Steve Earle & the Dukes (& Duchesses) - The Low Highway - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

2022 . Steve Earle has been creating intimate and personal music for well over four decades now. His songwriting has wound itself along a path from Texas to Tennessee and his education came in the form of learning from the best. 2009's Grammy-nominated record Townes was a tribute to his dear friend and mentor, Townes Van Zandt. Ten years later Earle released, Guy - an album concentrated on paying homage to the late Guy Clark and the indelible friendship that they had formed in stories told through song. 2022 welcomes the of Jerry Jeff a 10-song collection of songs written by the gypsy songman, Jerry Jeff Walker. Featuring hits like, InchMr BojanglesInch and InchGettin' ByInch, Earle & The Dukes honor the late Texan by amplifying the concept and sound of each song with a full-band recording.

Steve Earle was nineteen and had just hitchhiked from San Antonio to Nashville in 1974. Back then if you wanted to be where the best songwriters were you had to be in there. Guy Clark had moved to Nashville and if you were from Texas, Guy Clark was king. Flash forward more than forty years. In the fall of 2018, Steve and The Dukes went into House Of Blues studio in Nashville and recorded GUY in six days. 'I wanted it to sound live... When you've got a catalog like Guy's and you're only doing sixteen tracks, you know each one is going to be strong.' Earle and his current, perhaps best-ever Dukes lineup, take on these songs with a spirit of reverent glee and invention. But in the end Guy leads the listener back to it's beginning, namely Guy Clark, which is what any good 'tribute' should do. Guy is a saga of friendship, it's ups and downs, what endures. We are lucky that Earle remembers and honors these things, because like old friends, Guy is a diamond.

(England)