Steve Earle and the Dukes
Vicar Street, Dublin
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If you are looking for fireworks, ego-driven self-expression, dance routines, artful visual backdrops and costume changes, then boy, are you at the wrong gig.
If, however, you're looking for a politically, socially and personally aware singer-songwriter, who sings a song called My Old Friend the Blues, with its associative line, "I can always count on you" – then say hello to Steve Earle, a loose-clothed reprobate and creative agitator.
Texas-raised Earle belongs to a rather more fractious gathering of singers and songwriters that started with Woody Guthrie, caroused in the middle with Guy Clark and Townes van Zandt, and then ended cosying up to the likes of Lucinda Williams and Shawn Colvin. In other words, Earle is motivational storyteller, troubadour, proselytiser and conscience in one big, burly, bearded box.
The 58-year-old started his music career more than four decades ago in Nashville, Tennessee. A disciple of the songwriting styles of Clark and van Zandt, Earle was young enough back then to realise the potency of blending roots music with rock, and by the end of the 1980s had two defiant examples of the same (1986's Guitar Town and 1989's Copperhead Road). He brings a variant of this swagger to his live shows, helped in no small part by his band, which kicks like a mule (particularly lead guitarist Chris Masterson) during some of the more persuasive, rock-oriented material.
While better-known belters such as Guitar Town, Copperhead Road, and Galway Girl have the audience hopping out of their seats, it's with the quieter tunes that Earle makes his real mark. Songs such as Invisible, The Low Highway (the title track of his latest album), This City, and After Mardi Gras gracefully pinpoint the songwriter's overtly socio-political concerns.
Like Guthrie (and others) before him, Earle has eased his way into becoming a high-profile voice for the dispossessed and the under-represented. For some, such a status might be an obvious burden, but Earle seems to shoulder such responsibility with a mixture of pride and righteous indignation.
The kind of guy you’d want on your side if/when the chips go down? Damn right.