Steve Earle is touring his album of Van Zandt songs entitled Townes. Last night he played the Barbican to a sell out crowd. Steve had a bit of a crisis on his hands with his main Martin and my buddy Graham Parker fixed it for him. In fact Graham fixed it twice. Yesterday he got a call saying that his temporary fix didn’t last too long – Steve changes his strings after every gig. So Graham replaced the nut. Whilst doing so he noticed that the strings were too close to the neck. This caused the strings to slip off the neck every so often so whilst replacing the nut he made amends to the where the strings sat on the neck. I’m getting technical here, I’ll stop.
As a result of Graham’s help Steve’s guitar tech Russ Garett gave Steve two complimentary passes. We met up with Steve and Russ before the gig and had a brief chat. Steve was in pretty good form chatting away about his signature guitar. Graham explained that Les Paul used to get $50 for every guitar made. Steve explained that he got more than that, about $150. “Wow!” Graham and I said. “Yeah but I just give it to charity,” Steve replied. “When you make a load of money doing what I do as a Marxist what else can you do with it?” What a guy!
The gig was awesome. Steve was on great form chatting away talking at length about his relationship with Townes. How Townes heckled him in 1972 when Steve was just 17, how they became friends, how Townes visited Steve’s house and saw Steve looking bad and his arms looking worse. Steve also said how appreciative he was of the audience’s reception of the album and how his only regret was that Townes wasn’t around to enjoy it with him.
Steve got two standing ovations and seemed really humbled. Graham and I made our way onto the stage and made some movies of Russ striking the stage where Russ explained a bit about Steve’s set up.
Backstage Steve told Graham that the guitar felt great, “Plays like a fucking Martin should!”
Was a great evening out. Great to see Steve play on such fine form and meet the man. A true gent.
Read about the trip backstage.
Graham Parker and Steve Earle
Glad you remembered the finer details of the concert. A great evening and a great review. Awesome pic well done.
Ahhhh, I loved Guitar Town. One of my favourite albums of all time (up in the top 10 or so.) Lucky you, to see him play.
Jamie and I went to a gig in the late 80’s in a surprisingly small venue in London somewhere. The only time I ever asked Jamie to try and blag our way backstage at a gig was this one. Amazingly, we were allowed in to chat with the Great Man. He was very complimentary about SSS, which he claimed to have worn out from overplaying.
He was, as you describe: talented, humble, gracious.
Once, an interviewer writing about J’s band asked me if I enjoyed watching them on stage every night. I replied, ‘I’d rather be at a Steve Earle gig.’ Billy read that when the interview was published and gave me a hard time about it for years afterwards.
Happy memories….
Small world eh! So funny how all these things interconnect!