Album: The Low Highway
Year: 2013
. . .
In the past 15 years or so, Steve Earle has continued to walk his own idiosyncratic path, mixing genre exercises, song cycles and tribute albums — his mentors Towns Van Zandt, Guy Clark & Jerry Jeff Walker, and sadly, his son, Justin Townes Earle — with albums the featured his usual mix of hard rock, folk, country and blues.
So far as I can tell, there hasn’t been a bad one in the bunch, and they contain memorable songs, like “21st Century Blues,” my highlight from 2013’s The Low Highway, and one of the more biting songs Earle has ever written.
Here I am in the 21st century
I have to say it ain’t as cool as I hoped it would be
No man on the moon, nobody on Mars
Where the hell is my flying car?
Ain’t nothing even like a teletransporter so farIt’s hard times in the new millennium
Getting by on just the bare minimum
Everything to lose and nothing to spare
Going to hell and nobody cares
Ain’t the future that Kennedy promised me
In the 21st century
Anchored by a jangling 12-string electric guitar and colored by Eleanor Whitmore’s soaring fiddle, “21st Century Blues” contrasts classic sci-fi tropes, hippie utopianism and a clear-eyed vision of the world as it was at the time.
Finally come to the Age of Aquarius
And if we live through the Mayan apocalypse
There’ll be pie in the sky above Lemonade Springs
A god-damn American utopian dream
If you believe that, then you’re more optimistic than meLights out in the heart of America
No love in a time of hysteria
It’s head for the hills, every man for himself
Nobody helping out nobody else
Ain’t the way that the Maharishi said it would be
In the 21st century
As “21st Century Blues” progresses you start noticing the overdrive from the always-great Will Rigby and the coloring organ from soon-to-be-ex-wife Alison Moorer, and some psychedelic lead guitar from Chris Masterson all of which comes to a stop so that Earle can ask something from all of us.
Pray for guidance, beg forgiveness
Vote for change and hope they find this
Only thing I know for sure is
This builds to a final verse that is kind of an echo of “The Revolution Starts Now,” a tiny bit of positivism that in retrospect might ring a bit hollow, even if we can still maybe get out of the even worse bind we’re currently in, where Democracy itself seems to be on the ballot.
We stand now on the verge of history
The world can be anything that we want it to be
Where there’s a will, there’s a way
When there’s a fire, there’s a spark
Out in the streets, downtown in the park
Baby, the future’s just waiting on you and me
In the 21st century
In the 21st century
I guess we’ll find out next week, though, won’t we?
Anyways, by this time, Steve Earle was charting in four different places, as The Low Highway made #4 on US Folk, #10 on US Indie, #12 on the Country and #39 on the Billboard 200 albums charts.
“21st Century Blues”
“21st Century Blues” Live at WFMU, 2013
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