Steve Earle

He’s a Texas-to-Nashville transplant and a balladeer with an articulate business sense. But, from the way he assembled his band to his strong reverence for songwriting craft, Steve Earle embodies some of country music’s more venerable traits.

What he’s jettisoned are its anachronisms, yielding a beautifully-balanced, refreshing sound which calls to mind the Everlys’ most classic cuts. Lyrically, Earle leans more toward Tom Petty than Ernest Tubb; his honky-tonk aesthetic is thor-

oughly macho but substitutes a sulk for a spree. Still, Guitar Town, his debut disc MCA, and his new Exit O, are a near perfect synthesis of country and contemporary rock.

Psrfsct enough, in fact, to get him hyped as a country competitor to SpringsteenThis critical conceit—like the big I debate over whether his writing is “country” or “rock”—makes the blunt 32-yearold laugh. “That’s come up from the very beginning. I know I’m a country singer, | it’s clear enough to me. But people in the ' rock press, they hate to admit anything they like is ‘country.’ ”