Turmoil and Triumph in Nashville : Stacey Earle, Still Moving On
By Mike Zwerin International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, June 6, 2001

This is like one of those TV soap operas, about a young mother struggling against poverty, illness and drug addiction to become a country music star — but better. Stacey Earle released her first record "Simple Gearle," in 1999, when she was 38, her second last year and her third in March.
.
Before that, increasingly worried that her late start did not leave her much of a shot, she'd been looking in the mirror and worrying that her age was showing. But having two children when she was in her teens and not starting to write songs until she had something to write about turned out to be an advantage. Anyway, she doesn't worry about it any more.
.
Earle's life as a singer/songwriter goes back to early 1990, when she was a 28-year-old single mother of two young boys trying to cope with hard times as a waitress in San Antonio, Texas. When her utilities were cut, she pretended to the kids that they were camping out. "Get the candles," she said. "We're going to have a party." She could turn just about anything negative into a positive.
.
When her car was totaled, she called her big brother Steve, a successful singer/songwriter in Nashville, to borrow $500 to buy another one. Steve Earle had a "new-country" hit album, "Guitar Town." He sent the money, she bought the car and it was stolen that very same afternoon. She could find nothing positive in that. At the end of her tether, she called her brother again.
.
He invited her to bring the kids and live with him in Nashville for a while. They were always close. Their father was an air-traffic controller and they had grown up moving around. The only problem was that Steve Earle had one of the more famous and destructive drug habits in the music business.
.
In Nashville, Stacey found herself being nanny to Steve's two kids in addition to her own. They each had a different mother, so she was dealing with him, his habit, his two former wives, all of their children and her own former husband. "People called me the biggest co-dependent person in the world," she says. "I call it love."
.
She got a job serving lunch in the same elementary school her sons attended. She spent her spare time hanging around the house with Steve's guitar collection for company. With no musical training, she memorized how the chords looked when fingered on the fretboard, and she wrote her first song, "Afraid of the Dark."
.
She began to sign up for "writer's nights," amateur nights, at Jack's Guitar Bar. That involved lining up at 4 p.m. with her kids on their way home from school. The door opened at six. She'd go in and sign up and have just enough time to rush home, feed the kids supper, pick up the baby sitter and get back to sing at eight.
.
Her intimate voice had an expressive twang, her style was somewhere between country and folk, and her songs were increasingly personal. The black-and-white artwork on "Simple Gearle" recalls Walker Evans's Depression-era photographs, and there are nostalgic vinyl-LP surface-crackles between tunes.
.
She met Mark Stuart, now her second husband and musical partner, performing his own songs at Jack's. She says they "haven't spent a day apart in 11 years." She calls him "my knight in shining armor, but instead of a horse he had a guitar." Record companies could never figure out a way to market her, so she releases her own records and sells them on her Web site, www.staceyearle.com, and through an international distribution system she built and maintains herself.
.
In 1990, when Steve Earle came off the road (he was then what is called a "functioning addict") to record his next album, "The Hard Way," he overheard Stacey singing around the house and asked her to sing backup. But she was still taking medication for epilepsy and was afraid having a seizure during expensive studio time. - BEFORE the boys were born she'd had her own fling with drugs. ''Drug and alcohol addiction runs in my family,'' she explains. ''But what stopped me was once when I got high I had like 30 seizures. Epilepsy saved me. I was lucky, I was sick. And then I got pregnant and that was the end of my drug problem.'' The other musicians called her ''a natural'' in the studio. Steve offered to take her on his next tour as rhythm guitarist and backup vocalist if she could learn the material on his four albums in six weeks. She practiced and memorized and brought in her former husband to take care of the children. To make a six-week story short, they opened in Sydney and performed her first song, ''Afraid of the Dark,'' for the first time at the last show in Los Angeles. Then came 10 years ''beating it to death'' in Nashville. Being Steve Earle's sister would get her in the door. Publishers patted her on the back and said, ''keep writing them girl.'' Steve, who was starting to kick his drug problem at the time, was still unpredictable. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to write if he stopped using. Stacey felt she had to protect her kids from him: ''But Steve's been clean for seven years now. My boys just adore him. He grows bonsai trees now. He's become the great, generous person I always knew he was. Steve is my hero, my hero of battles.'' She reflects for a beat and continues: ''And Joan Baez is my hero of Grace. I did a tour with her. I was with her when she turned 60. She'd stand and sing front and center with confidence, her voice was still young, it filled the house. She's making another record now. Joan taught me not to panic about my age. She inspired me. Now I know that me, too, I'll still be making records when I'm 60.''
