Disc 127 is...Train A Comin'
Artist: Steve EarleYear of Release: 1995
What’s Up With The Cover?: Steve Earle looks cool, smokin' a cigarette and playin' the guitar.
How I Came To Know It: As you'll know from previous Steve Earle albums, I love the guy, and this is just me drilling the conversation. I actually got "Train A Comin'" fairly later on - probably around 2002.
How It Stacks Up: I have fourteen Steve Earle albums - this is one of the better ones, but competition is tight with Steve Earle. I'll say somewhere between 6th and 8th depending on my mood. I'll split the difference and say 7th, but if I also rank some future Earle album 7th and you call me on it, you'll just be pointing out how much time you have on your hands.
Rating: 4 stars.
For some reason, I don't put this particular Steve Earle album on very often, even though I really enjoy it when I do. My last memorable listen was shortly after buying it, I hung out at my buddy Casey's place and played it for him. He returned the favour by introducing me properly to the great Muddy Waters. One more awesome thing I can thank Casey for on a long list of such things.
This time around, I had one song to go from my drive home from work on Friday, but I deliberately left it in the car so I could get another full listen out of it. Then, driving around shopping with Sheila today, I heard it again (that is OK by the rules, as it was a second listen) and I got so excited I decided to race home and review it right away.
As I've alluded to in earlier reviews, "Train A Comin'" is Steve Earle's first 'sober' album, after cleaning up off of Heroine and sorting his life out. Many of the tracks are old songs he wrote back in the seventies that he just now was recording, with a few new songs, and a couple of very interesting remakes.
The whole album is done in a very stripped down, unplugged manner - very traditional bluegrass/folk sounding. Having said that, Earle is quick to point out in the liner notes, "this ain't no part of no unplugged nothin' - God I hate MTV." Ah, Steve Earle - always struggling to say exactly what's on his mind.
The best song on this record is a new composition "Goodbye", which was recorded the same year on Emmylou Harris' amazing album, "Wrecking Ball" - but I'll talk about Emmylou's version when I roll it.
This is a five star song about regret and lost love, which has few rivals. I've heard this song dozens of times, but when it came on driving home from work on Friday, I got choked up all over again. The chorus sums up the combination of loss, and the shame of being so far gone that you can't remember what happened to cause the loss:
"I recall all of them nights down in Mexico
One place I may never go in my life again
Was I just off somewhere or just too high
But I can't remember if we said goodbye."
While "Goodbye" is easily one of Earle's greatest songs, this introspective song is not typical of the album. The real strength of "Train A Comin'" is the amazing folk tales Earle effortlessly spins. There are three standouts on this record.
"Mercenary Song" tells of three fortune seekers that go to Mexico to fight for Pancho Villa as soldiers of fortune. "Tom Ames' Prayer" tells the story of a young criminal, Tom Ames, and his rebellious relationship with his God.
Finally, "Ben McCulloch" tells the story of two brothers who sign up to fight under General Ben McCulloch in the American Civil War. I love how Earle paints history from the perspective of the common man:
"Well the poster said we'd get a uniform and seven bucks a week
The best rations in the army and a rifle we could keep."
And later on as service with McCulloch turns sour:
"And on the way to Fayetteville we cursed McCulloch's name
And mourned the dead that we'd left behind and we was carrying the lame
I killed a boy the other night who'd never even shaved
I don't even know what I'm fightin' for I ain't ever owned a slave."
This song always makes me think of Mark Knopfler's song, "Bonaparte", which describes a similar story of French soldiers in the service of Napoleon.
All three of the folk tales on "Train A Comin'" were originally written in 1975, when Steve Earle was only 20 years old, and almost ten years before "Guitar Town" would make him famous.
The final element to "Train A Comin'" are some of most thoughtful and memorable cover songs you'll hear on a record. Earle puts a folksy, bluegrass edge onto the Beatles' "I'm Looking Through You" and the applies the same treatment to the Jamaican reggae/disco hit "Rivers of Babylon". After hearing them you'll swear they were both written in the Kentucky hills. The last remake, is "Tecumseh Valley" an earnest and emotionally honest tip of the hat to Earle's mentor, Townes Van Zandt (Earle went on to do an entire album of Van Zandt songs in 2009, which you'll recall from Disc 28).
I guess this album makes me doubly thankful. Thankful to hear such a great record. And even more thankful that Earle sobered up and stayed alive to record nine more following it.
Best tracks: Mercenary Song, Goodby, Tom Ames' Prayer, Northern Winds, "Ben McCulloch, Rivers of Babylon, Tecumseh Valley.
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