In 1986, Steve Earle released an album called Guitar Town. It was one of those recordings that critics immediately called "seminal" and it seemed Earle was a very serious contender indeed. He was a cross between Townes Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen and, despite the customary hostility from predictable Nashville sources, he made a very definite mark. Ten years later, he was living in Barna, Co Galway, writing songs and stories and contemplating a former life of heroin and booze. He was also admitting that a famous spell in jail might well have saved his life.
Steve Earle's post-Guitar Town career has been, to use the normal euphemism, "rather patchy", and at times the plot appeared lost. The music itself provided its own difficulties and was seen as either too left-wing, too rock-influenced, too country or too something else. What it all meant was that Earle never quite seemed to fit any particular bill, and so he ended up in the west of Ireland - one more displaced Texan singer-songwriter in the honourable tradition of outlaw country.
Growing up in San Antonio, Earle began life as an Elvis fan but moved to The Beatles when he was eight. He was listening to country music too and, as a teenager, he took to strumming a guitar - and a very particular guitar at that. Thanks to his aunt's friendship with Jimmie Rodgers's daughter, Anita, the young Earle could call at her house and play the guitar that belonged to the Singing Brakeman himself.
The significance of the relic was not lost on Earle who, many years later, recorded In The Jailhouse Now on the Dylan-driven Jimmie Rodgers' tribute album. It is perhaps inevitable therefore, given Earle's early experiences in Texas and Tennessee, that a regard for tradition and a respect for the originators themselves would be the very heart of the new, improved Steve Earle and his current bluegrass album, The Mountain.
"My mother was from Nashville and we would go there every few years to visit her relatives. I went to The Grand Ol' Opry for the first time when I was seven, and Bill Monroe was on that night. It made a pretty huge impression on me because it was different from everything else on the Opry. I mean I saw Tammy Wynette singing I Don't Want To Play House and a lot of great stuff, but there was a dignity and a power to that bluegrass music that attracted me.
"Then by the time I had started playing on my own in the 1960s, bluegrass was part of the whole folk thing. Things were sort of winding down for Bill Monroe at that point, but then when the folk boom started he found a whole other career. He began playing colleges and in fact that title The Father of Bluegrass Music didn't really come along until he started playing universities. So I've always been exposed to bluegrass, and it has always been a component of the music that I do."
Bill Monroe's first line-up included such legendary names as Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, Chubby Wise and Cedric Rainwater. Between them they basically invented a new kind of music - a high-energy mixture which included elements of honky-tonk, jazz and gospel. The sound was characterised by high-pitched vocal harmonies and furious instrumental breaks, and it appealed to just about anyone with a beating heart. It was no great surprise, therefore, that as soon as Elvis Presley got anywhere near a recording studio, he almost immediately got stuck into Bill Monroe's Blue Moon of Kentucky. The rest is a version of history. For Earle, the development of rock 'n' roll comes down to three figures: Presley, Chuck Berry and his hero Bill Monroe.
"I think it took me years to figure it out. Rock 'n' roll happened in two different places separately, and I don't think that either crew knew what the other was doing. I mean Chuck Berry made his playing different from the others on Chess Records because of that country element in it. If you listen to Maybelline - that's a hillbilly tune! And then there was Sam Phillips in Memphis, and he had this incredible catalogue of blues recordings that he had made, and so that's how the Elvis thing happened.
"And it's amazing how similar what Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley did turned out. They had their own styles and their own approach to it, but it really was sort of the same thing. But Monroe is a little different. The music comes directly from old-time stuff that he was hearing growing up in Kentucky. But there was also a real conscious thing of making it into his own brand of music with his own stamp on it."
The Mountain is Earle's ninth studio album, and the spirit of Monroe takes it far from the hard-living, hard-rocking feel of some previous releases. This is very definitely a bluegrass record and, although these are all Steve Earle songs, they are played in the best of bluegrass style by a group of musicians - The Del McCoury Band - which just happens to be perhaps the finest bluegrass band still playing. (For added credentials, McCoury actually played with Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys throughout the 1950s).
And so the recording, the album and the tour have all a serious personal thrill for Earle himself. This is the music he first heard at The Grand Ol' Opry at the age of seven, and still hears whenever fiddles are unleashed in Galway.
"It all comes directly from Irish music! In Galway, when I hang out with traditional musicians, we run across tunes all the time that have one name here and another name in the States. I always knew there was a connection because I started in coffee houses, and folkies are kind of amateur musicologists anyway. I mean I had always wanted to know where songs came from. Like when I heard the Doc Watson/Clarence Ashley recordings - that stuff like The Coo-Coo Bird - you wonder where it comes from.
"I've been pretty lucky because when I play Irish music I get to play with Sharon Shannon and Donal Lunny! We're going to do stuff together in the future and in fact I've already written a song called Galway Girl that Sharon and I are going to record together. And I'm going to buy a place in Galway too. I love to come here and write and play. It's nowhere near over with yet. But I can't keep up with those guys! And then with the bluegrass thing, when I finally got to the point where I could keep up with those guys, I got to make a record with the finest bluegrass band in the world!"
Despite commercial disappointments and serious personal crises over the past 12 years, Earle remains an influential figure highly regarded among his peers - Emmylou Harris, Iris De Ment and Gillian Welch were among those who showed up to sing on The Mountain. Some of his songs have been covered by fellow "outlaws" Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings and, in 1975, he very nearly managed to have a song called Mustang Wine recorded by Elvis himself. Unfortunately, The King didn't show up for the recording session, and Earle was thus cruelly deprived of both the honour and a serious rock 'n' roll anecdote.
On his recent flying visit to Ireland, the surprisingly spruce Steve Earle teamed up with Gillian Welch at Dublin's Vicar Street, and was greeted with near hysteria. Even in that very brief appearance he was evidently the carrier of several traditions. Townes Van Zandt, Jimmie Rodgers and Bill Monroe were suddenly all in the room. It's a bluegrass revival for this six-times-married survivor. And he's only 44 years old.
"One thing I noticed which I found was kind gratifying was that, when I got out of jail and started making records again, all these kids who were in bands like Uncle Tupelo had formed Son Volt and Wilco. And those kids knew who Townes Van Zandt was, and that's something I've been beating people on the head with for years - and also they are Del McCoury fans too. And now there's all these kids in these so-called alternative country bands in the States. It's not huge, and it's not the next line-dance craze but it is there, and it's strong. And I think that's kinda cool. So these kids are doing their homework, and while it's not going to represent millions and millions of records, it is going to keep it alive."
Steve Earle and The Del McCoury Band play Cork on May 15th; Dublin, May 16th; and Belfast, May 17th