[Dryerase] You won’t hear Steve Earle’s latest on the radio - but you should

[Asheville Global Report]

You won’t hear Steve Earle’s latest on the radio - but you should

By Nicholas Holt

(AGR)--  Tune your radio for what passes as country music these days and 
you might hear the following words being sung:
“Now this nation I love has fallen under attack./A mighty sucker punch came 
flying in from somewhere in the back./Soon as we could see clearly though 
our big black eye/Man we lit up your world like the forth of July
 It’s 
gonna be feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you/Brought to 
you courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue [sic.]!” (Courtesy of the Red, 
White, and Blue by Toby Keith)
Not a big surprise really. A cheery celebration of the murder of thousands 
of innocents to avenge the murder of thousands of other innocents belted 
out by a man who sings like a moose backed by his band of Muzac studio 
extras. Just what one could safely expect from Nashville Inc. in the days 
of the Bush Doctrine. Now compare Keith’s reactionary anthem  with these lines:
“Four score and a hundred and fifty years ago/our forefathers made us equal 
as long as we could pay.”
Or: “Better be careful someone might hear ya/The walls have ears and the 
sky has eyes.”
Or even: “But Allah had some other plan some secret not revealed/Now 
they’re draggin’ me back with my head in a sack/To the land of the infidel.”
Steve Earle, who sings the above lines on his new album Jerusalem (Artemis 
Records/E Squared) you won’t hear on commercial country radio, not least of 
all because he plays, well, country music, as in the music that came down 
the mountains with men like Earl Scruggs and Merle Travis and was picked up 
by Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, musicians that guys like Toby Keith, 
Garth Brooks, and their like have no business being shelved anywhere near 
in the CD store.
Earle, a five-time Grammy nominee, is an extraordinary songwriter who, by 
all appearances, has little concern for what will or won’t make heavy 
rotation on Country Music Television.
About Jerusalem, he writes “This is a political record because there seems 
no other proper response to the place we’re at now
Freedoms, American 
freedoms, things voted into law as American freedoms, everything that came 
out of the 1960’s, are disappearing, and as any patriot can see, that has 
to be opposed.”
Imagine Jim Hightower with a guitar, a progressive populist from Texas, a 
left leaning redneck, admiring of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and 
Patrick Henry, but more likely to sing about Emma Goldman, Malcolm X, Joe 
Hill, or Abby Hoffman.
Or John Walker Lindh.
Jerusalem attracted media attention far before it’s September release for 
the song “John Walker’s Blues,” a speculative exploration of  the mind and 
motivations of the “American Taliban”:
“I’m just an American Boy-raised on MTV/And I’ve seen all those kids in the 
soda pop bands/But none of ‘em looked like me./I started lookin’ around for 
a light out of the dim/And the first thing I heard that made sense was the 
word/Of Mohammed, peace be upon him.”
The song, possibly the most memorable both thematically and musically on 
the album, has earned Earle comparisons to “Hanoi Jane” Fonda and cheap 
shots about his lack of superstardom. A review in The New York Post titled 
“Twisted Ballad Honors Tali-rat” and written by a reviewer apparently 
unfamiliar with the notion of narrative-voice in songwriting accused Earle 
of glorifying Walker and comparing him to Jesus.
“I’m trying to make clear that wherever [Lindh] got to, he didn’t arrive 
there in a vacuum,” writes Earle. “I don’t condone what he 
did
Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real 
thought, and religion, too. But there are circumstances
the culture here 
didn’t impress him, so he went out looking for something to believe in.”
Earle has been a long time and outspoken opponent of the death penalty and 
landmines, voiced his support for the Zapatistas, and, here in an interview 
with the AP, has been known to make such observations as “capitalism is 
fundamentally oppressive because it depends on the service of labor in 
order to thrive.”
The songs on Jerusalem touch on conflict  in the Middle East, government 
surveillance, and the struggles of an ill-treated maquiladora worker, but 
also includes songs about the more traditional themes of prison life, 
lonely cowboys, and lost love, and country luminary Emmylou Harris makes an 
appearance for a duet titled “I Remember You.”
Earle, who possesses a full voice at once warm but scarred from past 
tendencies towards self-destruction conveying a steady attitude that 
suggests a starring contest with its possessor would be ill advised, is 
also a tremendous musician, equally impressive whether wrestling with an 
over-distorted six-string, finger picking a quiet ballad, or working out a 
bluegrass tune on the mandolin.
Jerusalem will please both long time country music listeners and those 
looking for a good introduction to the genre. It is a truly impressive work.