![]() ![]() The Irish Tenors are a group of singers that first formed in 1998. Though, as anyone who’s heard Washington Square Serenade knows, Earle himself has never been averse to incorporating stray hip-hop elements in his own music. It’s also surely the only Steve Earle cover to add a bona fide rap verse. It still features harmonica, but cranks the guitars up to 11, emphasizing the latter half of the country-rock genre mash. This barnstorming number comes from veteran Canadian band The Road Hammers. ![]() Many of the covers on this list lean on the folkier side of Americana, but a few go harder. I wonder if Hynde had been listening to Emmylou’s version (elsewhere on this list), as Hynde and Harris soon after turned up together on a Gram Parsons’ tribute album. Moving at a slow thrum here, the band makes up with atmosphere what it loses from Earle’s more emotional delivery, the strings behind gradually becoming more mariachi as the lyrics travel to Mexico. Jane, at this stage the Pretenders were little more than a brand, Hynde and whomsoever was around to pick up the rhythm section. ![]() But Chrissie Hynde has never been good at hiding her love of a good song, as her recent run of Dylan covers has shown. Given that it’s a slow acoustic ballad, The Pretenders aren’t perhaps the most obvious band to give it a go. “Goodbye” is said to be the first song Steve Earle wrote in sobriety, writing it in the state-enforced rehab he undertook late in 1994. When everyone from Johnny Cash to The Pretenders is singing your songs, you know you’re doing something right. Though he’s never been a big generator of hit singles, this songwriter’s songwriter has had a number of songs become stealth standards, particularly in the Americana, folk, and alt-country worlds. We’ll be reviewing the new one, Jerry Jeff, in the near future, but as we celebrate covers by Steve Earle, we thought we’d also celebrate covers of Steve Earle. They pay tribute to his musical heroes and teachers who’ve passed on – Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Jerry Jeff Walker – plus, in one tragic case, his son Justin Townes Earle, who died in 2020. Today, Steve Earle releases the fourth in his occasional series of covers albums. ![]()
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