Steve Earle's Jerusalem: "A good man, who never caused others to die, seldom rates a statue"

It sounds like an old Mission of Burma song when it starts out.  A whispered sample, “Ashes to ashes…dust to dust…A-A-Ashes to ashes…dust to dust”, leads a lumbering, rumbling bass line. A guitar chord is struck and then meanders.  These fascist fucking drums march over it all, stomping out their defiant beat. Its rock steady and damne near oppressive feeling – that’s the point. It shakes you to attention.  The storm has gathered itself out on the horizon and it’s blowing its winds in warning. Steve Earle’s voice doesn’t even tremble, not even a shudder, he just stands there – cold, still, seditious?  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust - he knows it, he sings it and unlike so many blowhard politicians of every ilk, he fucking believes it. It is, after all, inevitable.  Fate is just that…fate. Always has been, always will be.  It’s just that here in America, we’ve come to the conclusion that somehow we are entitled to buy, steal, con, or just fucking fight our way to its end.  Well guess what?  We aren’t the only ones.

  “Ashes to Ashes” is only the tip of this iceberg. It is merely the first - just one - audacious track from a record, Jerusalem, that, for now, stands as Steve Earle’s masterwork.

  For now?  Yeah, that’s right.  But only because over the past six years - and six albums -Earle has proven that he absolutely must be considered when speaking about the greatest American songwriters of our times. Jerusalem is just another chapter in a quickly become storied history.   The record is simply an enormous, staggering, towering, and captivating achievement. Not to mention the fact that it is the most plainspoken, honest, and reality-stricken assessment of not only post-9/11 America, but also America as she is now - warts, scars, attention deficit disorders and all - at the ripe old age of two hundred twenty six. 

  There ain’t no flag waving, no foot stomping, no bullshit jingoistic rhetoric that seeks sanctuary in the false patriotic pretenses of those horrible 9/11 deaths and tragedies. That was horrible, horrible shit that went down that day.  It was also complicated shit. People die, everyday, for many reasons…ain’t none of them very good (give me a ‘good’ reason to die, go ahead, I’m listening).  You see, that’s the very nature of death - it scares the hell out of each and every one of us.  And went you get right down to the roots and nuts of the thing, death just ain’t very fashionable in the American way of things.

  “It’s the best that we can do.”  Earle slaps that line right across your face at the end of both the title and the lyrics of “Amerika v. 6.0 (the best that we can do)”.  Unfortunately, he didn’t make it up – it’s been said before, too often.  Some American-fucking-Dream, huh? The best that we can do.   God Bless America (and no place else). Christ, where did it all sink into this fucking mud?

   I ain’t one much for getting political, and as much as Earle seems to have garnered a reputation as some sort of activist wank, I don’t find that to be the case. He’s just a guy who’s disgusted with so much of what goes on that he figures he might as well say it - maybe it’ll save a life along the way.  During a concert last year I was weary of Earle possibly going into some sort of preachy tirade concerning the death penalty – something he has been vocal and active about (which ain’t one ounce about politics, it’s all about humanity to Earle).  Inevitably, he brought the subject up from center stage and I cringed.   Think about it, he said. It’s about death. Just think about it. That was all he had to say.  There was a silent Amen in there somewhere. Then he played.

  Earle revealed the true beauty in his politics that night: people.  His causes, unlike so many others centered in power, are always about people.  Humans. Hearts. Souls. All of the important shit in life that our political system has flushed down the fucking toilet in favor of cash, toys, and power. And they ALL have.  That’s why we have to turn to Steve Earle to hear the things he’s saying. Things that need said; things that need to be heard.  The very things that made this country a pretty great fucking place from the git-go.

   So what’s he get for it all? A razzing about an honest as fuck folk song about the so-called ‘American Taliban’ (hell, why not just call the kid the fucking Evil Spawn?) John Walker Lihnd.  I’ll be honest; when I’d read the little fabricated controversy over the song “John Walker’s Blues” I’d figured the cut to be a bit opportunistic.  But then I heard the song and realized that I was being pretty fucking naïve to think that Steve Earle wouldn’t have a true purpose in mind when he wrote the damn thing, that opportunity ain’t his game.  He sings it and means it. So, maybe I’m a goddamn traitor, because the song makes perfect sense to my ears. Hell, the way Earle presents the thing - so precise, so astute, and so utterly obvious - it actually makes you wonder why more Johnnie Walker’s didn’t pop up in Afghanistan in the American mop up. 

   But in the end Earle is a rockroller, albeit in a country hick’s vessel. And as rockroll goes these days Jerusalem is stinging stuff.  His band, Eric Ambel, Will Rigby, and Kelley Looney, are true rockroll bleeders. They’ve been there for a long while and assist Earle’s vision as perfectly as any assemblage of musicians that Earle has ever worked with.  The songs are all concise, smart, never long-winded or highfalutin, and always as insistent on holding down their groove as much as the message or melody. And while the opening four tunes, “Ashes to Ashes”, “Amerika v. 6.0”, the soul-fried “Conspiracy Theory”, and the blasphemer’s folk of “John Walker’s Blues” are the very core of the record, the rest of the songs remind you that Earle is a writer of songs, not just messages. “The Kind” is shimmering folk whimsy; “What’s a Simple Man to Do?” a rollicking Cowboy Outfit organ grinder. “Go Amanda”, “Shadowland”, “Jerusalem”…not a flawed moment amongst them.

  Throughout it all, as he nearly always has, Earle makes it all sound so easy that it’s even easier to forget that it ain’t.   If it were so simple we wouldn’t have Earle knocking us over every time he uttered a musical word.  Not many people can do this so damn well for so goddamn long.  Jerusalem is an impeccable record during impossible times that does the improbable – making old fashioned freedom, that of American dissent, seem not only sexy but fucking sensible.  And if you’ve already had enough of that revolution stuff and find it a drag, well then just pop this thing in for the music, because its been way to fucking long since you’ve heard a record this good.

Selah. 

back