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26 illinoisentertainer.com may 2019
trout,” he tacks on. “There are some places
in Idaho now where there are just full-
blown cuts. So I always carry a couple of
fly rods on the tour bus when we’re play-
ing out west, which is where I started run-
ning into the hot shots, all of us up early in
the hotel lobby while everyone else was
still asleep. I had no idea I had such a fol-
lowing among those guys, and once I real-
ized what they did, that was the beginning
of where “The Firebreak Line” started.
And of course, some of them fish.”
As with composing, there were many
new tricks of the fly fishing trade for this
novice to learn. Sometimes complicated,
but often geographically simple. “Like, the
fish are way bigger in New Zealand than
they are anywhere else,” he says, “because
there are no natural predators, so they’re
way easier to catch, but harder to land
because they’re so big. So I learned how to
land a big fish while fishing in New
Zealand because you can catch five It’s genuinely amazing that Earle found
enough free time to cut his GUY tribute.
But he'd known the laconic legend for so
long – since 1979, when he first hitchhiked
to Nashville from his native San Antonio
and wound up playing bass in Clark’s
band, over a decade before his twanging
masterpiece of a debut, Guitar Town, came
out – he had no trouble selecting appropri-
ate covers. He’d been performing them so
long; he knew them all by heart. In 2009,
he’d noted the passing of another friend
and mentor, Townes Van Zandt, with
“Townes.” “And he did not co-write when
I met him, and he never encouraged me to
co-write,” the toutee recalls. “But at the
end of his life he was co-writing with
everybody, and he asked me to write a
song with him. But I just could never get
around to doing it, and that was one of my
biggest regrets in life.” Because the sage-
like Clark, a luthier by trade, had never
failed to give him great, perfectly precise
pounds and up rainbow trout all day there,
whereas you could fish your whole life in
North America and catch maybe one or
two fish that weighed over five pounds.
And I don’t do lakes — I like streams, with
running water.”
The man isn’t a Complete Angler just
yet. He still has one species on his bust list,
he admits. “I really, really dig big brown
trout – I just haven’t caught one yet.” They
call them fish stories for a reason. Does he
have any I-almost-caught-Mr.-Big whop-
pers to relate? Yes, he reports excitedly. “I
had two fish on at the same time! One on
the dropper, one on the lower leader. One
of them broke off, but I actually managed
to land the other. Me and the guide were
just standing there, going, ‘Are you SEE-
ING this?’ It was this big pool in a small
stream, and both fish just naturally bit at
the same time.” He pauses again, lost in
translation perhaps? Could be. “Other fish-
ermen may have trouble believing that
yarn,” he snickers. “But anybody else will
not know what the fuck I’m talking
about!” advice. “He’d say things like, ‘A song is
never finished until you play it for an audi-
ence.’’
There was only one questionable inclu-
sion – “The Randall Knife,” a father-son
sonnet so stark it can bring tears to your
eyes almost every time. Earle worried that
it was almost too personal for inclusion.
“But Guy worked on songs harder than
anybody I knew, and I learned so much
from him. And he was always working,
right up to the end.” Songwriting by its
very nature is a very unusual career, Earle
concludes. “Because nobody tells you
when to punch the clock, or when to get up
and start developing your ideas every day.
I mean, if you can’t get up to work? You are
fucked, and you’ll never amount to any-
thing.”
Appearing 5/25 at Foellinger Theatre, Ft.
Wayne, IN; 6/27 Summerfest, Milwaukee