Steve Earle Skips Sugarland’s "Steve Earle"

Sugarland photo by Kate Powers, courtesy of UMG Nashville.

Oct. 24, 2008 — Steve Earle is one of the leading lights of the Americana music movement, a place he began carving out with the release of the landmark 1986 album Guitar Town.

He’s also an outspoken critic of the establishment, and his willingness to tell it like it is presented a bit of a problem when Sugarland paid homage to him with a song called "Steve Earle."

"Jennifer [Nettles] is a fan, but I'm an absolutely stupid fan," Sugarland’s Kristian Bush told The Lexington Herald-Leader. "I started to explain to her, 'I think he is on wife No. 6 or 7 now, even though wives 1 and 4 were the same woman.' Jennifer just said, 'Really? This dude is a country song.'"

He literally became that when the duo included "Steve Earle" on their current Love On The Inside album. As it turns out, Steve has no opinion on the song.

"We sent it to him," Kristian explained, figuring "if the song pisses him off, let's not put it on the album. We are bigger fans than we are insistent songwriters. The response we got was that Steve doesn't read anything — reviews, anything at all — about himself, so why would he listen to a song that has been written about him? We thought, 'Genius! We love him even more.' But his manager explained to him what we were trying to do. We were told he laughed. That, in itself, is a triumph."

Sugarland has been playing "Steve Earle" on its current concert tour, which stops Friday in Evansville and Saturday in Lexington. Opening the dates are Kellie Pickler and Ashton Shepherd.