Lucinda Williams at Sydney's Enmore Theatre with Steve Earle. Photo: Lucinda Williams Facebook page.
I wrote a post a couple of years ago raving about watching a Lucinda Williams' Austin City special on YouTube and last night I finally saw her live.
I wondered about the impact of the bad stroke she suffered in November 2020, but she was in incredible form. Williams has obviously worked hard to get back to the stage of being able to tour and perform at a very high quality. She had to be led pn and off the stage, she can't play guitar and she was visibly tired from the effort (the only explanation for no encore as the crowd could not have been more pumped for one). But her voice was incredible, the best I can remember hearing it. She's always been more renowned for the quality of her songwriting and the poetic humanism of her stories than her voice but she sung beautifully last night.
Williams' songs are frequently masterpieces. She played some of the songs in that ACL show, the remarkably evocative "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" and a surprisingly upbeat version of "Lake Charles" (one of a few songs she has about those she called "beautiful misfits" and their early deaths).
She also played the sensual "Fruits of my Labour'", "Righteously" (about demanding decent treatment in a relationship) , "West Memphis" (about 3 west Memphis youths framed for murder in a hysterical campaign against "satanists" in a gross miscarriage of justice) and a song she covered on her 2020 album "You Can't Rule Me", originally by a Black woman country blues singer Memphis Minnie from the '30s that Williams dedicated to "The United States Supreme Court". All helped by her tight as hell band Buick 6.
Williams talent in story telling is to remarkable detail for often mundane experiences, such as "Out of Touch" about running into an old acquaintance on the street:
We speak in past tense and talk about the weather
Half broken sentences we try to piece together
I ask about an old friend that we both used to know
You said you heard he took his life about five years ago
She also played a new song from an upcoming album, itself a remarkable achievement post-stroke.
Oh and Steve Earle opened for her. He's a legendary singer-songwriter in his own right, but Steve Earle opening for Lucinda Williams is the correct order of things.
There's quite a lot going on in the world right now, but one "hot topic" is the sometimes controversial question of "identity".
So if you've been asking yourself big questions about exactly who you are and how you fit into this world, this quiz could help you answer the most fundamental of questions: Are you John Lee Pettimore from Steve Earle's 1988 hard rock/outlaw country crossover hit song "Copperhead Road"?
***
Is your name John Lee Pettimore?
A) Just like my daddy and his daddy before!
B) No, it's Lars.
C) What? Why are you asking me this?
Has your family ever been involved in the bootleg moonshine trade?
A) Everyone knew my granddaddy made moonshine. My daddy too, until the accident.
B) No, my father and his father were tax collectors, as am I.
C) What kind of question is that?
Are you from the US state of Tennessee?
A) Yeah Johnson County. Not far from Knoxville, though you hardly ever saw granddaddy down there, as he only came to town about twice a year.
B) Actually I live in Helsingør, which is a town of about 50,000 people in eastern Denmark, just a short ferry ride from Sweden!
C) What?
Has a close family member ever bought 100 pounds of yeast and some copper wire?
A) My grandaddy did!
B) No, what an odd question.
C) No, what an odd question.
Did your granddaddy ever had a run in with a revenue man who was never heard from again?
A) Nothing was ever proven.
B) Definitely not as my familiy have worked for the Danish tax office for generations. We find the suggestion of foul play against a fellow revenue collector disturbing to say the least!
C) What's actually happening?
Did your daddy ever drive a big block dodge?
A) Yep. Bought it at an auction at the Mason's Lodge. Though that was before the accident.
B) No my family have always driven Volvos. Say what you will about those Swedes, they make a solid car!
C) These questions are getting weird.
Did you serve with US forces in Vietnam?
A) I volunteered on my birthday. They draft the white trash first round here anyway. I did two tours of duty.
B) No, Denmark was not directly involved in the US conflict in Indochina, although while the general public view in Scandanvia was against US policy, the Danish government was not as outspoken in opposition to the conflict as, say, the Swedish government. There were a lot of factors behind this, such as more right-wing forces governing Denmak at the time. However I'm not really sure what relevence the geopolitics of Scandanavia in relation to US imperialism in the 1960s has to do with this quiz.
C) What the fuck is going on?
Have you ever grown cannabis for commercial gain?
A) Look, I came back from Indochina with a brand new plan. Moonshine's yesterday's news, these kids want a different high. So I took seeds from Colombia and Mexico and planted them up the holler on ...actually I'm not sure I should be telling you this. Last thing I want is some DEA choppers in the air! Not with my PTSD! Any narcs reading this, keep in mind that I learned a thing or two from Charlie!
