Three-time Grammy winner, country outlaw stalwart and Treme star Steve Earle is in the midst of a 30th anniversary tour for Copperhead Road, a triple-platinum-selling juggernaut. Speaking to OffBeat.com from Laguardia Airport in New York City, Earle remains one of the busiest performers well into the fourth decade of his career, which was most recently punctuated with 2017’s So You Wannabe an Outlaw.
Ahead of his May 1 performance at Tipitina’s with The Dukes (and special guests The Mastersons), Earle shared his thoughts on the dismantling of Confederate monuments in New Orleans, Mayor Mitch Landrieu, the perennial value of political music and more.
Do you remember the first time in your life when you realized how important New Orleans was to the music you were interested in?
The first thing I remember about New Orleans is po-boys. I was probably six or seven. That was before I was really playing music. I knew Gatemouth Brown and saw him play when I was a teenager. There was also a trad-jazz band called The Happy Jazz Band that I remember. Plus, I grew up an Elvis fan and saw King Creole 150 times. Up until The Beatles, it was all about Elvis. Separating music and New Orleans…I remember becoming aware of the two things almost simultaneously.
You released “Mississippi, It’s Time” in 2015 as a response to the state refusing to remove the Confederate flag from its stage flag. What are your thoughts on the recent debate over the removal of Confederate symbols like Robert E. Lee’s statue in New Orleans?
I’m pretty proud of your mayor right now. I’ve had a couple conversations with him. I saw him on Maher a few weeks ago and he’s a smart guy. He hasn’t been afraid to just say something about it, you know what I mean? He made a decision to fall on one side of that or the other, and he chose the right side. It was the right decision, and that’s rare nowadays. Look, the storm changed things. It changed the demographics quite a bit. And that’s OK; that’s the way New Orleans is supposed to be. But a white mayor in New Orleans doesn’t make too much sense.
I talked to him once about some kind of noise ordinance some of my friends down in New Orleans were concerned about. They told me they were trying to outlaw music in the French Quarter and stuff. I said “what?” and was able to track Landrieu down and gave him my pitch. Music is not noise in New Orleans under any circumstances, no matter what time of day or night.
Some people in New Orleans want to rename Lee Circle after Fats Domino or Allen Toussaint.
That would be wonderful. I loved Allen Toussaint. I got to work with him once and it’s sort of a big deal to me. It was one of the most thrilling experiences of my life.
While celebrating 30 years of Copperhead Road and the Ronald Reagan-inspired song “Snake Oil,” isn’t it kind of sad when this kind of music remains so relevant today, given the current administration? Isn’t the goal for something like that to no longer be relevant?
It is. I mean, it’s sort of convenient, financially for me. It’s funny because people writing about me suddenly becoming a political songwriter in the ’90s is bullshit. Guitar Town was political. With Copperhead, it was the ’80s and it was the politics then but it’s the same thing when you’re talking about what happens between most people and a very small number of people that really have control of things and always have been in power. That dynamic doesn’t change much, unfortunately. In Mexico, the same five families have always owned all the land in Mexico and they probably always will. And they’re Spanish families, European families.
As much as we think things change on a day to day basis, things really do remain constant in the grand scheme of things.
My experience with change—and I have a lot of it, otherwise I’d be dead—is that change is slow and it hurts a lot.
Well, at least you feel catharsis while writing new music, right?
That’s part of it, yeah. My next album is going to be Guy Clark songs. And I’m also already writing the political record everybody expected out of me this time. But I’m writing it very carefully and timing it for 2020. I don’t even know if we’ll be talking about Trump in 2020. I don’t think he’s gonna make it. It’s going to be written for people who voted for Trump and maybe didn’t have to, instead of preaching to the choir.
Tickets for Steve Earle & The Dukes with special guests The Mastersons at Tipitina’s are available here. Doors for the 18+ event open at 8 p.m.
