Steve Earle

He seems to own a measure of calm, but one watches Steve Earle in the same manner you’d track storm clouds. Long of beard, aging into his own vision of himself, Earle, 62, is like bad weather coming. Having had five wives or seven (depending on the source), a string of dark years during the ’90s that included jail time and recovery from hard drugs, Earle, more grizzly-like than ever, continues to reinvent himself. “Ain’t like it’s been easy,” he growls in “Pocket Full of Rain.” “I been up and down/ and lately I can’t keep my chin up off the ground.”

A life of agitation began at age 16 when Earle grew out his hair, ran away from home, and joined the anti–Vietnam movement such as it was in San Antonio. By 19, he was into marriage number one. By the middle ’70s, Earle was living in Nashville and writing songs that were recorded by a multitude of artists who made headway with his craft. Everyone did well by Steve Earle’s songs except for Earle himself, whose own earliest recordings were not memorable. Guitar Town, released in 1986, changed that.

The singer/songwriter’s new-found voice as champion of all things underdog got him airtime on big stages around the country, the Farm Aid concerts acting as a launch pad that ensured him a loyal following. But that’s about the same time his innate sense of rebellion took hold, and Earle created enough trouble for himself (and others) such that he disappeared for a short time. There have been many highlights since — a part in the HBO series The Wire, the staging and production of a play he wrote, and commercially successful albums and sold-out concerts. But one wonders if Earle’s in truth only sitting in the eye of a storm and if his inner structure’s going to break loose again, and if it does, how long the tempest may last.