“The best stuff coming out of Nashville is all by women except for Chris Stapleton. He’s great. The guys just wanna sing about getting fucked up. They’re just doing hip-hop for people who are afraid of black people. I like the new Kendrick Lamar record, so I’ll just listen to that.”
Later this week, legendary outlaw-country singer-songwriter Steve Earle will release his 17th studio LP, So You Wannabe an Outlaw. You can stream the record — which leads off with the Willie Nelson-featuring title track — via NPR right now.
Today, ahead of the album’s release, The Guardian ran an interview with Earle — makes sense, as the Brits have always had a thing for hardscrabble Nashville and Nashville-tangential songwriters like Earle (not to mention late, great pals of his like Townes and Guy). The whole interview is rock solid and full of Earle’s patented folksy quotes.
On his sixth wife, songwriter Allison Moorer, with whom he recently split? “She traded me in for a younger, skinnier, less talented singer-songwriter.” On whether he’ll get married again? “There are women. But I like sitting where I want to in the movies and when you go to the theatre at the last minute you can get a really good seat if you’re looking for a single. If I go to a baseball game I can stay for the whole thing.” On feeding his addiction in the ’90s? “I lost everything but my house. The house in Tennessee I still own, though I don’t know how. I guess it’s because I couldn’t figure out how to put it in the car and take it to the pawn shop.”
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