STEVE EARLE & THE DEL MCCOURY BAND
at the Vic, March 25
By Peter Margasak
The first few times I listened to "The Mountain," the new album Steve
Earle recorded with the Del McCoury Band, I couldn't stop thinking what
poor use he'd made of the group he himself calls the "best bluegrass
band working today." Despite Earle's declared love for bluegrass and
his close identification with Texas country-rock bards like Guy Clark
and Townes Van Zandt, he's always played far more rock than country
from his wonderfully bombastic 1988 breakthrough album, "Copperhead
Road" to his 1996 comeback anthem "Feel Alright," his music
consistently reveals his love for the real fist-pumping, roof-rattling
stuff. And while the best rock and the best bluegrass do share a
certain intensity, Earle's never been much for subtlety; against the
onslaught of overamplified modern music, on the other hand, bluegrass's
acoustic subtlety has become one of its greatest strengths.
Last week, when Earle performed at the Vic with McCoury's virtuosic but
restrained band -- singer and guitarist Del; his sons, mandolinist
Ronnie and banjoist Rob; fiddler Jason Carter; and bassist Mike Bub --
this schism occasionally became very apparent. During "Dixieland," a
Pogues-ish tune from the new album, Earle let out a hearty whoop that
seemed like a plea for the sort of cheap, instant kick in the ass only
a rock band can deliver; he went ungratified. And when he played a
handful of his best-known tunes by himself in the middle of the show,
he bludgeoned the chords more than he strummed them, substituting sheer
force for suitable accompaniment.
But by the end of the three-hour concert, throughout which the group
huddled cooperatively around a single multidirectional mike, I'd come
to think of the experiment as a success for Earle, if not entirely for
McCoury and his band. For the most part Earle was able to lead the
ensemble from within, and the McCoury gang did trade in some of its
cool virtuosity for raw energy.
This isn't the first time Earle has explored more traditional music. In
1995, after serving a brief sentence for crack possession, he cut the
all-acoustic "Train a Comin'" with guitarist Norman Blake, bassist Roy
Huskey Jr., and mandolinist Peter Rowan -- the progressive former Bill
Monroe sideman whom Earle credits as his mentor in bluegrass basics.
But Earle was more or less revisiting his own troubadour roots: he may
have been surrounded by accomplished pickers. but he was hardly on
unfamiliar turf. On "The Mountain," penned mostly by Earle and arranged
mostly by Ronnie McCoury, Earle admits that he was attempting to "write
just one song that would be performed by at least one band at every
bluegrass festival in the world long after I have followed Mr. Bill
[Monroe] out of this world." But his songs are still driven by his
impulse to rock, and at times the McCoury band seems to be blandly
vamping behind him. During the all-too-brief set the group played by
itself at the Vic, the music took on a luxurious buoyancy that it never
quite recaptured on the more driving collaborative numbers.
The phrase "high lonesome" has been applied so many times to bluegrass
singing that it doesn't mean much anymore, but when Del McCoury opens
his yap the definition snaps right back into focus. When his band did
Bill Monroe's gospel gem "Get Down on Your Knees and Pray," long a
staple of its live sets, the gorgeous four-part harmonies sent shivers
down my spine. Still, when Del sang with Earle on the new album's
"Carrie Brown," he tapped into something much more urgent and natural.
It wasn't sublime, like "Get Down," but there was an immediate, ragged
glory in McCoury's voice that I'd never heard there before.
Earle didn't give as much as his counterparts but he sure seemed to
enjoy playing with them. He did his darnedest to get his fans to listen
to the McCourys, but by three or four tunes into their set, many of
Earle's fans were talking loudly. Their attention was recaptured when
Earle, solo, hauled out warhorses like "I Ain't Ever Satisfied,"
"Hillbilly Highway" and The Devil's Right Hand," to which they happily
bellowed the words even though Bade himself looked utterly bored. I
don't think Earle's about to embark on a bluegrass career, but when he
was playing with the McCoury band, he gave some of his most spirited
performances since his first shows out of rehab.
Bob
