> out to be a real thrill for Jim when Steve bummed a cigarette off of
> him and the twostepped outside (no smoking in the Tennessee Performing
> Arts Center where theshow was held) to hotbox a quick one.
>
> "I've gotta do this before I talk to reporters," Steve
> cracked."Besides,my lungs are too full of fresh air."
>
> Five minutes later, Steve was led down to the miniature stage in
> thepress room, where he and Ray Kennedy talked about a number of
> subjects. Here's their first interview:
>
> REPORTER: You two came to Nashville about the same time, right?
>
> STEVE: No, I got here about '74, when I was playing bass for Guy
> Clark.Ray got here in '80, I guess, and I met him just about as soon
> as he got to town. We had really good parties at his house, and in
> fact, I hiredmost of my original road band at a party at Ray's house.
>
> RAY: The police used to come a lot. <laughing>
>
> REPORTER: So tell us what this award mean to you.
>
> STEVE: Well, this (producing) is probably our favorite thing that
> wedo. We have a little studio, and we make a lot of records for my
> label, for E-Squared, but we do some other stuff, too. We did
> Lucinda's record, andwe did Jack Ingram's record. We do enough to keep
> the lights on.
>
> What we're doing is pretty outside the mainstream here (in
> Nashville).We make rock records, for the most part. We'd make a
> country record, if we could make the kind of country record that we
> wanted to. In fact, I just made a bluegrass record, and we made that
> in the studio, and we sort of set recording back out 30 years.
>
> I bought the whole Nashville digital thing at one time. "Guitar
> Town,""Exit 0," "Copperhead," even, were all digital records and are
> prettymuch the way records are recorded here nowadays. But when I
> started making records again, Ray was the first person toshow me what
> I was missing, because I had never really made an analog record, and I
> had been making records since 1986. It was a real revelation forme.
>
> Really what it boils down to is that nothing has been done to
> improvethe way records sound since 1963 or '64. Everything since then
> has beenabout making it cheaper, making it faster, making it quieter,
> editing.Digital,though, is great for editing, and we do use it for
> that. And we've got a sampler that we turn on every once in a while,
> but we usually use it to make things go backwards and stuff <grins>.
>
> ME: Any predictions on whether "The Mountain" might be nominated in
> the bluegrass category next year?
>
> STEVE: I don't know, but that would be really cool if it was. I'm
> really proud of this record. Of course, I cheated - I got the best
> bluegrassband in the world to help me with it. But it was a labor of
> love, and it wasfun to do. We make records relatively fast, but this
> was even faster,because it was basically me on one side of the most
> ungodly array of microphones that Ray put in the middle of the room.
>
> When we started recording, we had two mikes on everything, figured out
> which ones were working and started weeding (the others) out. It was
> recorded in about eight days, really, and there were virtually
> nooverdubs.
>
> All the vocals are live. There's a few harmonies overdubbed,
> andthere's a song called "Pilgrim," and the idea was to get a lot of
> people thatworked with and loved Roy Huskey. It's a song I wrote for
> Roy's funeral, and I couldn't get everybody in one place, so that
> required a little bit of overdub. I had to carry a tape out to Tuscon
> to get Emmy on it, becauseshe was doing a record out there with Linda
> Ronstadt.
>
> ME: How far of a departure is "The Mountain" from "El Corazon"?
>
> STEVE: Well ... there's a bluegrass track on "El Corazon," which
> really sort of inspired this record. This record's a bluegrass record,
> and a pretty hard- core one, but it's still the next Steve Earle
> record.There's 12 new songs and two instrumentals, and we're really
> proud of it.
>
> REPORTER: Would you guys comment on Lucinda's victory? It was a
> recordyou both worked on.
>
> STEVE: Oh man ... there were a lot of people who talked about what was
> going on with that record, maybe because people were so anxious to
> getthat record ... but most of the people that talked about it and
> wrote aboutit had no idea what was really going on.
>
> It got painful for me at times, because I love that record. I don't
> know how to make records any other way. There's as much blood and
> sweat that goes into the records we produce as the records we make.
