Steve Earle: “Ghosts of West Virginia”

Till Kober in conversation with Mascha Drost

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Steve Earle sings about the lives of miners and the mining accident in the Upper Big Branch coal mine in 2010. (gettyimages / FilmMagic for Bonnaroo Arts And Music Festival)

With the new album Steve Earle underlines his political outsider role in the country scene. The professing socialist sings with a rough voice about life in the Appalachian coalfield. The critic Till Kober is empathetic and not kitschy.

Mascha Drost: Earle calls himself a “socialist”, he campaigns for green issues, fights against the death penalty and for women’s self-determination. With his long hair and long beard, he looks more like an “outlaw” than a good country musician from Nashville. His new album “Ghosts of West Virginia” has just been released. Who is this steve earle

To Kober: Well, Steve Earle has been saying goodbye to Nashville for a long time and he was never really at home there. Earle is already 65 now, he left home as a teenager to meet his great idol, the singer-songwriter Townes van Zandt, the inventor of Outlaw Country, so to speak, and to learn musically from him. He succeeded in that. However, he also took over his alcohol and drug consumption right away, and so in addition to some success in the country charts, he was particularly notable for his escapades and even had to go to prison for a while at its peak.

Earle has been dry and extremely productive since the mid-1990s. He releases an album about every two years, sometimes better, sometimes worse. One actually wants a break from Steve Earle, in which he focuses and finds his sound again. Class instead of mass. That is exactly what has happened now. One can even speak of a concept album.

Union-dominated tradition

Drost: Concept albums are rather rare in country music, what is this about?

Kober: The album is called “Ghosts Of West Virginia” – the spirits of West Virginia – and is primarily about a mine accident in West Virginia in 2010, in which 29 people died.

Steve Earle actually wrote some of these pieces for the play “Coal Country”, but then went a little further, composed more songs, and so it is generally about this coal mining region and of course about the people who live and work there .

West Virginia is one of the poorest areas of the United States and has a strong trade union political tradition, including mining, and so the Democrats have always been elected for a long time. Most recently, however, almost 69 percent voted for Donald Trump and Steve Earle is politically very clear on the left, and so this album is also the beginning of a dialogue, as he puts it, for him, because one of the greatest dangers for him is the idea that all Trump voters Are idiots and racists, because that’s just not true.

The right voice

And so Steve Earle gives a kind of lyrical guidebook through a region and through biographies that are probably unknown to most. And he just has exactly the right voice to sing about these topics so unadorned.

Drost: His voice almost sounds as if he had also worked as a miner, but can it be taken from the musician who did not live like these people that these issues are close to his heart?

Kober: I think so. He takes people’s worries, fears, lack of prospects and also this feeling of being worthless seriously. There is a song, “It’s about Blood”, where Steve Earle lists all 29 names of those who died in this mine accident, which could be pathetic, but it is a really touching moment, and also believable, you can feel that he is not here want to bugger these people, it actually seems to be close to his heart.

But there are not only sad or angry songs, on the contrary, the majority of the album is very lively, danceable and happy, played very powerfully by his long-standing band “The Dukes”, sometimes acoustically and folkily, sometimes roughly and electrically, and more it is also a musical expression of respect for this area.

Melting pot in the Appalachian Mountains

Drost: It’s interesting, what kind of musical tradition does West Virginia have?

Kober: West Virginia is located in the Appalachian Mountains, a mountain range that runs through the states of the east coast from Maine all the way down to Alabama and Mississippi, and over time a music of its own, a mix of its own, has emerged there. The Appalachian Mountains are a melting pot of immigrants from Europe and African-Americans, i.e. former slaves, and you can also hear this melange, there were the early yodeling blues musicians or Scots who accompanied their folk songs with the banjo, which is actually an African instrument is.

In principle, everything was invented here today, which is known as bluegrass or country or old time music, and from this rich musical culture this album by Steve Earle is also used, along with a very nice traditional, “John Henry Was a Steel Drivin ‘Man” , John Henry, this is an often sung, almost mythical folk hero who uses his strength against that of machines.

Drost: Who was this John Henry?

Kober: John Henry is said to have lived in the middle of the 19th century. When he was to be replaced by a machine, he entered into a competition with it and also won it, but, according to the story, should have died of exhaustion immediately afterwards.

Drost: In general, it all sounds a bit nostalgic and historic, wouldn’t a fresh breeze have done these topics better?

Kober: Well, there is such a spirit of solidarity through this album and protest songs, songs about the union and the working conditions of the miners, they have a great tradition here, Steve Earle is now one of them. Earle actually conjures up a dream on the whole album, the dream of a simple life in which you are properly paid for your hard work, it is about community, family, pride – these are timeless values, and it currently seems to be a great longing to give afterwards.

I like very much that these topics are not depicted in a maudlin and kitschy way, the whole thing is rather the musical counterpart to a Ken Loach film, you could say.

It will probably not decide the next presidential election, but there should be more soulful, emphatic and connecting music more often.

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