Earle sticks to songs written in the mid-’70s or earlier, including underrated gems like the beautiful Little Bird and the playful I Makes Money (Money Don’t Make Me). Some of the songs come directly from Earle’s early set lists when he was still mostly covering. Jerry Jeff is Earle’s fourth cover album. He released JT in 2020 as a tribute to his son Justin Townes Earle, who died of an accidental drug overdose. Jerry Jeff is the third tribute to songwriters Steve Earle considered friends and mentors, following his 2009 album of Townes Van Zandt songs and his 2019 tribute to Guy Clark.
book deals
For now, Earle doesn’t know when he might release another album of his own songs; he has a lot of other things to juggle. Aside from Tender Mercies, he is working on a sequel to his 2011 debut novel, I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive. It is the first of a two-book publishing deal; the other was going to be a literary memoir, which he has put on hold.
“It was very much about recovery and I will finish it one day,” he says. “But because it’s primarily a recovery book, it became a different book when Justin died. I just told my editor, ‘I can’t finish this right now.’ But the deal was for two books, the memoirs and a novel. Memories are worth more money and I’ve already spent the first half. So I said ‘either we change the delivery or I’ll give you your money back because I can’t write this right now’. He agreed to turn the delivery around, so I went back to work on the novel.”
Given that some of Earle’s work in the past has been based on his progressive political views, it might seem like his country has provided a lot of inspiration in recent years. In 2004, he released the fiery album The Revolution Starts Now in direct response to the reign of President George W. Bush. These days, those years almost seem quaint compared to the Trump years and what followed, including the recent Roe vs. Wade by far-right elements of the Supreme Court.
“I still write more songs about girls than anything else, but some work will probably come of it,” Earle says of the political climate in his country. “I am very pragmatic about this country. I have never believed that it was the purest form of democracy in the world. I really think people have to learn to talk to each other, whether they think they’re going to agree with them beforehand or not. That is the biggest problem we have come to.
“While we all take on our individual issues that concern us, most people take a problem for granted, the people who are actually in power have manipulated the federal courts. It’s not just the Supreme Court, this has been going on since the 1980s. The powerful people of this country, every time the Republicans have been in power, they’ve been getting as many judges as they can. Now, there are 870 people, that’s how many federal judges there are, that no one elected. None of them are elected, but they are really deciding the future of this country and that’s scary.”
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