>
> Lu's one of the best songwriters I know period, and I've known
> hersince I was 17 years old. It was a great batch of songs. Nobody
> could have made a bad record with this batch of songs.
>
> RAY: She's a great singer. Her performances were really good.
>
> STEVE: Yeah, most of her vocals were first takes. She really sang
> thebest I've ever heard her sing.
>
> REPORTER: Going back to the time frame and given the methods
> ofrecording,would you care to share a ballpark figure for how much it
> cost toproduce("The Mountain")?
>
> STEVE: Oh, God ... "The Mountain" was weird, because it's hard to say.
> I mean, we own the studio.
>
> RAY: It was six days of recording.
>
> STEVE: Six days of recording and six days of mix time. It's a record
> of hard costs you could probably make for $16,000 or $17,000. I paid
> theDel McCoury band a lot more than that, though. When I started out
> making the record, I was making it for Warner Brothers, and I had a
> budget, whichwas contractually guaranteed, for a lot of money. And
> halfway through that process, somebody in the business affairs
> department of Warner in NewYork decided to tell me I couldn't make a
> bluegrass record, and I told themto kiss my ass, and we ended up off
> the label.
>
> RAY: One other interesting thing is that "The Mountain" was all made
> ona console that was made in 1962. It kind of supports what Steve
> saidearlier that the quality of recording hasn't really improved that
> much.
>
> STEVE: Our records are low-tech, but their not lo-fi.
>
> After that interview, which lasted about 15 minutes, Steve and Ray
> disappeared. Hoping for a one-on-one, I bugged the backstage
> runners,the press folks for the Nammies, even people I'd seen walking
> with Stevedown the hall. The chances for a later interview didn't look
> good. But hey, I took consolation in seeing him perform. I was hoping
> he'd debut some new material off "The Mountain," but I was more than
> pleased to hear "IStill Carry You Around" played live. It was a little
> more traditional than the album cut, with Ronnie McCoury accentuating
> the tenor harmony vocals,his higher-pitched warble making a sweet
> counterbalance to Steve'swhiskey-and-cigarettes growl.
>
> As soon as the curtain closed, I dashed back down to the press
> room,hoping the group would come through one more time. No such luck,
> I was told -until one quiet PR girl, who shall remain nameless but to
> whom I'llremain forever indebted, whispered that Steve still had to
> come back down tosign a hallway full of posters to benefit MusicCares,
> a charity that profited off the posters' auction.
>
> And so I waited, feeling a bit like a stalker. I'm sure I drew
> somestrange looks, leaning against the wall in my leather "Serpico"
> jacket,completely unfazed as Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines
> walked by, followed by Vince Gill. Although I'd speak to them both
> later, I was determined not to leave without a few minutes with Steve.
>
> As it turned out, I struck gold. Steve was more than cooperative, not
> minding a bit to chat casually while he signed poster after poster
> witha silver metallic pen. It was pure gold, stuff every Steve Earle
> fan from passing fan to hardcore would like.
>
> Steve, thanks for your time. Jules, thanks for setting it up. And to
> my fellow fans, thanks for your interest. Your feedback on my
> interviewwould be greatly appreciated.
>
> ME: Steve, I'm Steve. Your four nights at the Station Inn in
> Nashvillesold out within a day. That's got to make you feel good about
> the hunger for Steve Earle performances in Nashville.
>
> STEVE: Well, it's sort of a double event, because it's Del and it's
> atthe Station Inn. I really wanted to play down there because J.T. and
> themkind of let me go to "bluegrass boot camp" there for the last year
> and ahalf, and they put up with a lot, a lot of me hanging out in
> their kitchen.
>
> ME: How did the collaboration come about between you and the
> DelMcCoury band?
>
> STEVE: Del recorded one of my songs about 10 years ago, and I've
> always been a fan. Then I made a record called "Train A'Comin'" with
> PeterRowan,Roy Huskey and Norman Blake, and with that record, we did a
> lot of festivals that Del and them were on, so we got to know each
> other alittle bit. And then Ronnie played on some of my rock records
> here and there, since he's a mandolin player who can really play. We
> started seeing each other a lot more, and Ronnie came over and played
> on some stuff, and I ended up writing "I Still Carry You Around" for
> "El Corazon." I justsort of dug the idea of sticking a bluegrass track
> in the middle of a rockrecord.
