Steve Earle is a staunch traditionalist who has always somehow been ahead of his time. In the 1970s, he ran away from home for Nashville, and he ended up appearing in the documentary Heartworn Highways—barely 20 years old—looking up to the masters as he honed his craft. In the 1980s, as country music was getting glossier, he was taking inspiration from Born in the U.S.A. and getting grittier. In the 1990s, he was fresh out of jail, singing songs about the hard lessons he’d learned and spinning stark tales of sobriety into new standards. Lately, Earle’s been on a prolific streak, releasing new albums at a fiery pace while serving as a spiritual godfather for country’s current renaissance. He embodies an artistic ideal for young artists attempting to maintain their authenticity while continuing to evolve. In other words, it was only a matter of time before the genre caught up with him.
On the opening track of his excellent new album, Earle decides to let you in on some of his secrets. “So you wanna be an outlaw, buddy take it from me,” he sings with a snarl. “This living on the highway ain’t everything it’s supposed to be.” It’s a warning, but it’s also a pretty alluring invitation, signaling Earle’s return to country music following his 2015 blues album Terraplane and last year’s folksy
collaboration with Shawn Colvin. For the second verse, he brings in Willie Nelson to take the lead, coaxing a growly, near-indecipherable delivery from one of country’s most amiable voices. Pedal steel and winding guitars roar behind them, exquisitely produced to sound like a bargain-bin record blasting from an old turntable, with all the grit reflected in their pipes.
Such is our introduction to So You Wannabe an Outlaw, an album dominated by simple pleasures. But it’s more than just a pleasant throwback: Earle sounds more energized and powerful than he has in years. In the roaring fireman’s anthem “The Firebreak Line,” he sounds particularly pissed off; when he tells you, “Ed Pulaski is a friend of mine,” you might worry that you somehow offended him by suggesting otherwise. In “If Mama Coulda Seen Me,” he effectively sneezes out the entire scope of outlaw country in one succinct sentence: “If my mama coulda seen me in this prison she’d’a cried but she cain’t.” Best of all is “Fixin’ to Die,” a pulverizing rocker that feels like the intro to “When the Levee Breaks” spread throughout an entire country song. During these tracks, Earle sounds not just comfortable within the genre’s limitations, but thrilled at the prospect of telling new stories within them.
The album’s second half slows down a bit, but it maintains the focus on songcraft and mood. Coming off her own recent career-best, Miranda Lambert joins Earle for the deceptively sunny-sounding co-write “This Is How It Ends.” The album’s gnarly production is used to great effect here, tying their voice together like ex-lovers reminiscing over a bittersweet phone call. The fact that both songwriters have gone through their own highly publicized divorces in the last few years only elevates the drama. “You Broke My Heart” mines similar territory but finds its rhythm in the boozey balladry of Phases and Stages-era Willie, with Earle delivering his lyrics more lazily, like he’s rocking back and forth on his porch with a bottle of whiskey.
Being a music scholar like Earle isn’t necessary to enjoy these songs, but it certainly helps. Earle—who also hosts a show on SiriusXM’s Outlaw Country channel, for which this album might serve as a living advertisement—imbues his songs with a dizzying number of homages and allusions. On the deluxe edition of the album, there’s even a suite of classic country covers that segues naturally from the closing notes of “Goodbye Michelangelo,” Earle’s touching tribute to the late Guy Clark. Atop the heartland power-pop of “Sunset Highway,” Earle shouts out Darkness on the Edge of Town and muses about a melody he heard about in a “dream, or was it a song.” It’s emblematic of the album’s motivating principle, that the key to succeeding in country music isn’t just by studying the past: it’s by living it.
