Train a Comin

 (39 customer reviews)

Steve Earl opens the album by declaring: "This here's the 'Hometown Blues' with apologies to Thomas Wolfe and Doc Watson," and then presents the listener with the warmest and perhaps most personal album of this country renegade's career. It had been four years since his last studio album, 1991's The Hard Way, and almost a decade since his 1986 debut Guitar Town. For this comeback effort, Earle strips things down to the roots. The band consists of a Who's Who of country, folk and bluegrass musicians: Norman Blake (guitar, Dobro, fiddle, mandolin and Hawaiian guitar), Peter Rowan (mandolin, mandola, gut string guitar and vocals), Roy Husky (accoustic bass) and Emmylou Harris (vocals). The album is a mixture of originals like "Mercenary Song" and "Ben McCulloch," and covers like Townes Van Zandt's "Tecumseh Valley" and a wonderful version of the Beatles' "I'm Looking Through You." If you enjoyed Earle's 1999 collaberation with the...Read more

"This ain't my unplugged record!" Steve writes in the liner notes to this gem, originally released in '95. It's a collection of songs old and new, and a few covers, performed primarily on acoustic tours. There's nary a bad track; and the good ones... they'll haunt you long after the album's over. A case in point: "Goodbye." Emmylou Harris does a near-definitive version of it on her Wrecking Ball album, but here... Steve's understated vocals bypass the brain in favor of the heart, recalling all of the folks left behind but carried with us, still. For that song alone, this CD is a necessary addition to any self-respecting fan's collection; add in the story-song "Ben McCulloch," his masterful take of Townes' Van Zandt's "Tecumsah Valley" and his duet with Emmylou on "Rivers of Babylon"... this is one of those albums that you put in the CD player to listen to and end up listening to it two, three, four times in a row.

Train catches the essential Earle. Great musicians on this album. Fantastic stories, good music, wonderful "comback" compilation of old and new. I was priviliged to see SE in his first live show after getting out of the grey bar hotel at the Vic in Chicago. Still the best show I have ever seen. He was truely moved on several occasions and once had to turn his back to the crowd because of it. I have been to dozens of shows in my day but never experieced a show where they turned on the lights to the theater and turned on the recorded music, and nobody left. SE came on for a 4th encore and said " I don't know where your staying tonight but it can't be here, so I'll do one more and you got to promise to go". Well he went into a acoustic version of Someday and made everyones night. What a great album and eclectic talent.