What The Great Players Do... (Train A Comin - Steve Earle)

Member Name: lynn_bex

Product:	Train A Comin - Steve Earle
Date:	31/01/03 (414 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Educational Lyrics, Based Upon Personal Experience, ...Learned the Hard Way

Disadvantages: "Country" is much misunderstood

This time last year, I reviewed the London gig, “Concert for a Landmine Free World,” and doffed my hat to the magnificent Steve Earle…

To quote what I said then:

“Having served time in prison for drug offences, Earle was released in 1994 and has since been living clean and sober, rebuilding his own life, and trying to right many of the wrongs in this world. He has been quoted as saying, “Anger and violence breeds more anger and violence,” referring to both the US penal system and current world conflict.

As well as giving his support to the “Landmine Free World” project from the outset, Earle is totally opposed to the death penalty, and actively supports relatives of those on death row in the US, as well as helping the prisoners where possible….”

Earle’s post-prison albums, released in 1995 and 1996, are particular favourites of mine…

If you will excuse me, I’ll quote Steve Earle from the liner notes of his SECOND post-prison album, “I Feel Alright,” before proceeding with this review of the first…

“PERSPECTIVE [he writes, on the cover of “I Feel Alright”]

When I was locked up, I was getting ready to go off on this boy that stole my radio. My partner Paul asked me where I was going. I said, “To get my radio – and then go to the hole for a little while.” He looked at me like I look at my 13 year old sometimes and said, “No, you ain’t. You’re gonna sit your little white ass down and do your little time and then you’re gonna get out of here and make me a nice record.”

SO I MADE TWO.

Peace. [It’s signed]
S.E.
November 1995”
~~
And so to that first post-prison album, the amazing, all-acoustic, “Train A Comin’.”

Backed by three top Country Pickers: Norman Blake (
Guitar, Hawaiian Guitar, Fiddle, Dobro & Mandolin); Peter Rowan (Mandolin, Mandola,Vocals, Gut String Guitars); and Roy Huskey (Acoustic Bass,) Earle himself is responsible for vocals plus Guitar, Mandolin, High String Guitar, 12-String Guitar, and Harmonica on this wonderful toe-tapping recording and, just to bulk-up the credentials of this acoustic outfit, Emmylou Harris duets on two cuts…

To set the scene, I must now quote Earle’s introductory notes on THIS album liner:-

“From the jump, this ain’t my unplugged record! I made most of these songs up before I was plugged in the first place. I hitch-hiked to Nashville from Texas in November ’74 and began my higher education in the pickin’ parties that went all night nearly every night back then. I had good teachers and I learned fast.

In those days I made up songs and then I went out and played ‘em for anyone who would listen – Simple. It wasn’t until ’82 that anybody would let me make a record. Some of those old songs have been dusted off for acoustic tours over the years, whenever I was feeling out of touch or I needed the money, and my favourites are here, along with a few new ones and a few covers.

This is what I used to do, and it is what the great players on this record do every day of their lives, come hell or high water; but make no mistake, this ain’t no part of no unplugged nothing’ - God, I hate MTV.

Steve Earle. January 1995”

[Oh, I LOVE album notes – and this particular CD has an exceptionally quotable liner, Steve Earl himself having provided a lead-in to every track…]

1. MYSTERY TRAIN PART II (Earle. ’95)

[Steve says: “Made up this mandolin line in L.A. before the lights went out. Finished the lyric the day we recorded it: HillBillies from Hell]

This opening track has me tapping along so frantically that I
keep forgetting there are no drums on this album… HillBillies from Hell, indeed!

“There’s a train a comin’/Hear them tracks a hummin’/There’s a train a comin’

Can’t you hear her blowin’? / …Wonder where she’s goin’?”

…I think I want to be a Hillbilly, instead of a London commuter…

2. HOMETOWN BLUES (Earle. ’77)

[Steve says: Went home to Texas and no one remembered me but the cops]

This is another foot-tapper, with a wonderful chorus that will have me lapsing into “sing-alonga-pub-song-mode” if I’m not careful.

You can hear this kind of music any way you choose; it could be country, folk, blues, jazz… But there is always a story in the lyrics and, as often as not, a universal truth, somewhere in those lines…

“I wish I’d never come back home/It don’t feel right since I’ve been grown/I can’t find any of my old friends hangin’ round/Won’t nothing bring you down like your hometown….

[CHORUS]
Home is where the heart is/Ain’t that what they always say?/My heart lies in broken pieces/Scattered along the way…”

Round about now, I could be crying into me beer.

3. SOMETIMES SHE FORGETS (Earle. ’79)

[Steve says: “I can’t remember”]

This is the kind of country song that’s sneered at by those who hear the tune but are too shallow to listen to the lyrics, let alone read between the lines…

“If you see her out tonight/And she tells you it’s just the lights/That bring her here and not her loneliness/That’s what she says but sometimes she forgets…

Sometimes she forgets that not too long ago she swore/She wasn’t gonna’ let her heart be broken anymore…

So now she k
eeps it locked away/It grows colder every day/And it won’t warm to any man’s caress…

Hey now, don’t give up ‘cause sometimes she forgets…”
~~
If Steve can’t remember, who am I to say how you should interpret these lyrics?

