"That's my step-daughter, who starts calling me daddy about two weeks before her birthday!" quips Steve Earle, snapping his mobile phone shut to reveal a quick-on-the-draw responsible parent. At the drop of a flat-pick, he becomes a cocktail of clashing ingredients: one part pipe-smoking father-knows-best to one part ex-junkie hellraiser, a spoonful of outspoken activist and campaigner, mixed with a pinch of beard-stroking bard and published prose writer. Add a measure of take-no-prisoners rock and roller who tears up stages for two and a half hours with his high-voltage rock shows, mix with a little bit of Nashville outcast and stir with some acoustic songwriting troubadour.
Just when we thought there was a pattern to his musical psyche, he's taken The Sex Pistols and Bob Dylan out of his traveling CD case, replaced them with Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin, and gone on to make a bluegrass CD with The Del McCoury Band. The result is The Mountain, arguably the best CD of his career... until the next one.
"It's just the most hard-core thing that I can imagine someone doing," ruminates Earle at this year's Merlefest, Doc Watson's annual festival in North Carolina, the day after a blazing performance with the Del McCoury Band. "To wake up one day and become a bluegrass musician: 'Okay, I'm going to take on this type of music that's so difficult that I'm going to have to practice all the time for the rest of my life to get pretty good, and it guarantees that I'll never make any money!' " Well, exactly how did this bluegrass CD come about, anyway?
"I thought this record was going to be another Train Band record and then [bass player] Roy Huskey died," explained Earle, as pipe smoke twirled around him. "Meanwhile, I'd started hanging out at the Station Inn [Nashville's bluegrass HQ] again and Ronnie [McCoury] and I got friendly. He started coming up and playing on some of my records and other records that I produced." Earle then recorded "I Still Carry You Around" with the whole Del McCoury band for last year's El Corazon. After the band did a whole set together at The Station Inn, a lightbulb flashed in his head. "That night I said to Del, 'If I was to write a whole record of bluegrass songs, would you guys record it with me?' and he said, 'Yeah'. I learned later that he thought it would take four years. Nine months later we were in the studio, recording!"
Steve Earle did not just parachute into bluegrass music with The Mountain, however. The first to shamelessly confess that he's been stealing off the form from day one, Earle became close enough to Bill Monroe in the last couple of years of his life to go to his funeral. The Father of Bluegrass himself even made a surprise appearance at one of his Train Band shows. "Five songs into the show — I think we were playing 'Angel is the Devil' — all of a sudden the audience explodes, and I turned to look and there was Bill Monroe and he started playing. We played three or four songs, I guess." When Bill put the mandolin down and took his seat, the unexpected happened. "Ronnie McCoury was there, Nancy Blake, my parents, and Lisa Huskey. It was December 1st, and someone at the back of the auditorium goes, 'Merry Christmas, Bill!' and he said, 'Okay, we can do that one!' and there we went. I just completely lost control of the show for the first time in my career — including the shows I did on dope!"
