HOW to dip into a 35-year career, play something for everyone, and not leave too many people wanting will be Steve Earle’s dilemma when he plays Tamworth in a couple of weeks.
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The US singer-songwriter says his supporting show on the Life Is Fine tour, which comes to Tamworth on November 14, will reflect headliner Paul Kelly’s as “a retrospective”.
But he says that will be a difficult task, with so much material behind him – from his 1986 breakthrough album Guitar Town to his latest So You Wanna Be An Outlaw?
“I’ll play some songs from Outlaw, but largely the point of tour ... for Paul is a retrospective, so I think I’ll make it that for me, too, and I’ll play a little bit of everything,” Earle says.
“It’s hard. You know. The sets are – whatever they are – an hour, maybe a little over, but I’ve got 17 albums.
“I’m gonna piss somebody off no matter what I do, so I’ll just to do the best I can.
“But you’ll probably hear stuff from the beginning, everything from my first record to this last record.”
‘Paul kept calling and kept calling’
Earle says he’s known Kelly for decades, catches up with him every few years, and came to be part of the tour after Kelly “kept calling and really wanted me to do this”.
Despite an intermediary’s request for the interview to not touch on Earle’s most recent divorce (he’s been married seven times, to six different women), he brings it up obliquely himself.
He’s explaining how being a longtime professional musician – and going on tours like this one – has shaped his life.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time now, and my life has been, you know, kind of weird because of it,” he says.
“I live alone, I’m 62 years old, and it’s starting to look like that’s how it’s going to turn out.
“But you know what? I kind of like sitting where I want to when I go to the movies, is what I’ve discovered.
“I mean, I never say never, but the point is, it’s hard to maintain any of the things that most people value most in their lives – family and all that stuff – when you do this for a living and you’re gone all the time like I am.
“I didn't plan on going to Australia in November, but Paul kept calling and kept calling and kept calling. He just really wanted to do it …
“I think a lot of him: he does this for the same reasons that I do it, and I’ve known him a long time and he was able to eventually convince me to drop everything and come, so I’m coming.”
Earle has never played in Tamworth but has travelled through on his way to other places.
He says he’s known the city as “the centre of country music in Australia for a long time”.
“Most of what I know about Tamworth, I learned from Bill Chambers – I’ve known Bill for a long time, too.”
‘I’m glad it’s them and not me’
Earle this year held his fourth annual Camp Copperhead – a songwriting retreat obviously named after one his biggest hits, Copperhead Road.
When asked what experienced musicians like him look for in a protégé, and what young people should know about the business, Earle just about throws his hands up, verbally.
“My niece is a singer and a songwriter, and she’s international now – she’s really good,” he says.
“She has a publishing deal but she doesn’t have a record deal yet. She co-wrote News From Colorado, which is on the new record, with me and Allison [Moorer], my ex-wife.
“But I don’t know what to tell her.
“She got through four weeks of The Voice and didn’t end up in the hot tub with CeeLo [Green, one of the hosts and mentors]; I was sorta proud of that.
“That business has changed so much, I don’t know what to tell anybody that’s coming along.
“I’m kinda glad it’s them and not me.
“They figure it out. They figure out the social media thing. If I had to live just on social media, I think I might kill myself.
“But the good news is: anybody can make a record. The bad news is: anybody can make a record.”
Earle says technology and social media has made the industry “way more democratic” but also far more competitive.
“It’s a lot of people competing for a much smaller pool of dollars, pounds, whatever around the world, and in my country it’s really small,” he says.
“And now everybody's streaming instead of owning music – which I get, I understand that – but we’re still not getting paid what we should be for streaming, as big a deal as it is.
“That will eventually work out, I think, but so far it’s kind of a mystery where, it’s like, the music goes in and nothing comes out sometimes with the streaming thing as far as records go.”
Earle says we’re in “completely uncharted territory” when it comes to the future of how music will be made, distributed and paid for.
“It’s all brand-new. Anybody that tells you they know how it’s gonna turn out is lying, because they don’t know. Nobody knows. It’s completely uncharted territory.”
As for what he thinks is worth paying attention to in this new, democratic music-making era: “I’m just looking for people who I think have songs”.
“My favourite young songwriter right now … and I just kind of am amazed by him; he’s only 22 years old, he’s a kid named Colter Wall and he’s from Canada, from the middle of nowhere in Saskatchewan,” Earle says.
“He’s a really good songwriter, good singer, and he sounds like he’s 80, but he’s 22.”
- The Life Is Fine tour – Paul Kelly with support acts Steve Earle and the Middle Kids – comes to the Tamworth Regional Entertainment and Conference Centre on November 14. Tickets from trecc.com.au/events/856/paul_kelly