When an artist releases a "collection of rarities and B-sides," it's usually not a good sign, the reasons most often being, a songwriting drought or a way to...
more >
In his liner notes to Sidetracks, Steve Earle writes the following: "With the exception of the instrumentals...these (songs) are not outtakes. They are, rather, stray...
more >
First things first: Steve Earle has taken a lot of unjustified heat from far-right commentators about his song "John Walker's Blues," which is nothing more than a coolly...
more >
Say what you will about him, but Steve Earle has never been afraid of getting people mad at him if he thought it was the right thing to do, and since his mid-'90s career...
more >
Easing into public again, Earle assembles a stunning cast (Peter Rowan, Norman Blake, Roy Husky, Jr., Emmylou Harris) for a bluegrass record that concentrates on covers and...
more >
Released in 1995, Train a Comin' signaled Steve Earle's final declaration of independence from the Nashville assembly line. At last liberated from his personal demons, Earle...
more >
10 years earlier, Earle was singing innocently on a song like "Someday" about getting out of a nowhere town. On I Feel Alright he's combing big city streets for dope ("South...
more >
"Be careful what you wish for, friends/I've been to hell and now I'm back again," Earle sings on the title track of I Feel Alright, immediately drawing you into one of the...
more >
MCA Special Products' Fearless Heart may just be a budget-price compilation, but according to those standards, it's an excellent one. Rounding up the toughest rock-oriented...
more >
The Supersuckers decided to up the country ante during the recording of their fourth album, Must've Been High, turning themselves into some kind of genuine cow-punks (the...
more >
Fitzgerald was wrong. Sometimes there are second acts in American lives, and Steve Earle is definitive proof. El Corazon is the third in a trilogy of terrific post-prison...
more >
The Mountain 2/23/1999, Yahoo! Music, Billy Altman
While he made his reputation as the rock-attituded enfant terrible of country music during the late '80s, Steve Earle's rehabilitation during the last few years from...
more >
On The Mountain, Steve Earle has teamed up with one of the very finest bluegrass ensembles around, the Del McCoury Band. All 14 of the songs here were written by Earle, who...
more >
Johnny Too Bad is a four-song EP Steve Earle recorded with the reggae band the V-Roys. Running through both Earle originals and reggae classics, the group sounds ragged but...
more >
Although his personal life was plagued with troubles during the late '80s, Steve Earle wrote a wealth of first-rate songs during that time and the majority of those tunes...
more >
Steve Earle turns toward the sounds of Revolver on this disc, the follow-up to his reviled-by-many bluegrass turn, The Mountain. Unlike every other critic I know, I've never...
more >
Steve Earle is a rebel. Not in the Hollywood/James Dean/Easy Rider/rebel-against-society sense, but rather in a real and personal way. Throughout his life and career he has...
more >
Good ol' boy/biker/outlaw/rocker/bad ass mofo Steve Earle gives the finger to Nashville and delivers his hardest-hitting album ever. Pissed-off and paranoid, Copperhead Road...
more >
Steve Earle always played hard country music with the swagger of a rock & roll star, so it made sense that he would take a detour out of Nashville, both literally and...
more >
In the wake of Guitar Town's success, Epic rushed out this collection of early Steve Earle tracks recorded from 1982 to 1985, including songs from 1982's Pink & Black EP....
more >
Steve Earle lives up to the title billing here. While some of Earle's recent work (and live shows) have inclined to excess, this disc collects lean, mean, and vital material...
more >
Fellow "New Traditionalists" Dwight Yoakam and Randy Travis were drawing on Bakersfield and George Jones, respectively. But on Guitar Town, Earle sounded more like...
more >
On Steve Earle's first major American tour following the release of his debut album, Guitar Town, Earle found himself sharing a bill with Dwight Yoakam one night and the...
more >
On this, his first album officially attributed to Steve Earle & the Dukes, it's not surprising that Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band are the reference point. A...
more >
Exit 0 essentially follows the same formula as Guitar Town, and while it isn't as uniformly excellent as his debut, Steve Earle has come up with a couple of his best songs,...
more >
Showcasing Earle and the Dukes at the peak of their live, rock 'n' roll virility, Shut Up is the final kiss-off to the record label that lost faith. 16 tracks strong,...
more >
Released on MCA in 1991, Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator was recorded live in Ontario, Canada, in October of 1990. The live hits collection was the last for Earle on MCA, as...
more >
With the excesses of his personal life taking their toll (yeah, we've mentioned drugs and legal matters, but we would be remiss to omit that Earle's had at least a...
more >
"I defend The Hard Way to the death, because I almost died in the process of making it," Steve Earle told a reporter in 2000, and he wasn't just being melodramatic. Earle's...
more >
On Steve Earle's first major American tour following the release of his debut album, Guitar Town, Earle found himself sharing a bill with Dwight Yoakam one night and the...
more >
The Steve Earle entry in Universal's 20th Century Masters -- The Millennium Collection series of midline-priced best-ofs predictably treats Earle's career as if it lasted...
more >
Nine years after he returned to active duty in music following a four-year "lost weekend" brought on by drugs and a stay in jail, Steve Earle is not only a stronger and more...
more >
Steve Earle wasn't yet one of the most respected, intelligent, and controversial voices in Nashville when he stepped on-stage for a taping of the long-running public...
more >
