May 9, 2018
30th Anniversary of Copperhead Road with the Mastersons.
Almost twenty years ago, Steve Earle and I took a ride through South Nashville.
It was down those mean streets that Steve had spent his famous “hiatus” in the early 1990’s mostly shooting dope. It was a crazy, unprecedented thing. Here was a guy ’ the supposed “new face” of outlaw country ’ who had already put
out a near unbroken string of instant classics, including chart hits like “Guitar Town,” “Someday,” and the immortal “Copperhead Road.” And he just up and disappears, drops from sight for four years, making no records, playing no shows. Many thought he was dead.By the time we met, Steve was on the way back, through his sixty-day stint in the Davidson County Jail, firmly in recovery. He’d already released a couple new discs, the masterly acoustic Train A Comin’ and
the defiantly electric I Feel Alright. But you could tell, he wasn’t all the way back. Clean and sober can be a transitory thing, the ghosts of the old days are far from fully vanquished, if they ever will be. Steve wasn’t sure he wanted any more of South Nashville, but being Steve, which is to be an adventurer and a
sport, he agreed to take the tour. “This is Lewis Street,” Steve said as we turned right off Fain. The neighborhood hadn’t changed all that much since Steve holed up there, listening to Dr. Dre’s The Chronic on a near permanent loop. A number
of local denizens were killing time on the corner, craning their heads to see if these particular white boys were buyers or cops. But I was already familiar with Lewis Street from the tune “South Nashville Blues,” which appears on I Feel Alright. “The Devil lives on Lewis Street, I swear, I seen him rocking in his rocking chair,” the song goes, prefaced by one of the hundred or so all-time great Steve Earle lines, “I took my pistol and a hundred dollar bill, I had everything I needed to get me killed.” A bit of old-timey shuffle, “South Nashville Blues” was very definitely a blues song. This was a little unusual, Steve told me back in 1996. “Because I don’t play a lot of blues tunes. I don’t think I’m really that good at them.” This is a perhaps not so roundabout way to getting to Steve Earle’s newest collection of songs, the sixteenth studio album of his singular career. It is called Terraplane, and as those familiar with the Robert Johnson song should know, it is very much a blues album, a very good, typically heartfelt blues album.
Located at the Bijou Theatre
Wednesday, May 9 - 7pm
Contact: [email protected] or 865-522-0832
Website: www.knoxbijou.org