Steve Earle is a passable guitar player, a good singer and a great, great songwriter. Now he’s written a book of short stories.
This job switch might seem like quite a leap when you’re leaning on the bar at the Tip Top Lounge and trying to imagine the kid onstage putting down his Telecaster and making with the literary licks. But Earle, like all good country songwriters, was writing short stories from the moment he discovered how well “you” rhymes with “blue.”
As Billy, the narrator of the story “Billy the Kid” and the owner of a Nashville bar called the Blue Room, notes about the songwriters who used to hang out there: “The best writers routinely cranked out three-and-a-half-minute jewels that owed as much to Tennessee Williams as to Hank,” he says. “Stories about coal mines and moonshine and movin’ it on down the line.”
Earle himself has written plenty of songs about coal mines and moonshine and movin’ it on down the line, which, as iconic signifiers of American three-chord emotion, actually owe more to Hank than to Tennessee. But he’s also mixed into his songs the detailed observations of the short story writer. “I laid my last $10 down though I didn’t need a thing,” he wrote (and sang) in a song about longing for a cashier, “just to touch sweet Carrie Brown when she handed me my change.”
In a song called “Billy and Bonnie,” he packed more character development into two couplets than a lot of writers get into two chapters: “Billy was 17 and mean as hell/Bonnie said she was 30, it was hard to tell/Billy met Bonnie on a Saturday night/At the dirt track races, it was love at first sight.”
If Earle’s songs sometimes read like short stories, his short stories sometimes read like songs. The themes are big, the conclusions final. “Billy the Kid,” for example, is about a hotshot writer named Billy Batson who makes “the best record ever recorded in Nashville,” only to meet a tragic fate, as does the record. Think “John Henry’s Pencil”: There lies a songwritin’ man, lord. One of the stories, “Taneytown,” about a black kid killing a white one in a racist Maryland town, is actually a song from Earle’s album “El Corazón” in narrative form.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. None of the stories in “Doghouse Roses” have been published before. They haven’t been shaped or approved by the small magazine or mainstream monthly editors. There’s an appealing sort of innocence to them. Not for this troubadour turned scribbler the ambiguous final sentence, the moody, leave-you-thinking coda. At the conclusion of one story I found myself thinking, “Yo, Steve, what’s with the happy ending?”
And happy or no, these stories end, baby. “A year and a half after that, Judge Beecher retired to Florida,” begins the windup of “The Red Suitcase,” a good story that seems to be about a small-town man who’s “a little slow,” but is actually about the death of the town. “He died three years later, eight days short of his eightieth birthday. Thurman Rose went on to become district attorney and was eventually elected judge.” Earle does not leave you wondering.
The title, “Doghouse Roses,” refers to those single, plastic-sheathed roses sold at supermarket checkout stands that men buy for their wives when they’re in the doghouse. The main character of the title story is a thinly veiled version of Earle, a critics’ darling country rocker with a cult audience who sinks into desperate drug addiction, loses everything, then manages a comeback.
In fact, much of this book seems to be based on Earle’s existence, slightly altered. There are a lot of junkies and a lot of traveling men — smugglers, musicians, hitchhikers. Almost every character, in fact, is far from home, even if that just means living in a different part of Nashville from where he grew up. Write what you know, they say, and Earle has done that. You can learn a lot about Music Row and the junkie lifestyle, among other things, by reading “Doghouse Roses.”
So is Steve Earle as good a short story writer as he is a songwriter? No. But it’s not really a fair question. He’s moonlighting here, and for a guy working a second job, he’s pretty good at it.
What if you had a football game and nobody won? It’s true that Tampa Bay defeated the Indianapolis Colts last night on “Monday Night Football,” but on the field of pointless gestures, the battle between ESPN and Hank Williams Jr. was a draw.
For 20 years now, Williams’s cry of “Are you ready for some football?” from his anthemic “All My Rowdy Friends” has been the Pavlov bell that brings football fans to their television sets. But not last night.
Why? Because earlier Monday, Williams shot his mouth off on “Fox and Friends.” After being introduced as “the voice of Monday Night Football” who “knows a little about politics,” Williams quickly embraced his new role as pundit, saying he didn’t like any of the GOP candidates and referring to the golf summit between the president and House Speaker John Boehner as “one of the biggest political mistakes.”
