Steve Earle @ Le National

By Steve Musil - CJLO Presents - 07/09/2009

Right now the popular music scene has seen a revival of country and folk acts. Oddly enough, a few older punk rockers are making some interesting strives with the likes of Drag the River, Tim Barry, Saw Wheel, Wayne the Train Hancock & Hank Williams III leading the way. Ask anyone of them who have influenced their music, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts, they’ll say Steve Earle. One of the greatest living songwriters on the planet, Steve Earle was in town on July 9th to bring not only his brand of rebellious folk country, but the music of his friend and mentor, Townes Van Zandt.

      It was a seated affair, which at first seemed odd, but as he took the stage armed with a nothing but an acoustic guitar and a shining spotlight, it seemed only fitting that we sit back and take in the knowledge he was about to bestow upon us.

     During the course of the evening, Earle explained how he met Van Zandt in 1972, and how shy he was to even speak to him. He recounted the story of how Van Vandt “took up the whole first row” at one of his shows and heckled Earle to play "Wabash Cannonball". Earle confessed he didn’t know it, but decided to shut him up by playing the Van Vandt song "Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold".

Those in attendance were lucky to hear songs that did not make it onto his newest album Townes. Steve had picked 28 songs the night before recording for his 2-disc set, but was only able to record 15 songs for the finished product. You could hear it in his voice through the stories he would tell, that Earle felt Townes Van Zandt deserved much more recognition than he got, and that he was grateful to be playing his friend’s songs to a new audience every night. As Earle said, “Van Zandt was a blues singer”, but not in the traditional way of blues where you state the problem, repeat the problem, and come up with no real solution. Van Zandt said there were two kinds of music. “The blues and zippity doo-dah, and this ain’t no zippity doodah”.

      Of course Earle also ran through his classics, tracks taken from 1986's Guitar Town, 1990's Copperhead Road,  1995's Train A Comin as well as many other of his releases.

The almost 2 hour set saw the crowd singing enthusiastically along to “Devil’s Right Hand” and “I Ain’t Never Satisfied”. Little can be said about this show other than inspiring.

      So, please do yourself a favor and check out Townes, along with Steve’s other classics from his extended discography. Also feel free to dig even deeper into the Van Zandt catalog, you won’t regret it. Earle was spot on in every way that night, and hey... He even said our food was better here in Quebec than in Ontario. The man knows what he’s talking about.