Steve Earle

Don’t let Steve Earle fool you—his revolution started a long time ago. Always one to speak out for what he believes, it is only now that Earle is being so concise with his words. The signs of his eruption, however, have been brewing for some time. From his ramblings on Copperhead Road, to last year’s live album, which yielded classic between-song quotes like “"It is never, ever unpatriotic or un-American to question anything in a democracy," Earle has always known when to deliver the truth.

So with the presidential election just around the corner, it’s no surprise that Earle views this as a crucial time. And as he writes in the liner notes for his newest album, The Revolution Starts…Now, he had little time to waste:

The word "immediate" best describes the atmosphere around the studio as this record was being made in the late spring of 2004…The most important presidential election of our lifetime was less than seven months away and we desperately wanted to weigh in, both as artists and as citizens of a democracy. All but two of these songs were recorded within 24 hours of the first line hitting the paper. We worked 12- and 14-hour days and in between takes and over meals we talked about the war, the election, baseball, and women, in precisely that order.

Maybe I am getting old.

Is it just me, or does anyone else hope that Earle never grows old? The man is just too important of a musician to grow ragged, too important of a soul to be lost. And old, thank God, is not a good word to describe Revolution, Earle’s attack against the Bush administration.

Emotionally and politically charged, Revolution feels like the freshest batch of songs that have come out of Earle and his band, the Dukes, in quite a while. Speaking in more direct terms than he has ever before, Earle kicks the album off with “The Revolution Starts…,” a song that warns of upheaval “in your own backyard, in your own hometown.” Right away we get the feel of a record that is so raw and inexorable that Earle could have sworn that the songs were recorded within 24 minutes, not hours, of their birth.

The immediacy of the recording proves to be the album’s strongest trait on war-related songs like “Home To Houston” and “Rich Man’s War.” Both tunes give off energy that is unforced and unpolished, making Earle’s fictional stories seem all too real. Earle’s duet with Emmylou Harris on “Comin’ Around” and his impassioned singing on “I Thought You Should Know” give the listener a nice break from politics and find him focusing on love—but even here Earle doesn’t offer any promises; instead he remains blunt with his offerings, suggesting that broken things sometimes remain broken.

The only song that maybe comes off as too direct is the lewd “F the CC.” Earle curses up a storm here about the FCC, FBI, and CIA, giving no reason for his anger other than his frustration with the way democracy is currently being enforced. I understand Earle’s anger, but when you compare this tune with his past work, namely his songs about the death penalty (“Ellis Unit One,” “Over Yonder (Jonathan's Song),” and “Billy Austin”), I can’t help to think that he could have expressed himself a little more creatively. I guess I’ll take his frustration as a sign that, in his rush to record his revolution, sometimes it just feels good to say F!@#. For this, I can’t blame him—the guy’s just as horrified as the rest of us who share his beliefs.