Songwriting and tradition

by Chris Bertram on July 3, 2005

Surfing around, I found this oldish report of “some classes that Steve Earle taught at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago”:http://www.insurgentcountry.net/steve_earle_at_the_old_town_school.htm . The class is about the links between traditional music — as found in Harry Smith’s American Anthology of Folk Music — and contemporary songwriting. There are classes on Woody Guthrie, Dylan, Springsteen, Townes Van Zandt, and on Earle’s own songs. There’s also much gossip and general chit-chat. Interesting stuff.

{ 3 comments }

1

Stephen Kriz 07.03.05 at 4:42 pm

Chris, thanks for the link. I have been a big Steve Earle fan for years. An American original, Earle is not a great singer, but an outstanding and insightful songwriter in the mold of Bob Dylan and Neil Young.

Earle is one of the few songwriters brave enough to be writing songs about the war in Iraq, and I don’t mean simple-minded, pseudopatriotic nonsense like Toby Keith puts out. Check out “Rich Man’s War” on The Revolution Starts..Now. Basic but truly incisive lyrics – After all, this so-called War on Terror is all about lower socioeconomic people dying because of three very wealthy men – Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush.

2

Amanda 07.04.05 at 6:11 am

Big Steve fan here too. Glad you’ve discovered the Old Town stuff. Steve has a blog too, but unfortunately he doesn’t update it much. http://www.steveearle.com/blog.html

He and I are pretty much on the same page politically but I haven’t been as big a fan of his last couple of albums, the most highly political ones. I just don’t think the lyrics are up to scratch, too pat and cliched. Just not good songwriting, whatever the sentiment behind them. Train A Comin’ is still my favourite.

3

catfish 07.05.05 at 12:26 pm

As a long-time Steve Earle fan, I have to second the complaint that his last two studio albums are not up to his previous standards. There are some good songs in there, but all in all, I think his songwriting suffers when it is overtly political (as opposed to character driven songs with politcal implications). I’m not sure about this, but I think this is true of most songwriters. In fact, the only counter examples that I can think of is the Clash, and even their most political songs were a little more obligue. Instead of “Margaret Thatcher is ruining England” we got the romantic “Spanish Bombs” (“bullet holes in the cemetary walls”) or the “make-a-choice-young-man” advice of “Clampdown.”

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