Swing Low

19 March 2014 | 5:00 am | Dan Condon

"I do the topical stuff and the political stuff better than a lot of other people do so I think I should do it."

The Low Highway sees people's poet Steve Earle once again take the weight of the world on his shoulders and  somehow speak for an entire society with far more clarity than any one man ought to be able to. “This record was more about what I saw out the window of the bus while travelling through North America,” Earle explains. “I was seeing something a lot closer to what Woody Guthrie saw; times that were as hard as what Woody saw.

“I've written a lot of songs about hard travelling and hard times, but I was doing that forensically, basically. But now things are tough out there, they really are. And that's what The Low Highway is.”

The opening title track speaks of abandoned houses and factories, growing lines of people waiting to be fed. Burinin' It Down is a scathing attack on the policies of the enormous Walmart chain of department stalls and Calico County is a fucked-up tale of broken homes, meth labs and a life in and out of jail.

On top of all this, Earle has his own problems. His battle with drug addiction has been well documented in the past and, on Pocket Full Of Rain, you can almost hear him toying with the idea of turning back to his old ways. He hasn't. “I've been clean 19 years as of September 13th and I've had kind of a rough year, it was hard. I still go to meetings and call my sponsor and do all that stuff, that's how I stay clean. My little boy was diagnosed with autism, Allison [Moorer, Earle's wife] and I are separated and a lot of stuff has happened that I thought I'd never have to go through again. That song came along as I was processing all of that.”

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When asked if he feels he has an obligation to shed light on the state of world in a political and social sense, Earle says he's aware that he does it better than most. “I have an obligation to do what I was put here to do; I do the topical stuff and the political stuff better than a lot of other people do so I think I should do it. I don't make any judgments about what anyone else should do artistically – apart from write the best songs they can write, don't try and put anything past me where you're not even trying.

“I learned to do this from Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, I'm emulating those guys and Bob Dylan and Lou Reed even; I've always known that what I was doing could and would be art if I just paid attention to that. Just say the truest thing that I can think of at the time that's at the core of what I'm trying to make.”

Earle brings his band The Dukes to Australia for the first time in over a decade this year, but he's thrilled to be able to bring them at all. Before his most recent solo tour of the country he said it simply wasn't affordable to bring the band so far across the world, but Bluesfest boss Peter Noble has changed that. “I flew over to speak at BIGSOUND and flew back; I was literally in Australia for 48 hours at most,” Earle tells. “I ran into Peter there and we had a conversation about it; I said I'd love to bring the band but I just can't see how I could make it make sense, and he stepped up to the plate. It's all Peter Noble in this particular case.”

Having Australian country darling Kasey Chambers in support will no doubt help Earle and co shift tickets to their headline dates along the east coast, and Earle is thrilled to be able to tour with Chambers again. “It's a big deal; she's an old friend and I think she's one of the best singers in the world. She's way bigger than I am, it's gonna be kind of strange. I was a little worried about her opening the show, but it was Kasey's idea when it came down to it.”

You might catch Earle paying a little more attention to the straight blues acts if you're at the Byron Bay Bluesfest next year, garnering a little inspiration for what he is anticipating will be a very bluesy follow up to The Low Highway. “Somewhere in the course of next [American] summer we'll start working on the next record, which I think is going to be a blues record. It's something I've got the notion that I want to do, I've got a couple songs and I've got a band who I think will really smoke it.”