Steve Earle: Solo And Acoustic

Check out this great article in the New York Times from 5/10/09 about Steve Earle!
Steve Earle had two reasons for coming out with this long-planned tribute to
Townes Van Zandt, a country-folk music singer-songwriter, performer, and poet, though he never had a successful album or single. While alive, he was labeled a cult musician with a small, but dedicated fan base, including Earle.
The first reason is practical. Earle is currently pushing himself to finish a years-in-the-making novel, and he wants to see it in print before the publishing business goes belly up.
The second is a more personal concern. Steve Earle loves the truth, and in the case of Van Zandt, he sees that the waters are muddying before his eyes. Very often over periods of years, the truth first becomes myth and myth later becomes truth. In regards to his teacher, hero and friend Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle was not about to let that happen.
Van Zandt started shaping Earle long before the elder singer knew the younger
existed. Van Zandt was already a demi-god in 1969 when Earle, then 14 years old, first heard his name in a San Antonio coffeehouse. After a few abortive attempts at completing his freshman year of high school and running away from home, Earle was finally expelled from school and allowed to live on his own. Not long after that, Earle spontaneously decided to move to Houston.
Townes is the reason I am the way I am more than anything else," said Earle. "What I always was, sober or using, I made a decision to write songs at the level of art whether I made any money or not, and I made that decision based on knowing and witnessing Townes doing it.
Townes, Earle's tribute album, features 15 songs written by his friend and mentor with guest artists such as Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, his wife, Allison Moorer and his son, Justin Townes Earle.
All but four of the songs on Townes were recorded first in Earle's cramped
Greenwich Village apartment - just Earle alone with his guitar and his memories of the
songs.
"I don't vouch for my memory as being 100 percent accurate, but it is the way I remember it, and a lot of these are the songs I learned to play watching him doing them," he said.