“It would be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu, OK?” he explained. “Not hardly.” Is it any wonder that on Monday’s broadcast, even the reliably nonsense-minded hosts of Fox and Friends seemed unable to make heads or tails of what Williams was saying? When pressed for clarification, Williams said, “You know, they’re the enemy. They’re the enemy…” He then spelled it out: ”Obama!”
In a statement Monday evening, Williams clarified that “Every time the media brings up the Tea Party it’s painted as racist and extremist — but there’s never a backlash — no outrage to those comparisons…” And while equating Obama with Hitler is as much a classic Tea Party move as whining about paying taxes, it seems that Williams was grasping for something else here, a poorly articulated point not about Obama’s perceived Nazism but the implausibility of natural enemies achieving a meeting of the minds.
That didn’t stop ESPN, however, from hastily yanking his less-political rallying cry from its Monday broadcast. In a statement, the network explained that “While Hank Williams Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize that he is closely linked to our company through the open to ‘Monday Night Football.’ We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result we have decided to pull the open from tonight’s telecast.” Williams, in his own statement, added, “My analogy was extreme — but it was to make a point. I was simply trying to explain how stupid it seemed to me — how ludicrous that pairing was. They’re polar opposites and it made no sense. They don’t see eye-to-eye and never will. I have always respected the office of the President.”
So in summation: ESPN reminds us that Williams does not work for them, but the network feels kind of bad he put his foot in his mouth, so they took his song away for one game so nobody will think they have confused Obama with the fuhrer. Williams, meanwhile, admits his statement was extreme — but he was just trying to make a point! And he respects the office of president, even though he did compare Obama to Hitler. Just nobody get upset, okay? Sorry! If But sticking to my guns, too!
It’s perhaps understandable that ESPN feared the game becoming politicized in the wake of this bizarre rhetoric. But it’s a fair bet that in a few days, when the hoo-ha dies down, the song will be back on Monday night and the “disappointment” forgotten.
Why shouldn’t it be? Okay, maybe because it’s been 20 years and couldn’t somebody come up with something new already? But the pontificating of a guy with a beard that ridiculous has zippo to do with whether a few bars of music deserve airtime. Which makes ESPN’s gesture of quasi-wrist-slapping as absurd as confusing Williams’s remarks with “knowing about politics.” It’s only Tuesday, but this whole embarrassment is already a front-runner for emptiest mutual display of posturing on television, non-Animal Planet division. Apparently, the only thing both ESPN and Williams have learned from their association with Monday Night Football is how to fumble spectacularly.
FILE - In this May 9, 2011 file photo, actor and musician Tim McGraw arrives at The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles' 21st Annual Simply Shakespeare Fundraiser in Los Angeles. Curb Records has filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against McGraw, claiming the country superstar failed to provide a fifth and final album under their deal that met contractual obligations by an April deadline. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, file)(Credit: AP)
Tim McGraw and Curb Records could be headed to court over an unreleased album.
The independent record label has filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against McGraw, claiming the country superstar failed to provide a fifth and final album that met contractual obligations by an April deadline.
A statement from McGraw’s spokeswoman says the singer turned in “Emotional Traffic” last fall and that Curb is holding the album “hostage” in an attempt to keep the singer “perpetually” under contract. The label contends some of the songs were recorded so long ago they violate terms of the deal.
Curb asks a judge to force McGraw to turn in new material for a fifth album, bar him from signing with another label and nullify a 2001 agreement that eliminated a sixth record from McGraw’s contract.
Alan Jackson gains credibility for his song "Where were you?"
Country music has enjoyed a resurgence in the past decade, and while it may be a little derivative to give all the credit to the surge of patriotism that Americans felt post-9/11, consider this: In May 2001, the Country Music Association took heat from its fans when it officially changed its slogan to “Admit it. You love us.”
The message was clear to anyone reading between the lines. If you liked country music back in the early part of the aughts, you hid that love, like a high-school girl who only listens to musicals. (Hey, I can relate.) The CMA even issued a statement, saying the quote was “a challenge to everyone who has ever connected with a country song or a specific artist but may not feel a current connection to the format as a whole or is reluctant to share their enjoyment of the music with others.” Yikes.
The attempt was part of a campaign by the CMA to “brand” its music, something that had never been tried before “as far as we can tell,” according to the CMA executive director Ed Benso. It wasn’t that country music had taken a nose dive, but the ’90s had been such a booming time for the genre that producers and music executives were loath to take a hit. Garth Brooks, Lyle Lovett and Billy Ray Cyrus had allowed the brand to go international and platinum in the space of a few short years, but it was still a struggle to find the right marketing techniques to sell Europe on the Country Music Television channel.
