There are many artists who need no introduction to the Americana UK audience, but Steve Earle probably heads the list. However, Classic Clips gives us the opportunity to reflect on perhaps one of his most completely successful musical visions, his whole-hearted jump into the bluegrass world alongside the revered veteran Del McCoury and his band to produce “The Mountain”.
Unlikely partners they may have seemed (the sweary, liberal leaning alternative rock and country renegade meets the highly traditional and respectful purveyors of Appalachian music), but they were bonded by a love of Bill Monroe and his high, lonesome sound.
Earle had touched on bluegrass before, both with his acoustic “Train a Coming” album and the rather gorgeous ‘I Still Carry You Around’ on previous album ‘El Corazon’ (backed by the McCoury band, and in retrospect, a clear precursor of what was coming).
Still, little would have prepared regular Earle fans for the all-in style of “The Mountain”. It has been argued that it sounds more like a McCoury album than an Earle one, but there is little doubt this was Earle’s call – he wrote songs to perform in this vein, and the McCoury band were perfect foils to provide the tightest and most nuanced of acoustic backings.
With performances this good, the music was always going to sound fantastic – but what elevates it are Earle’s songs. Even by his standards, this is writing of immense quality, maintained over a whole record. He writes song after song that sounds as if it could have been written generations before, but with the energy and reflectiveness that comes from the times in which he was actually living.
‘Carrie Brown’, the track chosen here, could have been as old as ‘Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley‘, with the simple exclamation of it’s chorus (“Carrie, darling Carrie / Carrie Brown, I cry / If I can’t marry Carrie Brown / I believe I’d rather die”). In Earle’s hands, however, it turns into a vital and pacy story from a somewhat unreliable witness who has an unrequited (and probably deluded and non-existent) love affair with title character Carrie. It includes some very smart lyrical vignettes; for example, when there inevitable gun play happens with adversary Billy Wise, it occurs on State Street, allowing Earle to opine “I shot him in Virginia and he died in Tennessee”.
A little extra frisson is the live performance of the songs – the band clustered round one microphone, stepping up for vocal or solo duties and back again when in the ensemble, a finely choreographed ballet on its own, and one which the city dwelling, democrat voting audience of the likes of Letterman and O’Brien were only too happy to embrace. The clip captures the joy of the players too, and even if it was a partnership destined to end in acrimony, it burned brightly in its time, and left a legacy for generations in the peerless music within the record.
‘The Mountain’ is a great album and the combination of the two styles is terrific. When the fall out happened, Tim O’Brien helped put together The Bluegrass Dukes, with Darrel Scott, Casey Driessen and Dennis Crouch, to support Steve on some dates. That produced some memorable shows and it’s a shame none have been officially preserved. A studio album would have been nice too. I recommend ‘Sidetracks’ to pick up some of Steve’s musical stragglers.