Steve Earle
The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn't kick me out of his class. He turned me on to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.' I had picked up Dylan with 'Bringing It All Back Home,' and he turned me on to the first couple of albums, which I hadn't heard.Collection: Teacher
Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.Collection: Best
My objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then I'm killing somebody.Collection: Government
I've never made a record that I'm ashamed of.
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.
I grew up counterculture. I'm essentially a hippie, and I'm essentially a folkie.
Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion too.
I'm a country singer, and I'm comfortable with that. But why does a country singer have to play only on country radio or a rock singer only on a rock station? I still don't understand why it's that big a deal.
Music was very influential on me as a kid.
I've been a serial husband, and I've done it badly every time.
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.
My audience is, you know, pinkos in big cities.
I've never known of Wal-Mart to be a good neighbor in any town it's ever moved into.
America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore.
To me, religion is an agreement between a group of people about what God is. Spirituality is a one-on-one relationship.
It amazes me that the most Christian funerals are the most barbaric funeral rites of passage that are celebrated anywhere in the world.
We're so terrified of death in Western culture that we have to make up a myth of an afterlife. I think there's something to be said for living your life very mindful of the fact that you're going to die because I think you carry yourself differently. It doesn't have to be this big, negative bummer.
You know, I'm not comfortable with people whose politics are static in a democracy.
You can listen to carpenters talk for hours in Ireland. The people have a relationship to words that I don't think you will run into anyplace in the world.
I'm from Texas. I hitchhiked to Tennessee when I was 19 years old, and it is really beautiful in Tennessee.
You can't write if you don't read.
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.
Every country that's ever been the most powerful country in the world ceases to be the most powerful country in the world at some point.
You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.
I don't usually read reviews.
If I can get Me out of the way, I can do anything.
I think the criticism that I take to heart is from other writers that I respect.
Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited.
I don't really think in terms of obstacles. My biggest obstacle is always myself.
Me, I'm spiritually retarded, I need to be knee deep in water with a fly rod in my hands, that's about as close to God as I get.
If there is such a thing as a workaholic, I'm it, and that's what passes for leisure.
Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what's going on in the world really bizarre.
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.
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.
I think the singer/songwriter genre is going to be like bluegrass and jazz. You can make a living at it, but it's not part of the musical mainstream anymore.
I think it's obvious that democracy is something that is contagious, and it always has been.
San Antonio is like a military town. It's like literally - when I was growing up there, there were five Air Force bases, plus Fort Sam Houston. I was always sort of near the military.
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.
Making art in America is sort of a political statement in and of itself. It's not the best environment for that sometimes.
My politics were really radical when I was younger, and then I moderated like everyone else does when they start having kids.
I still write more songs about girls than anything else.
Truman Capote is really an interesting cat.
Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.
As much as I'd like to think and as much as people mistakenly think my audience is blue collar people in the heart of America, my audience is basically, in the States, an NPR audience. I play college towns in the summer because that's who comes to see me.
I'm used to writing stories with a beginning a middle and an end in four minutes.
They say death and taxes are the only things that are inevitable. The truth is, you can not pay your taxes. I've done it, and there's consequences, but it can be done. Death you're not going to get out of, and you kind of got to deal with it.
In New York, I'm around a lot of the reasons I started playing music in the first place. I live right behind Matt Umanov Guitars. I live on the street that Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan were walking down on the album cover. I recognize the history.
There's a long tradition of people from the South living in New York City.
The creative core of New York has never been native New Yorkers; it's people from all over the world.
I don't believe that songwriting has to be profound, but I truly believe that it's a crime for you to go outta your way for it not to be.