This is like one of those TV soap operas, about a young mother struggling against poverty, illness and drug addiction to become a country music star — but better. Stacey Earle released her first record "Simple Gearle," in 1999, when she was 38, her second last year and her third in March.
.
Before that, increasingly worried that her late start did not leave her much of a shot, she'd been looking in the mirror and worrying that her age was showing. But having two children when she was in her teens and not starting to write songs until she had something to write about turned out to be an advantage. Anyway, she doesn't worry about it any more.
.
Earle's life as a singer/songwriter goes back to early 1990, when she was a 28-year-old single mother of two young boys trying to cope with hard times as a waitress in San Antonio, Texas. When her utilities were cut, she pretended to the kids that they were camping out. "Get the candles," she said. "We're going to have a party." She could turn just about anything negative into a positive.
.
When her car was totaled, she called her big brother Steve, a successful singer/songwriter in Nashville, to borrow $500 to buy another one. Steve Earle had a "new-country" hit album, "Guitar Town." He sent the money, she bought the car and it was stolen that very same afternoon. She could find nothing positive in that. At the end of her tether, she called her brother again.
.
He invited her to bring the kids and live with him in Nashville for a while. They were always close. Their father was an air-traffic controller and they had grown up moving around. The only problem was that Steve Earle had one of the more famous and destructive drug habits in the music business.
.
In Nashville, Stacey found herself being nanny to Steve's two kids in addition to her own. They each had a different mother, so she was dealing with him, his habit, his two former wives, all of their children and her own former husband. "People called me the biggest co-dependent person in the world," she says. "I call it love."
.
She got a job serving lunch in the same elementary school her sons attended. She spent her spare time hanging around the house with Steve's guitar collection for company. With no musical training, she memorized how the chords looked when fingered on the fretboard, and she wrote her first song, "Afraid of the Dark."
.
She began to sign up for "writer's nights," amateur nights, at Jack's Guitar Bar. That involved lining up at 4 p.m. with her kids on their way home from school. The door opened at six. She'd go in and sign up and have just enough time to rush home, feed the kids supper, pick up the baby sitter and get back to sing at eight.
.
Her intimate voice had an expressive twang, her style was somewhere between country and folk, and her songs were increasingly personal. The black-and-white artwork on "Simple Gearle" recalls Walker Evans's Depression-era photographs, and there are nostalgic vinyl-LP surface-crackles between tunes.
.
She met Mark Stuart, now her second husband and musical partner, performing his own songs at Jack's. She says they "haven't spent a day apart in 11 years." She calls him "my knight in shining armor, but instead of a horse he had a guitar." Record companies could never figure out a way to market her, so she releases her own records and sells them on her Web site, www.staceyearle.com, and through an international distribution system she built and maintains herself.
.
In 1990, when Steve Earle came off the road (he was then what is called a "functioning addict") to record his next album, "The Hard Way," he overheard Stacey singing around the house and asked her to sing backup. But she was still taking medication for epilepsy and was afraid having a seizure during expensive studio time. - BEFORE the boys were born she'd had her own fling with drugs. ''Drug and alcohol addiction runs in my family,'' she explains. ''But what stopped me was once when I got high I had like 30 seizures. Epilepsy saved me. I was lucky, I was sick. And then I got pregnant and that was the end of my drug problem.'' The other musicians called her ''a natural'' in the studio. Steve offered to take her on his next tour as rhythm guitarist and backup vocalist if she could learn the material on his four albums in six weeks. She practiced and memorized and brought in her former husband to take care of the children. To make a six-week story short, they opened in Sydney and performed her first song, ''Afraid of the Dark,'' for the first time at the last show in Los Angeles. Then came 10 years ''beating it to death'' in Nashville. Being Steve Earle's sister would get her in the door. Publishers patted her on the back and said, ''keep writing them girl.'' Steve, who was starting to kick his drug problem at the time, was still unpredictable. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to write if he stopped using. Stacey felt she had to protect her kids from him: ''But Steve's been clean for seven years now. My boys just adore him. He grows bonsai trees now. He's become the great, generous person I always knew he was. Steve is my hero, my hero of battles.'' She reflects for a beat and continues: ''And Joan Baez is my hero of Grace. I did a tour with her. I was with her when she turned 60. She'd stand and sing front and center with confidence, her voice was still young, it filled the house. She's making another record now. Joan taught me not to panic about my age. She inspired me. Now I know that me, too, I'll still be making records when I'm 60.''