>
> ME: You've collaborated with a lot of great artists out of Nashville
> inthe last several years - Lucinda, Emmylou, now Del McCoury. Is there
> anybody you've really got a hankering to record with or play with?
>
> STEVE: There's a few. Most of them I really want to, I'll probably get
> around to it, because I work a lot, and write a lot. The next thing
> I'm going to do with another artist is with Sharon Shannon, the
> bestaccordion player in Ireland. She and I ... are probably going to
> do something together. And here in Nashville, there's just no telling.
> One of these days, I'll probably put my own bluegrass band together,
> because this isnot my last bluegrass record. But the next record is
> going to be a rockrecord. I know that simply because I've written half
> the songs already.
>
> ME: When can we expect it?
>
> STEVE: That'd be hard to say. Maybe around Christmas.
>
> ME: OK, great! You've written a book of short stories coming out this
> summer, right?
>
> STEVE: Yeah, it should be this summer. I'm working on what's
> probablygoing to be the last story, right now.
>
> ME: What do you find easier to write, songs or short stories?
>
> STEVE: Well, short stories are a lot harder, because I haven't
> beendoing it as long. It requires a lot more discipline. It requires
> keeping your butt in the seat a lot longer, and I have to go through
> pretty serious temporary lifestyle changes to do it. I write a little
> all the time,but to get to the point I needed to be to publish this
> summer, I had to go to Galway (in Ireland) for a couple of months and
> be by myself and prettymuch live by myself and write seven or eight
> hours a day. But it was good. I wrote, like, 19,000 words: two
> complete short stories, five poems andfour songs. That's a good 62 days.
>
> ME: Sounds like Ireland was pretty conducive to your writing.
>
> STEVE: Ireland just is. The greatest poets in the English language
> areall Irish, and it's not even their fuckin' language. It must be
> something in the water over there, I don't know.
>
> ME: Any impressions from your recent trip to Asia.
>
> STEVE: Well, it takes you about two days in Vietnam to figure out why
> we got our butts kicked. They're just survivors, and we were just like
> aspeed bump, man. They were like, next!
>
> ME: They've been there for 1,000 years and will be there for
> another1,000.
>
> STEVE: Yep, exactly. And the Cambodians are in a lot more trouble
> simply because what happened there wasn't the infrastructure that
> wasdestroyed, it was the gene pool. They (the Khmer Rouge) were
> systematically killing off all of their educated people. And the
> leader that's there now isn't particularly sane either, so I don't see
> anything stabilizing a whole lot there.
>
> But there's a lot of good groups, like the Vietnam Veterans
> Foundation... they're one of about 50 (groups) doing work with victims
> of land mines, clearing land mines and doing really good work. The
> main thing is that the U.S. needs to signs the damn (internationalban
> on landmines) treaty. It's meaningless that the U.S. doesn't sign it.
>
> Clinton said he'd sign it in 2006, and that's not good enough.
> That'swhy I'm involved, is to bring that message back here. People
> need to write their politicians that represent them and tell them that
> it'sembarrassing for the U.S. not to be signatory to the landmine
> treaty.
>
> ME: Sounds like you have a great interest in international affairs.
>
> STEVE: I have an interest in people. I went there and I saw people. My
> interest in international affairs go only so far in that I've lived
> all over the world, and I meet nice people everywhere I go.
>
> And then he was whisked off - or should I say, he politely
> excusedhimself and got the hell out of there.
>
> As Jim and I walked back to the car, elated over our brush with a
> hellof a musician we both admire, a girl in front of us dashed across
> the streetand stopped a man on the other side. Jim stopped in his
> tracks and about swallowed a cigarette. Walking on the opposite side
> of the road from us- Steve Earle, once again.
>
> Seems Steve didn't care much for valet parking. His car - a Cadillac,
> by the way - was parked in the same pay lot as my jeep, and Steve got
> inand drove himself away. What a guy.
>
>
>
>
> ==
> To do is to be - Descartes
> To be is to do - Voltaire
> Do be do be do - Sinatra
>
>
>
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