Steve Earle & The Dukes will release Ghosts of West Virginia on May 22nd, 2020 via New West Records. The album was produced by Steve Earle and engineered by Ray Kennedy at Jimi Hendrix’s legendary Electric Lady Studios in New York City. The 10-song set is Earle’s 20th studio album and was mixed entirely in mono, lending a sonic cohesion and punch. In recent years, Earle has experienced partial hearing loss in one ear and can no longer discern the separation that stereo is designed to produce.

The 2019 Dirt Farmer Festival will be held at the Arrowood Farm Brewery in Accord, NY on Friday & Saturday, September 6th and 7th. Dirt Farmer is one of the premier festivals in the Hudson Valley and is chock full of talent. The performers include Amy Helm, The Midnight Ramble Band, Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams, Steve Earle, Phil & Grahame Lesh, Mercury Rev, Anders Osborne, Jimmy Vivino, The Lower 911 and a special tribute to Dr. John and many others.

For the past 18 years, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass has brought hundreds of thousands of die-hard live music fans from around the world to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park each October.

After a downright cold and sometimes chaotic night during the opening of the Bonnaroo campgrounds, the festival began to run much more smoothly as the gates of Centeroo opened just after noon on Thursday, June 13th. Partly cloudy skies gave way to an unseasonably pleasant and chilly afternoon as many of the 80,000 people attending the sold-out event swarmed into the concert area. Bonnaroo has become a virtual gathering of musical tribes from different generations.

Steve Earle & The Dukes have announced additional Summer 2019 Tour Dates in support of their critically acclaimed new album GUY.  A return to New West Records, the 16-song set is comprised of songs written by one of his two primary songwriting mentors, the legendary Guy Clark.  The New Yorker called GUY “a winsome tribute” while Stereogum called the album “...a truly sublime homage.”  GUY appears ten years after his Grammy Award winning album TOWNES, his tribute to his other songwriting mentor, Townes Van Zandt.

Always on the radar of the folk and Americana faithful in the Philadelphia area, the Ardmore Music Hall will bring in a heaping helping of top notch singer-songwriters to their calendar for the spring season in the form of Canadian cowboy Colter Wall, Tennessee songwriter John Paul White (of The Civil Wars), and Midwestern songstress Lissie and two Philadelphia Folk Fest veterans in Memphis songstress Valerie June and outlaw country legend Steve Earle.

Steve Earle & The Dukes are set to return with GUY on March 29th, 2019. A return to New West Records, the 16-song set is comprised of songs written by one of his two primary songwriting mentors, the legendary Guy Clark. GUY appears ten years after his Grammy Award winning album TOWNES, his tribute to his other songwriting mentor, Townes Van Zandt.

Almost twenty years ago, Steve Earle and I took a ride through South Nashville. It was down those mean streets that Steve had spent his famous “hiatus” in the early 1990’s mostly shooting dope. It was a crazy, unprecedented thing. Here was a guy – the supposed “new face” of outlaw country – who had already put out a near unbroken string of instant classics, including chart hits like “Guitar Town,” “Someday,” and the immortal “Copperhead Road.” And he just up and disappears, drops from sight for four years, making no records, playing no shows.

The last day of the second annual Music on the Mesa festival started out with blue skies and fluffy clouds, but the weather bureau promised rain. Here in New Mexico, we dance about that, especially in monsoon season, because it is arid here. With that in mind, I came prepared with my raingear to protect my camera.

It was red noses all around on May 22 in Southern Sonoma County, as thousands converged at the Mountain Event Center to celebrate Wavy Gravy in merriment and song on the occasion of his 80^th birthday.