STEVE EARLE & THE DUKES

BIO – PDF

Website: http://www.steveearle.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SteveEarleMusic/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SteveEarle
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steveearle

JERRY JEFF (2022)

JERRY JEFF Album Credits & Lyrics
JERRY JEFF Album Announcement Press Release

Press Highlights:

PRESS PHOTOS

J.T. (2021)

J.T. Album Announcement Press Release

PRESS PHOTOS

GHOSTS OF WEST VIRGINIA (2020)

Ghosts of West Virginia Album Announcement Press Release

PRESS PHOTOS

PRESS HIGHLIGHTS

The New York Times - FEATURE
NPR Morning edition - interview
NPR Weekend edition - interview
rolling stone - “in my room” session
rolling stone - album review
rolling stone - “best albums of may 2020”
Rolling stone - “best albums of 2020 so far”
rolling stone - album examination
rolling stone - “devil put the coal in the ground” premiere
Billboard - feature & full album preview
wnyc - all of it with alison stewart interview
American Songwriter - Feature
Associated press - album review
mother jones - “it’s about blood” premiere
DEMOCRACY NOW! - “UNION, GOd & country” premiere
New York magazine - album review
SPin - “john henry was a steel drivin’ man” premiere
spin - “times like these” premiere
Uncut - album review
paste magazine - album review
THE BOOT - FEATURE
No depression - album review
houston press - feature
popmatters - album review
San Antonio express news - feature

PRAISE FOR GHOSTS OF WEST VIRGINIA

"...arguably Steve Earle's best album since 2002's Jerusalem." 8/10 Stars - Uncut Magazine

"Earle's empathetic attempt to address the divide has resulted in one of his best albums: Ghosts of West Virginia." - The Associated Press 

"... Ghosts is undoubtedly a recharge for Earle, who embodies the forgotten experiences of an American tragedy with grace, poise and empathy." - Rolling Stone 

"... a highlight in Earle’s catalogue of stories about Americans making the most of a bad situation, using his wit as a writer and the grit in his voice to cry out for justice." - New York Magazine

"Like the best of Earle's early work, Ghosts of West Virginia is an album that gets the details right." - Rolling Stone Country

"... devastatingly poignant" - Garden & Gun 

"It’s a shared experience that crosses state lines, destroys privilege, and transcends time, and it will live on as one of Earle’s finest pieces of work of his career." - No Depression 

"From the opening words of ‘Heaven Ain't Goin' Nowhere’ to the closing strum of ‘The Mine,’ Earle succeeds in not just starting this conversation, but crafting one of the most prophetic and powerful albums he's ever released." - The Boot 

"... one of his most potent ever which, in a career with 20 releases, is saying plenty. Ghosts of West Virginia displays once again that Steve Earle is one of America's most captivating, unvarnished, provocative and talented singer/songwriters. 4 out of 5 Stars" - American Songwriter 

"... an undeniably powerful, angry work." - Classic Rock Magazine

“4 out of 5 Stars” - Mojo Magazine

"Earle addresses the catastrophe directly in the album’s most powerful song, ‘It’s About Blood,’ which proves a song can do something that journalism, government investigations and history books can’t: it can make us feel the human beings behind the statistics." - Paste Magazine 

"Steve Earle will leave you shaking in your boots as you listen to 'It's About Blood.' ... the Hardcore Troubadour and the Dukes unearth anthemic gems for America's marginalized." 8 out of 10 Stars - Exclaim!

"... with Ghosts of West Virginia, he's created some of the most eloquent music he's written in two decades." 4 1/2 out of 5 Stars - AllMusic 

"... songs of trouble and strife, heartache and loss. At their best, they sound as if they could have been written decades ago while being utterly timeless." - The Philadelphia Inquirer 

 "...a timeless feel." - PopMatters

"... One of his best." - The Lincoln Journal Star 

"... he’s still got the drive and the chops to take characters and stories and mold them into compelling songs." - Saving Country Music 

"... Ghosts of West Virginia sounds resonantly present and alive." - Riff Magazine 

"Is it his best record? Steve Earle’s made a lot of great records. Split the difference and call it one of his best. But he’s certainly made the Steve Earle record these fragile times need. We can learn a few things about others, and ourselves, as we listen." - The East Nashvillian 

"... Ghosts of West Virginia is both a compelling concept album - one with plenty of emotional heft - and a fantastic collection of songs." - Country Standard Time 

"... one of Earle's best works in his long and illustrious career... It's an emotional, empathetic album about loss, faith, sacrifices, conviction, and humanity in the face of tragedy. With this beautiful collection of songs, Steve Earle and the Dukes reinstate themselves as some of the best Southern rock storytellers of our modern era." - Meaww

GUY (2019)

Press Release, Album Announcement & “Dublin Blues” Premiere – PDF
Press Release, “L.A. Freeway” Premiere – PDF
Press Release, “The Randall Knife” Premiere – PDF
Press Release, “Old Friends” Premiere – PDF
Press Release, The New Yorker Full Album Premiere & Tour Dates Announced – PDF