Tell you what, though: a clean and sober post-prison Earle won’t take advantage of the lady…
~~

4. MERCENARY SONG (Earle. ’74)

[Steve says: I found the original lyric to this recently on the back of a Ciraco’s Pizza menu so I guess I wrote it at work.]

Here we have a story song, telling some unpalatable truths.

“Me and Bill there, we both come from Georgia/Met Hank out in New Mexico/We’re bound for Durango to join Pancho Villa/We hear that he’s payin’ in gold…

[Pancho Villa was a sometime cattle rustler and bandit, who became a revolutionary general, fighting against Mexican President Porfirio Diaz round about 1910.]

“I guess a man’s got to do what he’s best at…

…And we’re bound for the border/We’re soldiers of fortune/And we’ll fight for no country but we’ll die for good pay/Under the flag of the greenback dollar/Or the peso down Mexico way.”

5. GOODBYE (Earle. ’95)

[Steve says: I TOLD you I couldn’t remember]

I think Mr Earle remembers rather more than he cares to admit.

“I remember holdin’ on to you/All them long and lonely nights I put you through…
…I’m sure I made you cry/But I can’t remember if we said goodbye…

Was I just off somewhere, just too high?

…I only miss you here every now and then…

…Most Novembers I break down and cry/But I can’t remember if we said goodbye.”

This sounds like a heart-felt apology to me, but I would
not dream of asking the lady concerned to forgive the unforgiveable. That said, I have a feeling that today’s Steve Earle would welcome the impossibility of undoing the past.

6. TOM AMES’ PRAYER (Earle. ’75)

[Steve says: Written in the girls’ dormitory at Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, Texas. – My grandmother was the dorm mother.]

The Gunfight at the OK Corral has nothing on this morality tale, set to one hell of a challenging beat… - Think Folk/Country - with attitude!

“Everyone in Nacadoches knew Tom Ames would come to some bad end/Well the sheriff had caught him stealin’ chickens and such, by the time that he was ten/

And one day his daddy took a ten dollar bill and he tucked it in his hand/He said I can tell you’re headed for trouble son, and your momma wouldn’t understand…”

From this point, Tom Ames is on a downward spiral, living outside the law until such time as his luck finally runs out and, looking up to the sky, with his back to the wall, he realises that praying is the only thing he has never tried…

“You don’t owe me nothin’ and as far as I know, Lord, I don’t owe nothin’ to you/
And I ain’t asking for a miracle, Lord, just a little bit of luck will do/
And you know I ain’t never prayed before, but it always seemed to me/
If prayin’ is the same as beggin’ Lord, I don’t take no charity…

[With his back to the wall, Tom Ames’ prayer continues with some rather unsavoury recollections… Until he closes…]

“Yeah but who in the hell am I talkin’ to/There ain’t no one here but me/

Then he cocked both his pistols and he spit in the dirt/And he walked out in the street.”

Given that this was written long before Steve Earle “got clean and sober,” I don
’t quite know what to say…

So I’m saying nothing…

[Save that parents with 10 year old hoodlums may need to think long and hard]

7. NOTHIN’ WITHOUT YOU. (EARLE. ’80)

[Steve says: The first time I met Emmylou, she came in to sing on Guy Clark’s first album. She gave me half of her cheeseburger. I wasn’t the same for weeks.]

[Steve Sings]
“I’m the keeper of your heart/I keep the flame when we’re apart/I’m the lover in your arms/Or a baby soft and warm

I’m a hero in your eyes/I’m a comfort when you cry/When you hurt me, I’m you’re fool/But I’m nothin’ without you

[Emmylou joins the chorus]
“No I’m nothin’ without you/It don’t matter what I do/If I win or if I lose/Sweetheart, I’m nothin’ without you…

…I’m a poet, just the same/Every time I speak your name…”

Round about now, I’ll give him the whole cheeseburger…

8. ANGEL IS THE DEVIL. (Earle. ’92)

(Steve says: One of only four songs written during my vacation in the ghetto. Now me & John A. Lomax have something in common: we’ve both ripped off Leadbelly.)

[“Leadbelly,” who, {ahem} does not seem to have been a gentlemanly type where women are concerned, was born Huddie Ledbetter in Louisiana, USA in 1889, and was discovered and recorded by the folklorist John A. Lomax, whilst serving time for attempted murder in Louisiana State Prison. An early release was negotiated and Leadbelly, who had always picked up and played music dating from the days of slavery, went on to record such classics as “The Rock Island Line,” “The Midnight Special,” and, “Goodnight Irene.” Whether he wrote these songs, or adapted earlier folk songs, is unclear, but Leadbelly
has long been regarded as the first to introduce them to the record-buying public.]