This is like one of those TV soap operas, about a young mother struggling against poverty, illness and drug addiction to become a country music star — but better. Stacey Earle released her first record "Simple Gearle," in 1999, when she was 38, her second last year and her third in March.
.
Before that, increasingly worried that her late start did not leave her much of a shot, she'd been looking in the mirror and worrying that her age was showing. But having two children when she was in her teens and not starting to write songs until she had something to write about turned out to be an advantage. Anyway, she doesn't worry about it any more.
.
Earle's life as a singer/songwriter goes back to early 1990, when she was a 28-year-old single mother of two young boys trying to cope with hard times as a waitress in San Antonio, Texas. When her utilities were cut, she pretended to the kids that they were camping out. "Get the candles," she said. "We're going to have a party." She could turn just about anything negative into a positive.
.
When her car was totaled, she called her big brother Steve, a successful singer/songwriter in Nashville, to borrow $500 to buy another one. Steve Earle had a "new-country" hit album, "Guitar Town." He sent the money, she bought the car and it was stolen that very same afternoon. She could find nothing positive in that. At the end of her tether, she called her brother again.
.
He invited her to bring the kids and live with him in Nashville for a while. They were always close. Their father was an air-traffic controller and they had grown up moving around. The only problem was that Steve Earle had one of the more famous and destructive drug habits in the music business.
.
In Nashville, Stacey found herself being nanny to Steve's two kids in addition to her own. They each had a different mother, so she was dealing with him, his habit, his two former wives, all of their children and her own former husband. "People called me the biggest co-dependent person in the world," she says. "I call it love."
.
She got a job serving lunch in the same elementary school her sons attended. She spent her spare time hanging around the house with Steve's guitar collection for company. With no musical training, she memorized how the chords looked when fingered on the fretboard, and she wrote her first song, "Afraid of the Dark."
.
She began to sign up for "writer's nights," amateur nights, at Jack's Guitar Bar. That involved lining up at 4 p.m. with her kids on their way home from school. The door opened at six. She'd go in and sign up and have just enough time to rush home, feed the kids supper, pick up the baby sitter and get back to sing at eight.
.
Her intimate voice had an expressive twang, her style was somewhere between country and folk, and her songs were increasingly personal. The black-and-white artwork on "Simple Gearle" recalls Walker Evans's Depression-era photographs, and there are nostalgic vinyl-LP surface-crackles between tunes.
.
She met Mark Stuart, now her second husband and musical partner, performing his own songs at Jack's. She says they "haven't spent a day apart in 11 years." She calls him "my knight in shining armor, but instead of a horse he had a guitar." Record companies could never figure out a way to market her, so she releases her own records and sells them on her Web site, www.staceyearle.com, and through an international distribution system she built and maintains herself.
.
In 1990, when Steve Earle came off the road (he was then what is called a "functioning addict") to record his next album, "The Hard Way," he overheard Stacey singing around the house and asked her to sing backup. But she was still taking medication for epilepsy and was afraid having a seizure during expensive studio time. - BEFORE the boys were born she'd had her own fling with drugs. ''Drug and alcohol addiction runs in my family,'' she explains. ''But what stopped me was once when I got high I had like 30 seizures. Epilepsy saved me. I was lucky, I was sick. And then I got pregnant and that was the end of my drug problem.'' The other musicians called her ''a natural'' in the studio. Steve offered to take her on his next tour as rhythm guitarist and backup vocalist if she could learn the material on his four albums in six weeks. She practiced and memorized and brought in her former husband to take care of the children. To make a six-week story short, they opened in Sydney and performed her first song, ''Afraid of the Dark,'' for the first time at the last show in Los Angeles. Then came 10 years ''beating it to death'' in Nashville. Being Steve Earle's sister would get her in the door. Publishers patted her on the back and said, ''keep writing them girl.'' Steve, who was starting to kick his drug problem at the time, was still unpredictable. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to write if he stopped using. Stacey felt she had to protect her kids from him: ''But Steve's been clean for seven years now. My boys just adore him. He grows bonsai trees now. He's become the great, generous person I always knew he was. Steve is my hero, my hero of battles.'' She reflects for a beat and continues: ''And Joan Baez is my hero of Grace. I did a tour with her. I was with her when she turned 60. She'd stand and sing front and center with confidence, her voice was still young, it filled the house. She's making another record now. Joan taught me not to panic about my age. She inspired me. Now I know that me, too, I'll still be making records when I'm 60.''
