STEVE EARLE WAS BORN IN 1967. WELL, THAT’S NOT EXACTLY TRUE. EARLE WAS IN FACT BORN ON JANUARY 17, 1955, IN FORT MONROE, VIRGINIA, BUT THE SINGER, SONGWRITER, AND MASTER INTERPRETER’S MUSICAL AWAKENING CAME IN 1967, WHEN HE WAS 12 YEARS OLD, GROWING UP IN HIS ACKNOWLEDGED HOMETOWN OF SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS.
“It was a big year, man,” Earle says. “A lot of stuff happened in 1967. My uncle, who was five years older than me, was living with us at the time. It was my dream come true, because he was always my hero. He brought a lot of records into the house, like Cream’s Disraeli Gears and the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Are You Experienced.”
That was when Earle began unlocking the secrets of the stringed instrument that ultimately became his muse. “I got my first guitar when my uncle moved out,” he continues. “It was a 12-string, and I’d been trying to learn to play it upside-down because my uncle was left-handed, but I had to turn the strings around at that point. Things accelerated quickly after I turned the strings around.”
The album that influenced the teenaged Earle’s playing the most at that time may surprise you: , the June 1967 Rolling Stones compilation comprising an even-dozen B-sides, singles, and previously unreleased tracks. “I learned to play guitar from as much as any other record,” he told me. In fact, the Stones factor into the fabric of Earle’s brand of Americana as much as any folk, country, blues, or bluegrass artist does. Earle cites the draw of a pair of tracks that he still plays: “Take It or Leave It,” originally from the UK version of 1966’s , became an occasional encore, and “Ruby Tuesday”—the January 1967 single that was on the US version of 1966’s —is the fourth track on June 2016’s , in a duet with old friend Shawn Colvin. You can hear