PRESS PHOTOS

STEVE EARLE & THE DUKES RETURN WITH GUY MARCH 29th, 2019

16-SONG SET COMPRISED OF SONGS WRITTEN BY THE LEGENDARY GUY CLARK

FEATURES GUEST APPEARANCES BY EMMYLOU HARRIS, RODNEY CROWELL, TERRY ALLEN, JERRY JEFF WALKER, MICKEY RAPHAEL & MORE

NPR MUSIC PREMIERES “DUBLIN BLUES” TODAY  

Steve Earle & The Dukes are set to return with GUY on March 29th, 2019. A return to New West Records, the 16-song set is comprised of songs written by one of his two primary songwriting mentors, the legendary Guy Clark. GUY appears ten years after his Grammy Award winning album TOWNES, his tribute to his other songwriting mentor, Townes Van Zandt. Produced by Earle and recorded by his longtime production partner Ray Kennedy, GUY features his latest, and possibly best, incarnation of his backing band The Dukes including Kelley Looney on bass, Chris Masterson on guitar, Eleanor Whitmore on fiddle & mandolin, Ricky Ray Jackson on pedal steel guitar, and Brad Pemberton on drums & percussion. GUY also features guest appearances by fellow Guy Clark cohorts Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Terry Allen, Jerry Jeff Walker, Mickey Raphael, Shawn Camp, Verlon Thompson, Gary Nicholson, and the photographer Jim McGuire.  

Steve Earle first met Guy Clark after hitchhiking from San Antonio to Nashville in 1974. A few months after his arrival, he found himself taking over for a young Rodney Crowell as bassist in Guy’s band. “No way I could get out of doing this record,” says Earle. “When I get to the other side, I didn’t want to run into Guy having made the TOWNES record and not one about him.”   

“Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark were like Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to me.”  The mercurial Van Zandt (1944-1997) who once ordered his teenage disciple to chain him to a tree in hopes that it would keep him from drinking, was the On The Road quicksilver of youth.  Clark, 33 at the time Earle met him, was a longer lasting, more mellow burn.  “When it comes to mentors, I’m glad I had both,” says Earle. “If you asked Townes what it’s all about, he’d hand you a copy of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.  If you asked Guy the same question, he’d take out a piece of paper and teach you how to diagram a song, what goes where. Townes was one of the all-time great writers, but he only finished three songs during the last fifteen years of his life. Guy had cancer and wrote songs until the day he died...he painted, he built instruments, he owned a guitar shop in the Bay Area where the young Bobby Weir hung out. He was older and wiser. You hung around with him and knew why they call what artists do disciplines. Because he was disciplined.”  

“GUY wasn’t really a hard record to make,” Earle says. “We did it fast, five or six days with almost no overdubbing. I wanted it to sound live...When you’ve got a catalog like Guy’s and you’re only doing sixteen tracks, you know each one is going to be strong.

Today, NPR Music has premiered the album’s first single and lead off track “Dublin Blues” along with a nearly 30-minute conversation between Earle and NPR’s Bob Boilen for an edition of All Songs Considered. Hear it HERE.

There was another reason, Earle said, he couldn’t “get out of” making GUY.  “You know,” he said, “as you live your life, you pile up these regrets. I’ve done a lot of things that might be regrettable, but most of them I don’t regret because I realize I couldn’t have done anything else at the time. With Guy, however, there was this thing. When he was sick --- he was dying really for the last ten years of his life --- he asked me if we could write a song together. We should do it ‘for the grandkids,’ he said. Well, I don’t know...at the time, I still didn’t co-write much, then I got busy. Then Guy died and it was too late. That, I regret.”

Like the TOWNES record, GUY is a saga of friendship, its ups and downs, what endures.

GUY will be available on compact disc, across digital retailers, standard black vinyl, limited edition blue vinyl available at Independent Retailers, an extremely limited-to-200 clear vinyl edition available at retailers in Texas & Tennessee, a limited autographed edition available at Barnes & Noble stores, and limited edition red vinyl exclusively available for pre-order now via  NEW WEST RECORDS.

Steve Earle is one of the most acclaimed singer-songwriters of his generation.  A protege of legendary songwriters Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, he quickly became a master storyteller in his own right, with his songs being recorded by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, The Pretenders, and countless others.  1986 saw the release of his debut record, Guitar Town, which shot to number one on the country charts. What followed was a varied array of releases including the Grammy Award Winning albums The Revolution Starts...Now (2004), Washington Square Serenade (2007), and Townes (2009).  A true Renaissance man, Earle has become a novelist, a film, TV, and stage actor, playwright, record producer, and radio host.  Earlier this year, he appeared in the off-Broadway play Samara, for which he also wrote the score that The New York Times called “exquisitely subliminal.”  2018 marked the 30th Anniversary of his legendary album Copperhead Road.  GUY is Steve Earle’s 19th studio album.

GUY Track Listing:
1. Dublin Blues
2. L.A. Freeway
3. Texas 1947
4. Desperados Waiting For A Train
5. Rita Ballou
6. The Ballad Of Laverne And Captain Flint
7. The Randall Knife
8. Anyhow I Love You
9. That Old Time Feeling
10. Heartbroke
11. The Last Gunfighter Ballad
12. Out In The Parking Lot
13. She Ain’t Going Nowhere
14. Sis Draper
15. New Cut Road
16. Old Friends

PRaise for GUY

“…a truly sublime homage.” - Stereogum

“In the hands of Earle and his band the Dukes, ‘Old Friends’ is a solemn prayer, with Harris harmonizing with Earle on the opening verse.” - Rolling Stone Country 

“A winsome tribute.” - The New Yorker

“Earle turned sixty-four this year, and, though his vocals have always been suffused with a bit of psychic fatigue, it feels like he’s now the exact right age to give voice to Clark’s particular heartache.  He sings each verse with understanding and love.” - The New Yorker

"It's no surprise to find that GUY is accomplished, spirited, and utterly complimentary to Clark's unique songwriting gifts." - American Songwriter

"Earle is now at the point in his career to give each of these songs the weighty interpretations they deserve." - American Songwriter

tour dates