This is like one of those TV soap operas, about a young mother struggling against poverty, illness and drug addiction to become a country music star — but better. Stacey Earle released her first record "Simple Gearle," in 1999, when she was 38, her second last year and her third in March.
.
Before that, increasingly worried that her late start did not leave her much of a shot, she'd been looking in the mirror and worrying that her age was showing. But having two children when she was in her teens and not starting to write songs until she had something to write about turned out to be an advantage. Anyway, she doesn't worry about it any more.
.
Earle's life as a singer/songwriter goes back to early 1990, when she was a 28-year-old single mother of two young boys trying to cope with hard times as a waitress in San Antonio, Texas. When her utilities were cut, she pretended to the kids that they were camping out. "Get the candles," she said. "We're going to have a party." She could turn just about anything negative into a positive.
.
When her car was totaled, she called her big brother Steve, a successful singer/songwriter in Nashville, to borrow $500 to buy another one. Steve Earle had a "new-country" hit album, "Guitar Town." He sent the money, she bought the car and it was stolen that very same afternoon. She could find nothing positive in that. At the end of her tether, she called her brother again.
.
He invited her to bring the kids and live with him in Nashville for a while. They were always close. Their father was an air-traffic controller and they had grown up moving around. The only problem was that Steve Earle had one of the more famous and destructive drug habits in the music business.
.
In Nashville, Stacey found herself being nanny to Steve's two kids in addition to her own. They each had a different mother, so she was dealing with him, his habit, his two former wives, all of their children and her own former husband. "People called me the biggest co-dependent person in the world," she says. "I call it love."
.
She got a job serving lunch in the same elementary school her sons attended. She spent her spare time hanging around the house with Steve's guitar collection for company. With no musical training, she memorized how the chords looked when fingered on the fretboard, and she wrote her first song, "Afraid of the Dark."
.
She began to sign up for "writer's nights," amateur nights, at Jack's Guitar Bar. That involved lining up at 4 p.m. with her kids on their way home from school. The door opened at six. She'd go in and sign up and have just enough time to rush home, feed the kids supper, pick up the baby sitter and get back to sing at eight.
.
Her intimate voice had an expressive twang, her style was somewhere between country and folk, and her songs were increasingly personal. The black-and-white artwork on "Simple Gearle" recalls Walker Evans's Depression-era photographs, and there are nostalgic vinyl-LP surface-crackles between tunes.
.
She met Mark Stuart, now her second husband and musical partner, performing his own songs at Jack's. She says they "haven't spent a day apart in 11 years." She calls him "my knight in shining armor, but instead of a horse he had a guitar." Record companies could never figure out a way to market her, so she releases her own records and sells them on her Web site, www.staceyearle.com, and through an international distribution system she built and maintains herself.
.
In 1990, when Steve Earle came off the road (he was then what is called a "functioning addict") to record his next album, "The Hard Way," he overheard Stacey singing around the house and asked her to sing backup. But she was still taking medication for epilepsy and was afraid having a seizure during expensive studio time. - BEFORE the boys were born she'd had her own fling with drugs. ''Drug and alcohol addiction runs in my family,'' she explains. ''But what stopped me was once when I got high I had like 30 seizures. Epilepsy saved me. I was lucky, I was sick. And then I got pregnant and that was the end of my drug problem.'' The other musicians called her ''a natural'' in the studio. Steve offered to take her on his next tour as rhythm guitarist and backup vocalist if she could learn the material on his four albums in six weeks. She practiced and memorized and brought in her former husband to take care of the children. To make a six-week story short, they opened in Sydney and performed her first song, ''Afraid of the Dark,'' for the first time at the last show in Los Angeles. Then came 10 years ''beating it to death'' in Nashville. Being Steve Earle's sister would get her in the door. Publishers patted her on the back and said, ''keep writing them girl.'' Steve, who was starting to kick his drug problem at the time, was still unpredictable. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to write if he stopped using. Stacey felt she had to protect her kids from him: ''But Steve's been clean for seven years now. My boys just adore him. He grows bonsai trees now. He's become the great, generous person I always knew he was. Steve is my hero, my hero of battles.'' She reflects for a beat and continues: ''And Joan Baez is my hero of Grace. I did a tour with her. I was with her when she turned 60. She'd stand and sing front and center with confidence, her voice was still young, it filled the house. She's making another record now. Joan taught me not to panic about my age. She inspired me. Now I know that me, too, I'll still be making records when I'm 60.''