And then, Sept. 11. If country music benefited as a result of the twin towers falling, then it was a bittersweet victory. CMT garnered its highest ratings in October of 2001 after holding the “Freedom Concert,” which raised $5 million for the Salvation Army Disaster Relief Fund. Alan Jackson achieved a moment of fleeting worldwide fame when his single “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” became a symbol both of America’s pain and cynical attempts to cash in on the hurt. (See “South Park’s” takedown of Jackson in the episode “A Ladder to Heaven.“) The same went for Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue (The Angry American),” which the country star had to be coaxed into playing after an initial bout of discomfort with the material.
“… if country songwriters have been reluctant to talk, country fans have been more than willing to listen … both Jackson’s and Keith’s records topped the Billboard country singles chart, Jackson’s for five weeks. Several similar records, ranging from generally patriotic numbers to songs written in direct response to the attacks, have made at least nominal showings.”
Not all performers were shy about tackling the tough issues post-September either. Steve Earle put out his response in the album “Jerusalem” in 2002, which included the song “John Walker’s Blues,” written “from the vantage point of ‘American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh.” The song was met with criticism from both sides, with some calling it “unpatriotic” and others claiming that it was too controversial a subject. Some performers were accused of cashing in on the attacks, like Bruce Springsteen, who released “The Rising.”
But the legacy of country music is bigger than the individual. Once the dust has settled, what will people see when they look back at country music in the aughts? Taylor Swift, the CMT Awards, the CMA Awards (completely different), Carrie Underwood, Lady Antebellum, Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert, Keith Urban, Gwyneth Paltrow and “Country Strong”; just in the past year the popularity of the genre has allowed its stars to overtake the Grammys, both in nominees and interest in other music award shows.
Perhaps we can attribute the rise in popularity of country music as much to Swift, Underwood, Miley Cyrus and “American Idol” as we can to the attacks on Sept. 11. But I’d wager that these fresh faces in the industry flocked to country music specifically because it resonated with the first historical event they were alive to witness.
Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” is a seven-minute sprawling epic music video, the trumpet that heralds in the singer’s (performance artist’s?) second studio album of the same name. “Born This Way” is why Gaga was in an egg during the Grammys, and for all its epic weirdness, its lyrics are a joyful celebration of sexual preference, with lines like “No matter gay, straight, or bi/Lesbian, transgendered life/I’m on the right track baby/I was born to survive.”
“Born This Way” also sounds (like most Gaga songs do) exactly like an early Madonna track. Which still doesn’t explain why this morning the Internet was introduced to an alt-country version of “Born This Way” that sounds suspiciously like Gwyneth Paltrow’s attempts at the genre during “Country Strong.”
Maybe it was an attempt to make country music more inclusive: after all, you don’t hear a lot of lyrics about gay people in Lady Antebellum songs. Or maybe country-pop really is getting that popular after “Need You Now” swept up both the CMA Awards and the Grammys. Whatever her reasoning, I’m at least grateful that this diversion has distracted the Internet from making another Rebecca Black remix to commemorate what day of the week it is. Oh wait, nevermind.
The other night, while washing dishes, I could have sworn I heard Dolly Parton on my radio telling some story about her daddy selling moonshine. It wasn’t Dolly, but Elizabeth Cook, who has a sweet Southern twang, serious songwriting skills and a pretty good set of brass ones, if she doesn’t mind saying so herself. In fact, “Balls,” as in “Sometimes It Takes Balls to Be a Woman,” was the title of her previous record, released in 2007 (you can see the video, in which Cook dances in what looks like a wedding dress outside an auto body shop here). Her fifth record, “Welder,” was released earlier this month. Cook isn’t a welder, but her daddy is, “courtesy of the the Atlanta federal penitentiary,” where he spent some time for selling moonshine. He joined a prison band, then later met her mother, also a musician, and the two played bars together, their young daughter in tow.
