Description
Warner Bros. Records will release remastered versions of six classic Steve Earle albums in September 2017. September 29 marks the release of Earles 2003 live set, Just An American Boy. This will mark the first time that Just An American Boy has been released on vinyl.
Steve Earle subtitled his 2003 live album Just an American Boy an Audio Documentary, which may be a bit more grand than it deserves, though in all fairness an awful lot had happened with Earle in the 12 years since his last live album, Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator (recorded shortly before Earles drug habit bottomed out both his career and his personal life for several years), and a lot was going on with him at the time this show was recorded. Always free with his opinions, Earles 2002 album Jerusalem, which was written and recorded in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, featured a song about American Taliban John Walker Lindh, and soon Earle was being denounced as a traitor by right-wing commentators faster than you could say Dixie Chicks.
As Earle himself puts it on this album, recorded on the tour supporting Jerusalem, Things have been really f*cking weird down South, and theyre gonna get even weirder, and he uses much of Just an American Boy to spotlight the progressive political slant that has long been a part of his songwriting, ranging from his moving anti-death penalty ballad Billy Austin, the labor anthem Harlan Man, and his call for new peoples heroes in Christmas in Washington to a venomous screed against compassionate conservatism, Amerika V. 6.0 (The Best We Can Do). While Earle mounts a soapbox through much of this set, his political views fortunately dont take a back seat to his skill as a songwriter, which remains razor sharp, or his vocals, which are craggy but emphatic on these recordings, with Earle and his band (including Eric Roscoe Ambel and Will Rigby) revving up a potent head of steam throughout. AllMusic
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