B) No, I find Denmark's national tax office pays well enough to avoid the need for recourse in the illicit drug trade. Sure I smoked a bit of pot in my uni days, who didn't?
C) WHY WOULD YOU ASK ME THIS? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING???
Has country musician Steve Earle ever written a commercially successful cross-over hit about your life?
A) Hey! That bastard owes me a shit-ton of royalities for that song he had in the 80s! That prick'd better stay away from Copperhead Road!
B) Steve Earle? I don't think so, no, but I don't know his full discography. It would certainly be pleasing to know someone had written a song about the life of a tax revenue worker in Denmark as it is a lot more intersting than you'd think.
C) I DON'T UNDERSTAND JUST PLEASE DON'T HURT ME.
ANSWERS
MOSTLY As: You are John Lee Pettimore and Steve Earle owes you a lot of royalities.
MOSTLY Bs: You are Lars from Helsingør in Denmark and not John Lee Pettimore. To be honest, I'm not sure why you even did this quiz.
MOSTLY Cs: You are in the grips of a major identity crisis. You don't know who you are, where you are, or why. Please, for your own sake and the sake of those who love you, get professional help.
Without much doubt, the highlight of Steve Earle's latest record, the enthusiastically, unashamedly country So You Wanna Be An Outlaw, is "Goodbye Michelangelo" -- his moving ode to his friend and mentor, the late Texan singer-songwriter Guy Clark who died in the Great Artist Cull of 2016.
Clark was the godfather of the "country folk/singer songwriter" tradition that developed in Texas in the 70s, out of which the younger Earle emerged. The Texas scene in the mid 70s was captured well in the Heartworn Highways doco, at which a young Steve Earle can be seen among the acolytes gathered at Clark's house.
Townes Van Zandt was that movement's guiding spirit, but Clark was its craftsman and the mentor to generations of future songwriters. Clark was more than a country singer, he was a poet and an artist, as I went on about after his death. Earle fucking means it when he sings:
Is this goodbye 'till it comes my time? I won't have to travel blind Cause you taught me everything I know Goodbye Michelangelo
The track makes an interesting counter-point, as the album is dedicated to a different Texan country singer, Waylon Jennings. It is that "outlaw" hard-edged country with rock'n'roll rhythms tradition the album largely draws from.
It is true that, in the 70s, both Waylon Jennings and Guy Clark were associated with "Outlaw country", a rawer, less polished genre off the beaten track from the commercialised, polished Nashville mainstream. But they existed at opposite ends of the "Outlaw" spectrum.
Waylon was a bona fide star, with or without the endorsement of the suits in Nashville. He played big, loud, electrified songs with his up-tempo rock influenced sound.
Clark, by contrast, was the poet, playing carefully crafted tracks with a folk singer's sensibilities, all stripped down to essentials on an acoustic guitar. Not that there was no cross over -- Jennings joined Clark to sing harmony on Clark's 1976 song "Last Gun Fighter's Ballad". The Highwaymen, the country supergroup with Jennings, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, also made Clark's signature tune, "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train", their own.
In general, So You Wanna Be An Outlaw is entertaining and enjoyable, and even touching in places as it pays homage to the style of rough-hewed country developed by the likes of Jennings and Merle Haggard, but... I am sorry to say... it is just isn't as good as Hayes Carll's critically acclaimed and award-winning album last year, Lovers and Leavers.
That comparison may not seem superficially obvious. They are very different albums -- Lovers and Leavers found Carll in a quieter, introspective mood, with deeply personal tracks compared to Earle's homage to often-loud Outlaw country.
But Earle brought this comparison on himself.
In the lead up to its release, he shot his mouth off in classic Steve Earle fashion. He slagged off Oasis and Noel Gallagher as a shit songwriter (he was in Camp Blur). He slammed much of what passes for modern country music as "hip-hop for people who are afraid of black people" (if you think that is an exaggeration, try, if you can, listening to "bro-country" darlings Florida Georgia Line) .
That is all well and good, but especially eye-catching was his comment in a high-profile Guardian interview that his last wife, fellow country singer Allison Moorer, with whom he separated in 2014, had left him for a "younger, skinnier, less talented singer-songwriter".
Now, Earle did not mention Hayes Carll by name, but he did not need to. It is no secret that, both emerging from failed marriages, Carll and Moorer have embarked on a relation both personal and professional (often at the same time, as the many clips of them performing heartbeakingly beautiful ballads together testifies).
Really, all any of us can hope for in this life is to find someone who'll look at us the way Allison Moorer looks at Hayes Carll while they sing a duet.