This track rocks like crazy, while Steve struggles with his irresistible bad girl…

“Everybody call her angel/She’s no stranger to the devil, I know/
His mark is on her body/His fire’s burnin’ in her soul/
When we’re makin’ love, he’s laughin’ at us down below/
She’s the devil I know…

…Said she come from heaven/Angel is the devil I know…

…Got the kind of face you swear you seen someplace before/
Coulda’ been your Mamma/Coulda’ been a Mexican whore….

Now she’d drag you straight to hell… …think I’ll just go/
…Every inch she drags me down/I’m closer to the glow…”

9. I’M LOOKING THROUGH YOU. (Lennon/McCartney. ’65)

(Steve says: This is the stuff I cut my teeth on – Middle Class White Boy Roots Music)

Country Music mockers should perhaps take note of this terrific version of a familiar Lennon and McCartney song, featuring:

Steve Earle – Guitar & Vocal; Peter Rowan – Mandolin & Vocal; Norman Blake – Dobro; Roy Huskey – Accoustic Bass & Inspiration.

“I’m looking through you, where did you go/I thought I knew you, what did I know?/
You don’t look different, but you have changed/I’m looking through you, you’re not the same…

…Why, tell me why, did you not treat me right?/Love has a nasty habit of disappearing over night…

You’re thinking of me, the same old way/You were above me, but not today,
The only difference is you’re down there/I’m looking through you, and you’re nowhere.”

Whether it’s Lennon/McCartney or McCartney/Lennon (as Sir Paul now seems to prefer,) this is my f
avourite version of this song of theirs…

[Love that dobro, which I presume to be responsible for the “rah-ta-ta-raspberry” kind of a noise…]

10. NORTHERN WINDS. (Blake. ’95)

(Steve says: “Shut up and learn something”)

This is a sweet little guitar instrumental track (1.40 minutes) by Norman Blake that might just save us from all this sing-along-nonsense.

[As Steve says, “Shut up, and learn something!”]

11. BEN McCULLOCH. (Earle. ’75)

(Steve says: This song was my Dad’s idea. Dedicated to him and to Guy Clark, who taught me everything I know about story songs.)
~~
Written in the first-person, with justifiable bitterness, this is a snapshot of the American Civil War and, with minimal research, I can report that Ben McCulloch was a real person.

A former Indian Fighter and Texas Ranger, McCulloch became a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army, during the American Civil War.

McCulloch’s background and credentials may serve as a timely reminder that today’s America is a very young country.
~~
“We signed up in San Antone, my brother Paul and me/To fight with Ben McCulloch and the Texas infantry/
Well, the poster said we’d get a uniform and seven bucks a week/The best rations in the army and a rifle we could keep…

Well they told us that our enemy would all be dressed in blue/
They forgot about the winter’s cold and the cursed fever too/
My brother died at Wilson’s creek and Lord I seen him fall…

Goddamn you, Ben McCulloch/I hate you more than any other man alive/
And when you die, you’ll be a foot soldier just like me/
In the devil’s infantry

…I killed a boy the other night, who’d never even shaved/
I don’t even know what I’m fightin’ for/ I ain’t never
owned a slave.

12. RIVERS OF BABYLON….
(Steve says: “Hillbillies in Jamaica - Ain’t you ever heard of the Blue Mountains?”)

This is the second track upon which Emmylou Harris duets, and it’s the perfect example of a Raggae/Country hybrid recording of an educational story song…

In many situations, so far as I am concerned, songs are more valuable than books…

“By the rivers of Babylon/Where he sat down/And there he wept/When he remember Zion

It was the wicked

Carry us away in captivity/Require from us a song/How can we sing King Alfa’s song/In a strange land?”

13. TECUMSEH VALLEY. (Townes Van Zandt. ’69)
[Steve says: I named my oldest boy after T. ‘Nuff said…]

“The name she gave was Caroline, the daughter of a miner/
And her ways were free and it seemed to me/The sunshine walked beside her…

She came from Spencer, ‘cross the hill/She said her Pa had sent her/
’Cause the coal was low and soon the snow/Would turn the skies to winter.”

Well, she said she’d come to look for work/She was not seeking favours/
For a dime a day and a place to stay/She’d turn those hands to labour,

The times were hard. Lord, the jobs were few/All through Tecumseh Valley/
But she asked around and a job she found/Tending bar for Gypsy Sally

She saved enough to get back home/When spring replaced the winter/
But her dreams were denied, her Pa had died/The word came down from Spencer…”

Awwwww…I can’t complete these lyrics and end on a sad note…

The lyrics are undoubtedly on-line somewhere, should you be determined to hear the end of this sad story…

Me? I'll end:

“Peace,” (quoting Steve Earle, from November, 1995)

Lynn

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