Review: Steve Earle, St George’s – ‘The voice of a fallen angel in a room full of ecstasy’

There’s always been something about a gig-filled, summer evening in Bristol.

As the day cools and the last rays of sun roll down Park Street, there’s a sleepy, smiley laziness, a hand beckoning you over, the promise of fun as the night unfolds. There’s a gentle hum about the place, a buzz, a thrum that rises from the pavements. It’s impossible to resist.

A buzz and a thrum rises from Steve Earle too. He opens with the Pogues’ If I Should Fall from Grace with God and this seems, somehow, fitting. Like Shane MacGowan, Earle is a fallen angel, a survivor, a certifiable genius.

His version lacks the Celtic fizz of the original, instead there’s a blues-y twang from a battered six-string, a world-weary resignation, the idea that falling from grace is an inevitability.

“I like to start with that one,” Earle says “because Shane MacGowan is one of the greatest songwriters on the planet”.

Of course, one of the other great song writers is Steve Earle. The first twenty minutes of the show have the feeling of a philanthropist who has just found a roll of 50s in his suit pocket. Earle flings complete classics around with total abandon. Fistfuls of songs, that lesser writers can only gape at, are bashed out with ridiculous ease.

The Devil’s Right Hand is probably even more relevant now than it was back in the 1980s, when it appeared on the Copperhead Road.

There’s an added urgency now, the anti-gun anthem fuelled by a punk sensibility. He thrashes away at his guitar, barely pausing for breath as one song crashes into another. His voice, though, is just as good as it has ever been. It’s the sound of real life, of anger, of everyday frustrations, of desperate love.

For My Old Friend the Blues lights trace intricate patterns across the St George’s ceiling. It all seems a tiny bit incongruous, a bit flash, you feel Earle would be as happy singing these songs in some dusty old tavern somewhere, or simply out there, under the stars.

Forty years ago, Guitar Town celebrated the freedom of the open road and playing music, now it seems to be defiant, an affirmation that the best things are still the simple things.

It is everything that you need on a sunny evening. Everything you could wish to sing along to. I Ain’t Ever Satisfied does that too, there are woo-oohs, a harmonica and massed ranks of 50-somethings crooning into the dusk.

Everything about this solo show (part of the Bristol Beacon Presents programme) is precision tooled, custom made, to utter perfection. The ragged acoustic punk classics give way to four songs about girls, and they, in turn, give way to three desperate blues.

The desperate Blues numbers track the well documented difficulties that Earle has faced, and overcome. It’s as though he forces himself to look at the difficult stuff, to remind himself that he can do this.

South Nashville Blues and CCKMP are scorching admissions, postcards from the drugged depths. Neither preach, neither hector, neither wallow; they are honest, real, wonderful songs.

They are made all the more poignant when he sings Harlem River Blues, written by his son, Justin Townes Earle, who died of an accidental overdose almost three years ago. Even then he refuses to pontificate but, with a crack in his careworn voice, reminds us to “be careful”. As we sing the chorus and find our own Gospel-tinged spirituality, so Steve Earle smiles.

If there were any thoughts that he had exhausted the classics, he finishes the night with two of the greatest songs ever written. Both Galway Girl and Copperhead Road will be cherished long after most of us have gone.

They merge seamlessly into one another, stitched together with a mandolin, the voice of a fallen angel and a room full of ecstasy. They are the gleeful promise at the end of a beautiful summer’s day.

Main photo: Gavin McNamara

Read next:

• Review: Mika, Lloyds Amphitheatre – ‘Queer joy simmered through his performance’
• Review: Maddie Morris, St Georges – ‘A socially conscious songwriter’
• Venue of the month: The Loko Club

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