Many of the songs on the record are slapstick hilarious: “El Camino” is an ode to the driver of a ’72 brown and tangerine, “low and obscene” car of the same name (“We were making out in the disco era,” she sings, “he was Travolta and I was Farrah,” before concluding with the inspired rhyming couplet: “If I wake up married, I”ll have to annul it/Right now my hands are in his mullet.”) Many women will recognize the hipster dude she describes in “Rock ‘n’ Roll Man,” (he’s got “all his money tied up in guitars,” with a “tip bucket by the microphone stand,” and “likes to talk about Elvis, but only the Sun years”). Unfortunately, even more might know just exactly what she’s talking about in “Say Yes to Booty” when she sings: “When you say yes to beer, you say no to booty. If you’ve slept with a drunk man you understand, it’s not that hard.” On the other hand, the song “Snake in the Bed” seems even funnier because it doesn’t seem to be so much a double entendre as it is a warning about the possible hazards of sleeping on a pull-out couch in the country.
But Cook’s songwriting has serious range: “Heroin Addict Sister” uses her knack for details to create a heartbreaking portrait of a loved young woman who shoots “the devil’s DNA” and comes home “asking for her mama’s bathrobe and a pot of potato soup.” In “Mama’s Funeral,” a family gathers around the porch swing to look at the paint worn down by their mother’s feet. Cook also covers “I’m Beginning to Forget You,” a song written by her mother, Joyce, soon after her first husband left her alone with five small children.
Besides making records and touring the country, Cook also hosts “Apron Strings,” each weekday on Sirius radio, in which she “chit-chats” about aspects of her daily life, like making music, being on the road, and missing her cat and her bathrobe. We caught up with her just after her morning radio show taping and just before she got back on the road for her nightly gig.
You were raised by country musicians and you’ve played everywhere from the Grand Ole Opry to folk festivals to rock festivals. Is there a more eclectic audience for country music in your generation than there was for your parents’ generation?
At last night’s gig, we had some old punk rock guys, then these total country boys, tattooed-up roughnecks, then older well-heeled couples and intellectuals. So hipsters, intellectuals, folkies, hippies, it’s absolutely across the board. People are generally more diverse. Everyone has a richer, more unique experience. Just because you live in some town doesn’t mean you live a stereotypical life from that town. Yet at the same time, people are nostalgic for where they come from. That’s why the old-school country sound is still viable. Longing for a simple, more innocent time.
And are your influences diverse?
My first concert my parents took me to, when I sat on my daddy’s knee, was Conway and Loretta. The first concert I went to where my daddy drove me and three of my girlfriends and sat in the parking lot while we went inside was Madonna on the “Like a Virgin” tour, with the Beastie Boys as the opening act. MTV came on the air when I was coming of age, and they had Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen, everything on the same channel; there wasn’t so much focus on the genre issue. I knew all the words to Merle Haggard and Tammy Wynette songs, but found pop music very exotic.
Madonna is obviously a huge generational touchstone for women musicians in terms of pushing the boundaries of what one can say in a song, owning your sexuality, and all that. Do you have any thoughts on what you’ve taken from someone, like, say, Madonna, and singers like Dolly and Tammy and Loretta? Do you feel there are things you can say that they couldn’t?
The thread is that they all represent themselves in an open, honest way. I think a lot of women struggle with it. We use different terminology now but it’s all saying the same thing. “Say Yes to Booty” is “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ With Lovin on Your Mind.” It’s all the same message; just different ways of saying it.
Something about that “Snake in the Bed” song sounds like the snake in question was more literal than metaphorical.
It’s actually 100 percent true. I was at Georgia Southern; I was sick, I was sleeping downstairs on a foldout couch-bed and I thought I would catch up on some schoolwork. I had my backpack sitting by the sliding glass doors in our little condo and I went and dumped my whole backpack out on my bed. I was laying back, sorting through folders, and this little black thing went wiggling down my leg. I completely freaked out and ran and got the neighbor. He was a big old strapping country boy and he was such a wimp about it. We both ended up taking the sheet out and shaking it out. But I actually wrote the song after watching Bush’s State of the Union address in 2005 or 2006. It’s somehow metaphorical; I don’t quite understand it myself.
Something about watching George Bush address the nation made you think of a black snake in the bed?
It just seemed like there was some trickery going on.
Hank Williams Jr. (Credit: AP) 
FILE - In this May 9, 2011 file photo, actor and musician Tim McGraw arrives at The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles' 21st Annual Simply Shakespeare Fundraiser in Los Angeles. Curb Records has filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against McGraw, claiming the country superstar failed to provide a fifth and final album under their deal that met contractual obligations by an April deadline. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, file)(Credit: AP) 
Alan Jackson gains credibility for his song "Where were you?" 
Dolly Parton, eat your heart out. 