Of course, Steve Earle's credit as a songwriter goes well beyond his latest album. It is not even that he has written such classics as "Guitar Town" or "Copperhead Road" (as good a song in its genre as anyone can ever hope to write). It is also that his career, while uneven, has been constantly bold and boundary pushing.
For instance, "John Walker Blues" is the most radically humanist song I've ever heard. Released in 2002, just after 9/11, it is a song written from the perspective of a young American man, John Walker Lindh, who was fighting with the Taliban.
Earle, a left-wing socialist, has no personal sympathy for the religious fundamentalist vision that inspired Walker to fight with the Taliban, but, as hysteria took over the US, he released this song empathising with Walker, who was captured and tortured by US forces.
The song's fucking chorus is "A shadu la ilaha illa Allah. There is no God but God."Released just after 9/11. That is courage. That is using your songwriting skills to fucking do something of note. No surprise that the shit hit the fan.
I take nothing away from Earle. He has earned his stripes over a career with 16 full-length releases from the mid-80s on. His legacy is beyond dispute.
But a straight up comparison with Hayes Carll is obviously unfair simply because Earle has been around for much longer. To judge Hayes Carll, you have to look at the impact he has had within the shorter frame of his career, and it is hard to knock.
Carll is very widely respected as one of the best of the younger generation of songwriters and performers, with five quality albums under his belt and many fans built up by constant touring. Plus he has written with, and earned the respect of, many of the greats (including Guy Clark, with whom Carll wrote "Rivertown").
I'm not sure I've ever heard a bad song from Hayes Carll. His reputation is justly huge. Of all the people to pick on... well it is blindly obvious that Earle chose Hayes for very personal, and very bitter, reasons.
But when you look at the comments closer, you see something even uglier. It is not actually Hayes Carll who is the main target of Earle's attack. It is actually Allison Moorer, who he proceeds to basically slander. Hayes is just roadkill.
Earle pretty much suggests she cynically "traded him in" for a younger, skinnier, but "less talented" model. Even worse is his implication that Moorer resents being in New York, despite the fact, Earle says, it is best for their severely autistic son.
This seems a low blow to go with in a public interview. Judging someone from social media and media comments is hard, admittedly, but any brief perusal of Moorer's comments on either strongly suggest someone who deeply loves their son.
And as to their break-up, obviously no one knows exactly what happens in other people's relationships, but it ultimately doesn't matter -- life and relationships are complicated and messy and trying to slag an ex in public is a dog act, no matter your legacy in the biz.
In fact, a man with a powerful legacy in the biz slagging off a woman in the biz coz they broke up with them is really pretty screwed up.
To be honest, it casts a bit of a pall over the second track on Earle's new record, "Looking for a Woman", where Earle is "looking for a woman won't do me like you". Sure, I think the track is not meant to be taken too literally or seriously, it is just a solid mid-tempo "dealing with heartbreak" song, but country music has a less-than-glorious tradition of men blaming women for relationship shit (which Kitty Wells famously responded to in her "answer song" to Hank Thompson way back in the early 50s). I find it hard not to think of Earle's unfair public comments towards Moorer when I hear him sing that song.
Moorer, for her part, dealt with the collapse of her relationship with Earle on her 2015 album Down To Believing. The title track is a heartfelt, deeply moving take on the end of intense relationships -- as beautiful, thoughtful, and sorrowful a song on how relationships end as I have ever heard. You can hear it here -- but a spoiler, it doesn't say "Steve was alright, but then I met this younger, thinner singer-songwriter and sure he's not as talented but he is hotter". Not exactly.
Some might even say Moorer's track is all class... in stark contrast to Earle's comments.
Neither Moorer or Carll have publicly commented on Earle's comments... at least not explicitly.
However, in recent days, social media and the music press has been alight with reports that at Willie Nelson's annual July 4 festival, at which both Hayes Carll and Steve Earle performed (on different stages at different times), Carll used his performance to debut a new song, which apparently included the key line: "I think she left you because you wouldn't shut your mouth."
Not very hard to interpret, that one.
I am grateful for Earle's moving ode to Guy Clark. Steve Earle is the man to write such a song and I am glad he has.
But I also see no reason to forgive his slagging off of Hayes Carll, not only because I am a Hayes Carll obsessive but because it is cover for him slagging of Allison Moorer for the simple reason they are no longer together.
And while I get the bitterness, for a proudly progressive man to use his public media profile to do this, frankly it fucking sucks.
Your favourite bucket hat-wearing blogger with Hayes Carll when he played Sydney last year.
