This was our third in-store with Steve Earle and as soon as he entered the store with trusted road manager and sound engineer he seemed at ease and friendly. He is comfortable talking about normal stuff like baseball, guitars, burritos and TV, but he is equally at home with geo-politics, chaos-theory or union history; he is a thoughtful, intelligent, interesting man. Armed with his never-absent diet Dr. Pepper he took the stage at 7:05 p.m. for a spine-chilling 45 minute set that leaned heavily on his new album I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive, but also included songs from all phases of his career like “Jerusalem,” “Copperhead Road” and the unreleased cover of the Hank Williams song that is the title of his new album. As usual he had plenty on his mind. He talked about the death of Osama Bin Laden, the immigration issue, New Orleans - you name it, he had an opinion and he wasn’t ashamed to share it. That ultimately is Steve Earle’s greatest strength; he has a conscience and it isn’t compartmentalized from his art. He walks the walk and talks the talk. I for one am glad we have him - there aren’t enough like that anymore. The crowd ate up every second of it, staying after to have him autograph and shake hands, his audience totally gets what is great about this guy. We had over 300 people for the event and sold 46 deluxe and 115 regular versions of the new CD. In addition we sold 6 copies of his Record Store Day 7” and 16 copies of his new novel. I can honestly say we love Steve Earle.
- Paul Epstein
Photo by John Hendrickson from http://www.heyreverb.com/
1 comment:
Wow! Wish he would come down to Phoenix for an in-store. Thanks for sharing.
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