Steve Earle Quotes
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I don't think I'm a political songwriter as much as I am just a political person. I think it's in my fabric.
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I have no doubt in mind that I justify the space I take up in the world.
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We're Americans. I don't consider us to be evil, I just don't think we know any better. We're a really young culture. We're hillbillies, and the rest of the world sees us that way. I travel all over the world, and probably the only worse rednecks than us are the Australians. And they're an even younger country.
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The singer-songwriter has always played music that was stylistically rooted in the '30s and the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. But the fact of the matter is that none of us remember the Depression firsthand.
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You can go out and find ways to make your own record and get it out there now. If you really want to, you can be heard. Keep things simple. Learn to go out and play solo. That's a really really good thing to learn, if you're a singer-songwriter. Don't be dependent on a band because you may not always be able to afford one.
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Woody Guthrie was what folks who don't believe in anything would call an anomaly.
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Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.
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I wasn't raised to not write about issues, and I'm just living in really politically charged times. You know, I'd rather write songs about girls, but it's just hard to do right now.
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Politics and music don't necessarily go hand in hand. They just do for me.
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I do not believe Tony Blair was a fundamentally good man who went bad. I believe he was evil in the first place.
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I have a low tolerance for mediocrity in music and life. I'm into pain and joy and the in-between doesn't interest me.
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New Orleans is a unique environment.
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My therapist says that I choose women that I couldn't possibly succeed in a relationship with because I really want to be alone. Which sounds complicated and convoluted to me, but I don't know. Maybe she's right. There's a part of me that wants that.
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I'm used to writing stories with a beginning a middle and an end in four minutes.
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I really believe that if I make records that are indispensable to my audience, they'll go out and spend money to buy them, even if they've already downloaded them. If they can afford it. If they can't, I'd rather they be able to download it than not get it at all.
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You make decisions, and that's what separates art from some other pop music. It doesn't mean that you can't make an embarrassing amount of money, for a borderline Marxist, doing something that you love, but it does mean that this huge pool of money that was out there when I started making records in the '80s is gone.
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The idea that murder victims' families are best served by continuing the cycle of violence is something that I consider to be not only a lie, but criminally negligent. You lie to victims' families when you tell them they're going to receive closure if they participate in the process and witness the execution of a human being.
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You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.
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My politics were really radical when I was younger, and then I moderated like everyone else does when they start having kids.
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Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.
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I think the music business is changing. Artists that don't want to tour and just want to collect royalty checks and stay home are not going to be able to do that.
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I'm a very disciplined person when it comes to my work, but discipline can't save m from being a drug addict.
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All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.
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Every leap forward that I make is by reaching back and firmly getting a footing in the past, and pushing forward as hard as I can.