Private Idaho
By Tom Lanham
I
t’s a puzzlement, a Sphinx-like riddle
for the ages. How in holy hell has resi-
dent alt-country iconoclast Steve Earle
managed to keep his mouth shut over the
past three Trump-and-Brexit bedeviled
years? Make no mistake, what he’s offered
instead has been stunning – 2017’s picture-
perfect loper So You Wannabe an Outlaw –
polished still brighter by guests like Willie
Nelson and Miranda Lambert – and the
new labor of love GUY, a collection of cov-
ers by the Texan’s first Nashville mentor,
the late Guy Clark. Relatively speaking,
these are two of the warmest and fuzziest
entries in his 18-album catalog. And he's’
not vowing any return to vitriolic, fanged
form in the future.
“The next record I’m working on is
going to be very political, but just not a
"preaching to the choir" record,” swears
the 64-year-old. “It’s aimed at reaching
people that maybe didn’t vote the way that
I did, and seeing that maybe it didn’t have
to be that way, because the biggest mistake
we make is thinking that people who
voted for Donald Trump are stupid and
that this was an anomaly that can’t ever
happen again.” What went wrong with the
last election, then? Earle pauses, then sighs
somberly. “There was just a lot of people
out there that didn’t see their lives getting
any better, and they just voted for some-
thing different. I want to take to THOSE
people and try and change their hearts and
minds. And I still really believe that music
can do that.” How did Earle go placidly
through the noise and waste while refus-
ing to let the oppressive, divisive negativi-
ty weigh him down? Lyrically, he left a few
subtle hints on “Outlaw,” starting the fid-
dle-fueled stomper “The Firebreak Line,”
originally intended to be the album’s only
political cut. On the surface, it details the
exploits of a turn of the century firefighter,
Ed Pulaski, who invented the trade’s
definitive tool (known as the Pulaski Tool)
that’s still in use today. “But I tweaked his
story a little bit,” chuckles Earle, who has
the protagonist saving all of his trapped
workmen in a real-life 1910 mining disas-
ter that not all survived. But he represents
something much grander — and more uni-
versal — in scope — the one thing that’s
guaranteed to provide him with inner
peace, every single time.
For the past decade, or so – especially
while touring the American West with his
backing group The Dukes – the 64-year-old
had found himself rising earlier and earli-
er in his secluded mountain hotels, where
he began bumping into the same cadre of
burly jump-suited gents in the lobby. They
recognized him right away (perhaps by his
increasingly pendulous salt and pepper
beard —and praised his work. But the
more he learned about these men and their
death-defying deeds, the more he was in
awe of their accomplishments. They were
professional firefighters or ‘hot shots’ that
would soon be celebrated in “Firebreak
Line” – giving them their own anthem was
the least he reckoned he could. But Earle
was staying in the same lodgings and up at
dawn for completely different reasons —
he kept venturing deeper into the wilder-
ness, where forest fires regularly raged out
of control, in pursuit of his one remaining
addiction – fly fishing, which demanded
monastic patience he never used to pos-
sess.
None of this happened overnight. It
took some convincing. Earle first experi-
enced hip-to-wader-booted angling the
same way many Americans did — by
viewing Robert Redford’s glorious depic-
tion of the sport in his 1992 film adaptation
of the Norman Mcclean's novel A River
Runs Through It. The sunlight-dappled
visuals of one man testing his skill against
an implacable force of nature like a stream
stirred primordial emotions deep inside
the singer, just as he was trying to quit
heroin – possession of which had earned
him a year-long sentence in the stir, all part
of his edgy outlaw appeal, even though he
only served 60 days.
“So basically, fishing was a recovery
thing,” he recollects. “My first sponsor
fished with a fly rod, and he started taking
me to all these fishing spots in town, and
that’s when I first started TRYING to do it.
And then I’m in New Mexico, of all places,
and I got a female guide who was a really
good teacher. And she taught me a lot
about it, so I finally started learning how to
fish.”
The singer pauses, mid-drawl, pauses,
searching for the right equation. “It was
just one of those things that happen,” he
decides. “I travel all over the world, and
I'm exposed to a lot of stuff, so I got into fly
fishing the same way I ended up writing a
song that’s played at every Irish wedding
and pub session, “The Galway Girl.” And
it’ll still be getting played long after I’m
gone. Every time musicians get together in
Ireland before the night is over, somebody
will play “Galway Girl.” And at every Irish
wedding, too.” Point being, the man does-
n’t question the direction in which the cur-
rent is pulling him. He just relaxes and
goes with the flow.
But in interviews over the years, Earle
holds nothing back, and he’s honest to a
fault. You want to know about the color
and texture of his old prison-issue uni-
form? He’ll willingly tell you everything
you need to know, no holds barred.
Happily, he’ll sing the praises of John
Henry, his autistic son with last (and sev-
enth ex-) Allison Moorer. “I just took my
little boy to the Bahamas,” dad says.
“Although I guess taking a nine-year-old
to the beach is SORT of a vacation.” The
rest of his free time – when he’s not star-
ring in off-Broadway plays like Richard
Maxwell’s recent Samara; penning his own
dramas and novels like the Hank Williams-
themed “I’ll Never Get Out of This World
Alive”; punching the clock as colorful TV-
show characters in “Treme” and “The
Wire”; DJ'ing his own Hardcore Troubadour
show on satellite radio; and running his
annual Camp Copperhead songwriting
workshop, not to mention cranking out
short story collections — is devoted almost
exclusively to fishing. And he’s gotten a
reputation for playing bargain-basement
concerts in off-road locations adjacent to
the type of catch he’s seeking. It’s mainly
trout, and catch and release only. “I can’t
kill them anymore,” he confesses.
“Although I will occasionally humiliate a
fish before I put him back in the water.”
At the moment Earle’s favorite spot, he
swears, is Idaho. “There’s so much less
pressure out there, and there’s brown and
rainbow trout, and there are cuts.” Cuts?
He stops long enough to hip the layman to
fishing vernacular. “I mean CUTTHROAT
continues on page 26
22 illinoisentertainer.com may 2019