Steve Earle's Guy Clark tribute album set for spring; touring now

Steve Earle & The Dukes are set to return with GUY on March 29. A return to New West Records, the 16-song set is comprised of songs written by one of his two primary songwriting mentors, Guy Clark.

GUY appears 10 years after his Grammy Award winning album TOWNES, a tribute to his other songwriting mentor, Townes Van Zandt. Produced by Earle and recorded by his longtime production partner Ray Kennedy, GUY features his latest backing band The Dukes: Kelley Looney on bass, Chris Masterson on guitar, Eleanor Whitmore on fiddle & mandolin, Ricky Ray Jackson on pedal steel guitar, and Brad Pemberton on drums & percussion. GUY also has guest appearances by fellow Guy Clark cohorts Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Terry Allen, Jerry Jeff Walker, Mickey Raphael, Shawn Camp, Verlon Thompson, Gary Nicholson, and the photographer Jim McGuire.

Steve Earle first met Guy Clark after hitchhiking from San Antonio to Nashville in 1974. A few months after his arrival, he found himself taking over for a young Rodney Crowell as bassist in Guy’s band. “No way I could get out of doing this record,” says Earle. “When I get to the other side, I didn’t want to run into Guy having made the TOWNES record and not one about him.”

“Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark were like Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to me.” The mercurial Van Zandt (1944-1997) who once ordered his teenage disciple to chain him to a tree in hopes that it would keep him from drinking, was the On The Road quicksilver of youth. Clark, 33 at the time Earle met him, was a longer lasting, more mellow burn. “When it comes to mentors, I’m glad I had both,” says Earle.

“If you asked Townes what it’s all about, he’d hand you a copy of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. If you asked Guy the same question, he’d take out a piece of paper and teach you how to diagram a song, what goes where. Townes was one of the all-time great writers, but he only finished three songs during the last fifteen years of his life. Guy had cancer and wrote songs until the day he died...he painted, he built instruments, he owned a guitar shop in the Bay Area where the young Bobby Weir hung out. He was older and wiser. You hung around with him and knew why they call what artists do disciplines. Because he was disciplined.”

“GUY wasn’t really a hard record to make,” Earle says. “We did it fast, five or six days with almost no overdubbing. 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.

Today, NPR Music has premiered the album’s first single and lead off track “Dublin Blues” along with a nearly 30-minute conversation between Earle and NPR’s Bob Boilen for an edition of All Songs Considered. Hear it HERE.

There was another reason, Earle said, he couldn’t “get out of” making GUY. “You know,” he said, “as you live your life, you pile up these regrets. I’ve done a lot of things that might be regrettable, but most of them I don’t regret because I realize I couldn’t have done anything else at the time. With Guy, however, there was this thing. When he was sick --- he was dying really for the last ten years of his life --- he asked me if we could write a song together. We should do it ‘for the grandkids,’ he said. Well, I don’t know...at the time, I still didn’t co-write much, then I got busy. Then Guy died and it was too late. That, I regret.”

GUY will be available on compact disc, across digital retailers, standard black vinyl, limited edition blue vinyl available at Independent Retailers, an extremely limited-to-200 clear vinyl edition available at retailers in Texas & Tennessee, a limited autographed edition available at Barnes & Noble stores, and limited edition red vinyl exclusively available for pre-order now via NEW WEST RECORDS.

Track Listing:

1. Dublin Blues
2. L.A. Freeway
3. Texas 1947
4. Desperados Waiting For A Train
5. Rita Ballou
6. The Ballad Of Laverne And Captain Flint
7. The Randall Knife
8. Anyhow I Love You
9. That Old Time Feeling
10. Heartbroke
11. The Last Gunfighter Ballad
12. Out In The Parking Lot
13. She Ain’t Going Nowhere
14. Sis Draper
15. New Cut Road
16. Old Friends

Tour dates:

January 11th - Boston, MA City Winery
January 12th - Nashville, TN Bridgestone Arena (Willie Nelson’s 85th Birthday Celebration
January 14th - Chicago, IL City Winery
January 15th - Chicago, IL City Winery
January 17th - Nashville, TN City Winery
January 18th & 19th - Santa Rosa, FL 30A Festival
January 20th - Atlanta, GA City Winery
January 22nd - Sellersville, PA Sellersville Theater
January 23rd - Boston, MA City Winery
January 24th - New York, NY City Winery
January 25th - Washington, DC City Winery
January 27th - February 1st - Outlaw Country Cruise
February 10th - Boston, MA City Winery
February 11th - New York, NY City Winery
February 12th - Washington, DC City Winery
February 13th - Washington, DC City Winery
February 15th - Atlanta, GA City Winery
February 16th - Nashville, TN City Winery
February 17th - Cincinnati, OH Ludlow Garage
February 19th - Lawrence, KS Liberty Hall
February 21st - Dallas, TX Kessler Theater
February 22nd - Houston, TX The Heights Theater
February 23rd - Austin, TX The Paramount (Texas Songwriters Hall of Fame)
February 25th - Chicago, IL City Winery
February 26th - Chicago, IL City Winery
February 28th - Albany, NY The Egg
March 1st - Rockport, MA Shalin Liu Performance Center
March 2nd - Ithaca, NY Hangar Theatre
June 29th - Owensboro, KY Romp Festival * with the Dukes
July 18th - Bala, ONT Kee To Bala * with the Dukes
September 3rd - 6th - Big Indian, NY (Steve Earle’s Camp Copperhead)

SteveEarle.com