Steve Earle Sees The Light

“It wasn’t number one the day he died,” Colin Escott clarifies in his Williams biography, “although it shot to number one in the wake of his death.”

Put two and two together – Earle’s high-concept approach to albums plus a nod to the world’s most important honky-tonk singer-songwriter – and you’d almost expect this one to be a Hank tribute, in the way that Earle’s 2009 covers album Townes paid homage to his artistically gifted though self-destructive mentor Townes Van Zandt.

But that’s just it. By Earle’s standards, there wasn’t much of a concept worked out – Williams-commemorating or otherwise – by the time he headed into the studio with Burnett’s tried-and-tested team.

He’d written five of the eleven songs for dual use in other projects: “God Is God” and “I Am A Wanderer” for the album he produced for Joan Baez, Day After Tomorrow; “Lonely Are The Free” for the indie film “Leaves of Grass,” in which he had a small role; “Heaven Or Hell” for the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss follow-up that was not to be; and “This City” for Treme, in which he plays the less-small role of street singer Harley Watt. That last track was the first one Earle and Burnett recorded together – in New Orleans, with horn parts by Allen Toussaint, no less.

Earle didn’t notice any theme running through those songs, or the rest he’d written, until he was listening to preliminary mixes. Then it hit him: “I said, ‘Oh my god! This record’s about the same thing the book’s about. This record is about mortality.’”

Mortality is only one of the heaviest subjects a songwriter could want to tackle. He managed to do it without making the songs feel the least bit burdened.

Only one of them works truly traditional territory where death themes are concerned, and that’s Earle’s murder ballad “Molly-O,” a sinister-sounding Celtic string-band romp.

Elsewhere are polished examples of Earle songwriting staples. One’s autobiographical (rockabilly album opener “Waitin’ On The Sky”), another political (“Little Emperor,” a hooky, down-home goodbye and good riddance to the second President Bush) and still another a story of blue-collar struggle told in character (Anglo-Celtic country rocker “The Gulf Of Mexico”). During the former he expresses boyish amazement and gratitude that he’s lived long enough to do, and savor, what he’s doing now, and the latter two mark significant endings – of an administration and a way of life.

It’s worth mentioning that Justin Townes Earle included his own story-song about pan-generational working-class survival – titled “Working For The MTA” – on last year’s Harlem River Blues.

So, does his father feel like they share much common ground as songwriters?

“We have a lot more in common than he thinks we do, probably,” the elder Earle maintains. “I mean, he’s a folkie. He wants to be something else … His best songs are as good as anybody’s, and he plays really great, and he’s a good entertainer. That means he’ll probably be okay.”

After Earle blows off steam during the first several tracks of I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive, the real action begins, and it’s considerably quieter. “God Is God,” “Every Part Of Me” and “I Am A Wanderer” possess something a lot of folks aren’t accustomed to looking for in his work – tenderness to go with all that passion.

“God Is God” may qualify as his first hymn of belief; it’s the simple, heartfelt confession of a soul who’s at peace with the existence of God in the here and now, sans religious particulars. “Every Part Of Me” is hardly his first romantic ode, but it ranks among his most touching; to hear it is to heara toughened, love-weary troubadour completely give himself over to lifelong love, and dare to hope it might outlast his time on earth, in spirit or legend. Earle’s folk ballad “I Am A Wanderer” has gentle dignity to its melody and, at its core, empathy for those who mount inner resistance against outer oppression.

As much as the album is about mortality, it’s also about living and loving well right up to the end, and not sweating that end too much. In hindsight, Earle doesn’t find it at all insignificant that his father died while he was writing some of these songs.

“My dad,” he sighs, “my dad had a hard time leaving here. Part of it was me telling myself maybe not to fight quite as hard as he did. There comes a point when you’ve got to call it. But our society makes it hard to call it. We are taught to be terrified of death. The only way that this culture’s ever learned to deal with death is to teach that you’re gonna continue to live after it’s over.

“I definitely believe in God. But I don’t believe that God does parking spaces, and I’m not sure that the continuation of my life perpetually isn’t a parking space, when it gets right down to it.”