anyone love Steve Earle?

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does anyone else love Steve Earle? anyone else think he's "alternatively wired" in some way?

i'm thinking of how focused he is on music, and how he gets that "honing in" look when he sings--the one many people interpret as "spaciness."

also thinking of his former interview program on talk radio. often, he seemed to forget to ask his guests questions: he was too busy being fascinated by something they just said, and giving all the ins-and-outs on that particular topic.

anyone know a great deal about his life? i'd be interested in your perspective. (or any perspective, for that matter.)

Copperhead Road is his only good song. the others just aren't good. Drugs might have made him space out.

really? in general, i'm not much of a country music fan. but i think he's such an underrated songwriter. (love both his personal ballads and political works. John Walker Blues, Rich man's war, etc.)

i would write the "spacy" look off to drugs, but he's been clean for years. i think he might be in hyperfocus.

I only know his most recent album (I think) but I really like it. The one with the political agenda. My step brother turned me onto him back when we'd get together and rant and rave about "W" (and he's a Republican ) I'm not really a country fan but I like him and Alison Krauss a lot. I've read that he's been married six times to five different women and has battled addiction with drugs. So I guess he's earned his country music lyric creds. I like any artist that I feel creates from an honest perspective and is not just churning out variations of the same thing over and over.

Never even listened to him before.

I was hooked on him by "Copperhead Road" the song- and the album.
The song is an ingeniously constructed musical journey into the hillbilly heart of darkness. Kinda of - the Irish Cheftains meet metallica - all with a country two-step beat.

Other songs from the same album are good- "the Devil's Right Hand" (an anti-gun song), and "Snake Oil".

That recent political album has only one song that sticks in my memory though- that reggae ode to "Condi Condi".

The visuals conjured up by that song of Condoleeza Rice dirty dancing on a tropical beach are a bit a much for me! Musta bin on drugs when he penned that one!

i love that he's busted every single one of my stereotypes about country music, country musicians. (when i lived in Ohio, country music fans were often the people i needed to be frightened of.)

but Earle? he's a pretty fierce defender of "the underdog" overall. he loved the peace of the place he lived, but opted for NY city because he "needed to see a bi-racial gay couple walking hand in hand with no harassment." i love that he tells the stories of those others would rather ignore (those on death row, etc.)

he's unabashedly hillbilly. and i love him for that too.

in short: he short-circuited all my expectations. i love him for this. (and for all that incredible music!)