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| Steve Earle with one of his many guitars. |
By Mary Lyn Maiscott
Watching Steve
Earle and Allison Moorer in concert Monday night at the City Winery brought to
mind another musical couple: also-populist-singer Bruce Springsteen and
also-redheaded-wife-and-musician-in-her-own-right Patti Scialfa (though Moorer
is moorer, I mean more, of a strawberry blonde). And I thought: god, how we
need these people. Earle is inspiring in his been-there knowingness,
down-to-earth accessibility, political outspokenness (or maybe
outsungness—listen to “John Walker’s Blues”), and I-still-have-hope-ness.
Moorer—looking
chic in a ruched black skirt, very high boots, and black-frame glasses
she said she wore because “they kinda go with the outfit, and god knows it’s
all about the outfit”—appears to be, if not a deus ex machina for Earle,
perhaps an earth-goddess ex musica. It’s hard not to think that she, younger by
a generation, shone a light into what has been at times a rough life (Earle was
a heroin addict and spent time in jail). Especially when Earle sings a
song like “Every Part of Me” (“I love you with all my heart/All my soul/Every
part of me) or “Waitin’ on the Sky” (“Singing a song about a red-headed girl…I
am sitting on top of the world”), both off the recent release I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive,
nominated for a Grammy for best folk album.
Though her
porcelain looks might make you think nothing bad has ever touched her (she’s
like a cross between Nicole Kidman and Taylor Swift), Moorer too has known some
very dark days; her father and mother died in a murder-suicide when she and her
older sister, singer Shelby Lynne, were teenagers. Monday night Moorer sang,
among other originals, “A Soft Spot to Fall,” which made a splash a while back
as part of the Horse Whisperer
soundtrack, as well as a dramatic new song involving a thunderstorm and a
hurricane—“Songs that I seem to be writing now have to do with tense
situations,” she explained, adding that in this case she wanted to call someone
“a bitch-face” but wrote the song instead.
Her voice is
both lovely and strong, with a tone similar to Lynne’s—they recently toured
together for the first time. Hearing Moorer’s harmonies with Earle, it occurred to
me that he could have been tempted to marry her just to have at the ready that
oxymoronically bluesy-ethereal sound as a counterpoint to his country-gritty
one.
Both with and
without Moorer, Earle gives good show—and had the sweat-soaked shirt to show
for it. With the help of several guitars, a mandolin, a bouzouki (“It’s called
a bouzouki —unless you’re going through an airport; then it’s not a bouzouki,
especially if you’re me”), and a harmonica, he did 21 tunes, including the
audience requests “Copperhead Road” and “Galway Girl.” For the latter Moorer
joined him on accordion (“She only learned to play this instrument before we
went on tour last spring—it freaks me out”).
The concert also
featured Mike Doughty, formerly of Soul Coughing, doing tunes such as the
exhilaratingly bitter “Na-Na-Nothing” (“It has that certain Mötley Crüe je ne sais quoi,” Doughty joked) and
reading from his new memoir, The Book of
Drugs—as Earle pointed out, he too has a book out, a novel that shares the
title of his new CD, both alluding to the Hank Williams song. Throughout their
residency at City Winery, Mondays through February 6, Earle and Moorer are
featuring guests such as Doughty and the Mastersons, who’ve toured with them as
members of the Dukes and Duchesses.
Yes, we can!
Sing, that is. And listen to others do so with every part of themselves—an act
that somehow carries with it hope and inspiration.
