A Conversation with Steve Earle – HuffPost 8.6.12

Mike Ragogna: Steve, your novel I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive, imagines the troubled life of Doc Ebersole as he is haunted by the ghost of his former patient and friend, Hank Williams. What inspired you to write something like this?

Steve Earle: I had always heard there was a doctor traveling with Hank; turns out the guy wasn’t really a doctor, he was a quack. I decided the idea that he was a doctor was more interesting, and I came up with my own character, Doc Ebersole. It started out as a simple ghost story and became a Harry Potter book for adults by the end, it got kind out of hand, but I’m pretty proud of it actually.

MR: And it has the same title as your latest album.

SE: The book was always going to be called, I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive because it was the last single that Hank Williams released before his death and it went to #1 after he died. Kind of weird it worked out that way, but it did. I’d been working on my record and the book was finished, turned in, and getting ready to be published. My producer and I were finished recording, mixing, and in the process of sequencing. It occurred to me that the songs were about a lot of the same things that the book was about–mortality, not in the morbid western sense, mortality in the sense of something we all have to deal with, in a spiritual sense. I lost my dad a few years ago, and when the generation before you goes, you’re next. It was something, as an artist, I found myself dealing with and writing about a lot. I made the record and the book in pretty much the same time frame. I decided to give them the same title and capitalize on the confusion.

MR: So the record is dealing with a lot of the same issues that the book talks about, but it’s not a companion piece to the book.

SE: Correct, you won’t hear Doc Ebersol singing on the album.

MR: Although “Waiting On The Sky,” to me, could be the crossover piece. It sets up the album with concepts of mortality, just as you mentioned. Otherwise, it seems very personal.

SE: This record is probably the most personal of any record I’ve ever made. I couldn’t figure out what it was about until the end. The book was inevitably taking up a lot of space in my consciousness and I made the connection. I worked on it for a long time; finally finishing it was a big deal to me.

MR: I have to say, your version of your original “I Am A Wanderer” resonates with me deeply. You said this album dealt with issues that are more personal than not. What was behind this song?

SE: I wrote “I Am A Wanderer” and “God Is God” originally for Joan Baez’s last record, but it’s still me talking when I’m writing for someone else, at least to some extent. “I Am A Wanderer” is about the things that Joan and I have in common, that we might as well do something while we’re here. How everything we do and say matters. It affects other people in the world, not just the people that we see. Basically, try not to forget about anybody.

MR: You and Joan have gotten close over the years, haven’t you.

SE: Yeah, it’s a big deal for a songwriter of my generation and political depth to have Joan Baez sing six of your songs. It’s hard for me to believe but it’s true.

MR: To me, it seems you had a major turning point or personal growth spurt with yourJerusalem album.

SE: Well, Copperhead Road is a pretty political album and song. It was my post Vietnam record. It was being made the same time as Platoon and [Springsteen’s] Born In The USA. There was a period in the ’80s when we were all finally dealing with the war. Jerusalem was the first time I ever intentionally set out to make a record that was overtly political. I don’t think I’m a political songwriter, but I made two political records in a row because there was nothing else to do for a writer like me. Jerusalem is my post 9/11 record. The Revolution Starts Now is me reacting to living through a decade of war. It’s happened twice in my lifetime. The fact of the matter is we’ve constantly been at war in my lifetime. Pete Seeger says all songs are political, even lullabies are political to babies.

MR: Steve, you’ve been doing readings of I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive since its release?

SE: Right, I did quite a few when the book first came out, and it’s currently being released in paperback.

MR: What’s your favorite part to read?

SE: Pretty early in the book, when Doc Ebersol first sets up for business. The paragraphs that describe his beer joint where he has a table in the back that serves as his office that he uses to consult potential customers. His main livelihood is that he performs abortions. It shows how hard Doc has fallen. He was, at one time, a physician from a respected family in New Orleans. He ended up in San Antonio because of his own weaknesses.

MR: What bonded him and Hank Williams?

SE: The real Doc Ebersol was a man named Toby Marshall who claimed he could cure alcoholism with chlorhydrate, which is a barbiturate. It cured him alright; you can’t drink if your dead. Hank had a lot of alcohol, a lot of chlorhydrate, and a fair amount of morphine in his system when he died. He took morphine because he was in excruciating pain for most of his life from spina bifida.

MR: Would Hank Williams have been drawn to someone like that?

SE: Hank Williams was an alcoholic, he had people in his life that weren’t good to hang out with, so probably yes.

MR: I see you will be doing a reading at Iowa City’s Live From the Prairie Lights at 4pm on August 7th followed by a Q&A.

SE: Yeah, I’ll read a little from the book, answer some questions, and sound check for my show.

MR: Which will be at Iowa City’s Englert Theatre at 8pm.

SE: Yeah.

MR: What are the most common questions people have about the book?

SE: People often ask me how writing books compares with writing songs. I tell them books take longer.

MR: What is your advice for new artists?

SE: I think you have to wake up in the morning and remember that you’ve committed to doing something that not everybody gets to do. If you get to make any sort of living doing and kind of art, then you are very fortunate. I’ve spent a lot of years doing this and I was in my thirties before I made any money. It can take a long time, hang in there.

MR: Thanks, Steve. All the best.

SE: Thanks, Mike.

Transcribed by Theo Whitley