Steve Earle Canadian Dates

[NewRider]

Fran's has a great little bar. Allison and I got sloppy there before Wilco!

[NewRider]

Someone please jot down a lil' rough setlist for me if they can.

[Kanada Kev]

Well, i gotta say that i am damn glad that I made it to this gig. It was a nice back-to-back with Springsteen the night before. Great storytellers and performers.

Met up with TimmyB and Arlene before the show for some fine cuisine at Fran's and conversation. I had to wait for a friend to show up to get a ticket to. We ended up not seeing the opener, Steve's wife, Allison Moore. I kinda wish I had gone in. I thoroughly enjoyed her when she came out to perform with her husband. And she's a stunning beauty too! http://www.allisonmoorer.com/gallery.php

After realizing (thanks TimmyB) that I actually had seen Steve Earle perform once before I was excited to hear him again. (he was at the Concert for a Landmine Free World at Massey Hall seven years ago ... wicked concert). We settled in and he went to work. Mesmerized is how I can best describe it. There were a couple of songs that really packed a punch that got me. One was "Billy Austin". The other was a long-introduction and performance of a song that he wrote for his son 24 years ago. He told us about all the birthdays in his family in the early months of this year, his relationships with his sons, siblings, family and parents. He also talked about the recent death of his father and how great he was. He said that he was happy that his dad was able to die without seeing any of his kids die before him. Heavy, heartfelt and you could see that it was very emotional for him. I couldn't wait to get home to hug my kids.

Anyhow, the only distraction for me (and it really wasn't all that bad) was the "DJ". He basically just hit buttons to start drum beats. I would have preferred to see a real drummer in behind him, but oh well. A wonderful night and one that I won't soon forget. Looking forward to Steve's return.

Here's what the Star had to say:

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/309547

`The kind of banjo that scares sheep'

Singer Steve Earle brings brand of bluegrass to Toronto

Mar 05, 2008 04:30 AM

GREG QUILL

ENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST

Few songwriters can make as much with so little as Texas-born, Nashville-trained, New York newcomer Steve Earle can.

Three or four chords, a gruff and meaningful drawl, a lyrical bead on a good idea, and some vigorous, relentlessly rhythmic picking and strumming have served him well over the years, adding flesh and muscle to humanist songs that testify to his hard battles with addiction, a series of failed relationships – five marriages, in fact – and political convictions that have placed him well outside the country music mainstream, and indeed, in enemy territory if you pay any mind to his detractors.

He's a brave, inventive and curious folk artist who has absorbed a payload of influences, from Appalachian mountain music, blues and protest songs to modal Irish laments and Moorish rhythms and even – as his fans witnessed last night at a sold-out double bill at Massey Hall with his current wife, and apparently the love of his life, soulful and sadly underappreciated singer-songwriter Allison Moorer – the trappings of the digital age in the form of computer generated drum loops and scratch beats manipulated by an onstage DJ.

Having discovered the mechanical beats while exploring his home studio software during the creation of his most recent album, Washington Square Serenade, in his Soho apartment, and deftly working them around his own guitar patterns to great effect, Earle is adapting these predominantly rap – and hip-hop accessories to his very traditional live presentation — to not such great effect.

In fact, having set up the crowd with a barrage of favourites performed solo on guitar – the robust "Steve's Last Ramble" and the anti-gun rocker "The Devil's Right Hand," the tender love ballad "Can't Remember If We Said Goodbye," the blistering anti-death-penalty narrative "Billy Austin" and "My Old Friend The Blues" (which the bearded and bespectacled performer dedicated "to the memory of Jeff Healey"), to prolonged and heartfelt applause – he very consciously broke the spell by allowing the rhythm machinery to take virtual control of his performance.

An adventurous and clever experiment in the studio, the mechanical drum device was unnecessary, distracting and intrusive onstage, given how strong a guitar player Earle is, and how well his vocal phrasing hugs the backbeat.

Moreover, the hard and robotic sound of the beats was at painful sonic odds with the rich organic sounds of Earle's guitars and, in one song, drowned out a banjo, about which he felt the need to apologize.

"Don't worry – this isn't bluegrass," the 53-year-old troubadour said.

"Bluegrass is a very sophisticated form of music, like bebop. This ain't that kind of banjo. This is the kind of banjo that scares sheep."

While Earle seems to understand the dangers inherent in his current presentation – in a recent interview he admitted that in Britain the beat machine had scandalized his devotees in the same way as Dylan's electric guitar frightened his audience 30 years ago – he's just stubborn enough to barrel on through, even it lessens the power of some of his better songs, including "Jericho Road" and the mining song "OxyContin Blues," as it did last night.

Edited March 5, 2008 by Guest