"I’m alive and I’m in reasonably good health considering how bad I’ve been," he said in his slow, menacing Texas drawl. "I spent doing press for the whole last record and the record before that talking about beating my heroin-and-cocaine addiction. If I hadn’t gone to jail (in 1994), I never would have gotten clean. I would have died. And I was probably months away from being dead. The only thing I couldn’t figure out was why it was taking so long." Still, in the liner notes for his latest album El Corazon, he cheerfully states that this is the first recording he’s ever done totally clean.

"Nothing about El Corazon was intentional," he says. "I thought I was going to make this real straight-ahead guitar-electric bass-and-drums, real Crazy Horse kind of record. And I thought it was going to be a musical theme that drove this record. But the songs didn’t want to be that.

I had this whole romantic notion that I was going to go to Ireland and really get ahead on these short stories ... I actually wrote one, and had just put it on a disc and printed out a rough copy of it and I completely and totally lost everything. I just started writing songs. And the songs wanted to be a lot of different kinds of songs. And it ended up probably being the most diverse record I’ve done musically."

However long Earle’s musical reach has grown, he still thinks of himself as a country singer-songwriter. And he isn’t shy about his feelings about the New Country. Disgusted by the scene at a Country Music Awards ceremony, he once referred to Shania Twain as the "highest paid lap-dancer in America."

Steve Earle had been doing an extensive round of international touring, both in solo acoustic and full-electric combo variations. "I always like to perform solo before I make a record," Earle explains. "It gives me a chance to try out new material on audiences. The last show on the tour was in Galway, Ireland, and since I’d never spent much time there, I rented a cottage by the bay to finish up the album. It’s a great spot to write, as it turns out; one of those towns like Key West and Santa Fe, where tourist money allows a permanent slacker population to exist. I’ve always been comfortable in places like that."

Recently I had the pleasure of seeing the fruit of Steve Earles’ work in performances at Tramps, in N.Y.C., February 4th and 5th. They were mammoth and mighty in every way imaginable. He and his band "The Dukes", performed for three and a half hours on both nights with so much heart, it is only natural that his new offering ,on Warner Bros. graces most "Best Of 1997" lists. Steve Earle gives new meaning to the phrases "played his heart out" and "went the extra mile" in a world full of prima donnas, who leave their fans wondering if the show they have attended was really worth the price of admission. As Emmy Lou Harris is fond of saying "Steve Earle is 100 proof !" He certainly brings a blue collar approach to his performances and is undeniably all heart.

"Country music is the most superficial music out there right now. I haven’t been interested in it in a long time," said Earle. His roots are classic country, folk and the Southern story-telling tradition — Woody Guthrie, Hank WIlliams and "stories told around the fire ." "You’ve got to remember who taught me to do this: Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark. I wasn’t taught to go and write songs and worry about whether it was going to get on the radio. I was taught that you ... almost have to commit to doing it and doing it the best you could do, whether you could make any money from it or not."

Steve Earle's band "The Dukes", Kelly Looney - bass, and Emmy Lou Harris's drummer Brady Blades, accompanied show openers, Buddy and Julie Miller. Who did nothing but tremendously boost their fan base and send those newly found fans scurrying to purchase their fine new products ("Poison Love" by Buddy Miller and "Blue Pony" by Julie Miller) on High Tone Records.

Steve Earle began the shows with his prayer like "Christmas In Washington", the solo acoustic pleading for idealistic heroes to combat the conservative turn and inspire the return of real morality in this country. Then things really departed from here, with the robust electricity of "Here I Am" and the "Crazy Horse" like jam of "Taneytown", my skin was crawling with goose bumps! After "Hardcore Troubadour", he slowed things down with an old favorite, "My Old Friend The Blues", a solo acoustic with the band joining in by the refrains.

Both nights we were lucky to hear a spattering of Steves’ hand picked cover tunes, we were blessed to hear him not only cover, but actually plug Son Volt. This part of the program ended each night in absolute bedlam with the first power mando chords to Steve Earle anthem "Copperhead Road", and "The Dukes" getting electric and very rowdy! I don’t care how many times I’ve heard them, Brady Blades thunderous drums on "Copperhead Road" sent shivers up my spine!

The beautifully penned bookend to "Christmas In Washington", on "El Corazon" - "Ft. Worth Blues", was of course introduced, 'This is for Townes'. The haunting "Billy Austin", Steve Earles’ first song to deal directly with his opposition to the death penalty, (the other being "Ellis Unit One" from the excellent "Dead Man Walking Soundtrack" are arguably two of the best songs this prolific songwriter has ever penned.) was far and away the most powerful message song of both evenings. With the execution of Carla Fey Tucker hitting the headlines for night one, it was especially poignant!

The amusing continuity and crowd frenzy continued with the old favorite "Devils Right Hand", with the crowd yelling out the refrain, "Nothin’ touched the trigger but the devils right hand"! Steve showed his adeptness flowing from one musical genre to the next throughout each evening, battering down the boundaries that record companies and radio execs use to segregate country, bluegrass, rock, folk and soul music from each other. He continued this exploration with the tongue in cheek rockabilly of "Nothing But You" from his recently re-released ."Early Tracks" LP.

On Wednesday, the initial encore was introduced by Steve, explaining how do to touring commitments, he was unable to attend a friend's funeral and felt bad enough about it that he dedicated the next cover to him, Carl Perkins’ "Everybodys Tryin’ To Be My Baby". Thursday night however, he went directly to his masterpiece. "On Valentines Day". On both nights the delirium continued with the opening notes of crowd favs "Guitar Town" and "I Aint Ever Satisfied", joined word for word by every drunk still in the joint. The Stone’s "Sweet Virginia," from the 1972 classic "Exile on Main Street" was introduced by explaining that anyone that claimed to know anything about the tunes he covers has to know about his serious penchant for British hillbilly songs.

Both shows ended with dedications to the loudmouth drunks in the audience. The following evening at "The Tradewinds" in Sea Blight, N.J. was a memorable one with none other than Bruce Springsteen joining Steve Earle on stage. As Bruce mounted the stage, Steve told the crowd "Shit they’ll let anyone in this place."

The Steve Earle's shows ended at midnight, and with my approaching middle age, my lower back was in need of serious repair. I hadn’t stood on my feet for this long a time on consecutive nights since the marathon Grateful Dead shows of the 1970’s! The scariest thing is that I would not refrain from doing it again and again.