In praise of mentors and miners Steve Earle and the Dukes bring latest albums, and hopefully a few old classics, to the Burt By: Alan Small Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, Aug. 8, 2022

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This article was published 08/08/2022 (1156 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s common for artists in their 60s to lean on music from their past.

Steve Earle, who plays the Burton Cummings Theatre Tuesday night with his band the Dukes, will be going way back, long before the 1980s when Guitar Town and Copperhead Road made the 67-year-old a country-rock star.

Earle’s latest album, Jerry Jeff, pays tribute to one of his mentors, country singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, who died of throat cancer in October 2020 at the age of 78.

It’s the fourth album of tributes and the third honouring outlaw-country legends who showed Earle the songwriting ropes when he moved to Nashville in 1974. Townes, which included a collection of Townes Van Zandt covers, came out in 2009, followed by 2019’s Guy, which included Earle’s versions of Guy Clark’s tunes.

“The records were recorded and released in the order in which they left this world. But make no mistake — it was Jerry Jeff Walker who came first,” Earle said in a release when Jerry Jeff came out in May.

Walker’s mostly known for the hit 1971 Mr. Bojangles, which Sammy Davis Jr. turned into his signature song in the 1970s and ’80s and has been performed by countless others.

Earle first heard the song when he was in high school in Texas, thanks to a drama teacher, and he wanted to be like Walker so badly that when he moved to Nashville in 1974 as a 19-year-old he sought out Walker and learned the ups and downs of the music business in exchange for being his chauffeur.

“There’s a tendency to think of Jerry Jeff around a relationship to one song,” Earle says in the release, “He was also such a great interpreter of other people’s songs. But my main purpose in recording this album was to remind people that he wrote a lot of f—— great songs.”

Among those are Gypsy Songman, which the Dukes give a zydeco twist, and the up-tempo I Makes Money (Money Don’t Make Me), which sticks with the song’s bluegrass sound.

Earle’s fourth tribute record, 2021’s J.T., was never planned but became a must when Earle’s son, Americana singer Justin Townes Earle, died in August 2020 of an accidental overdose in Nashville. He was 38.

Father and son had their differences over the years, Earle has said, but those who attended the Interstellar Rodeo at the Forks in 2015 saw how music helped them maintain a connection.

Both Earles were on the bill that year and those who watched and listened to the younger Earle perform songs such as Harlem River Blues might have noticed his father digging the songs from the side of the stage, in what must have been a rare opportunity for two artists to cross paths while on tour.

When Earle takes to the Burt stage he will likely sing Mr. Bojangles and a few other Walker songs from the new album, not to mention songs from his own catalogue of heavily covered favourites.

It would be a treat to hear a song or two from his 2020 album, Ghosts of West Virginia, which come from the off-Broadway play Coal Country.

The musical, which wrapped up in April, was about a deadly coal-mine explosion in 2010 that killed 29 West Virginia miners. The 10 songs on the album are the most recent of his own songs he’s released, and they’re among his most powerful.

Coal mining and the impoverished lives that were often part of the business have been fertile ground for country artists, long before they targeted the pickup-truck driving and beer-drinking crowd who have fled the harsh, rural life of their forefathers and settled in the suburbs.

Earle’s written several songs about the mines before — his most ardent fans will remember him recording The Mountain with bluegrass master Del McCoury — and he often sings reverentially of those who provided for their families while trying to avoid the back-breaking job’s many dangers.

In The Devil Put the Coal in the Ground, from Ghosts of West Virginia, Earle references the double-edged sword for those working in the coal mines. He sounds like he’s just emerged from the mineshaft, gruffly singing, “And the black lung’ll kill me someday / The black lung’ll kill me someday / I’m already underground I reckon anyway / The black lung’ll kill me someday.”

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall