Despite his enduring reputation for powerful restless-young-man anthems, Steve Earle is also the writer of some of the finest love songs and political ballads of the ’90s.
Unfortunately, these songs are often marred by yakkers in the audience during the short acoustic portions of his shows.
On Tuesday night, during a rare all-acoustic show at FitzGerald’s, the Texas-born singer-songwriter had an opportunity to give these quiet gems center stage.
A few hundred Earle fans (who got their free tickets through contests held by WXRT, which sponsored the show) gathered at the Berwyn venue to hear the hard-core troubadour play solo, girded with a mere acoustic guitar or a mandolin.
Playing his second unpaid performance this month in the area (he also turned in an early set with the V-Roys at this year’s Farm Aid), Earle began the nearly two-hour show with the bleak and biting “Christmas in Washington,” a neo-leftist ballad that beckons “Come back Woody Guthrie” in a style that would make the late songwriter proud.
Warning request shouters that he makes up his own set list when he does a free show, Earle nevertheless rolled through many of his most popular rockers– including sing-along crowd pleasers “I Ain’t Never Satisfied,” “Copperhead Road” and “Devil’s Right Hand”–letting the audience fill in the missing instruments in their minds as they pumped their fists in the air.
But as stirring as these numbers were (and always are), the most moving moments of the night came in the quiet songs that, this time, were greeted with the respectful silence (for the most part) that they deserve.
While Earle offered anecdotes to introduce most songs, he fell silently into these, letting the gentle guitar intros send a hush over the room. Among these stark masterpieces were his song of simple lover’s gifts, “Valentine’s Day,” and perhaps the loveliest ballad ever written about drug-induced forgetfulness, “Goodbye.”
Perhaps the most poignant song of the night–and one Earle has called his best–was “Ellis Unit One,” a first-person account of working as a Death Row guard that he wrote for the “Dead Man Walking” soundtrack.
After a stunned silence, the crowd burst into some of the most enthusiastic applause of the night, as if they had never heard the song performed live like that before. That’s probably because they hadn’t.
