By CURTIS ROCKWELL

Steve Earle is one of the most acclaimed singer-songwriters of his generation. And he coming to Pascagoula.

Earle will bring his “Alone Again” solo acoustic 2024 Tour to the Grand Magnolia Ballroom on Sunday, June 2nd. Don’t dare miss a chance to see this legendary performer in a small, intimate venue.

Tickets are already on sale at http://www.grandmagmusic.com.

Earle has won three coveted Grammy Awards and been nominated a total of 16 times. A protege of legendary songwriters Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, he quickly became a master storyteller in his own right, with his songs being recorded by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, The Pretenders, and countless others. 1986 saw the release of his record, Guitar Town, which shot to number one on the country charts and is now regarded as a classic of the Americana genre. 

Two years ago, Earle traveled to Luckenbach, Texas, about an hour away from where he grew up, to play an outdoor concert celebrating the life of Jerry Jeff Walker. Walker – the colorful cowboy troubadour whose ballad “Mr. Bojangles” marked a new era of imaginative folk songwriting – had died at 78 from throat cancer. His wife Susan threw a party for his fans, with Emmylou Harris, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Jimmy Buffett, Mac McAnally, Rodney Crowell and Keith Sykes among others all singing Walker’s songs and telling stories. 

Now, Earle will appear in Buffett’s hometown at the Grand Mag just like McAnally, Crowell, Sykes and Buffett himself did as well over the past decade.

Earle went onstage toward the end of the night. He chose to perform “Hill Country Rain,” a joyous 1972 singalong. ‘Cause I got a feeling Something that I can’t explain It’s like dancing naked In that high hill country rain “It’s in a bizarre tuning that he made up,” says Earle. “But that was his opus, really. That was full-blown hippie music.”

Most recently, Earle’s 1988 hit Copperhead Road was made an official state song of Tennessee in 2023. Subsequent releases like The Revolution Starts…Now (2004), Washington Square Serenade (2007), and TOWNES (2009) received consecutive GRAMMY® Awards. His most recent album, Jerry Jeff (2022) consisted of Earle’s versions of songs written by Walker, one of his mentors. 

On that now legendary Copperhead Road album, the title track, with its mandolin-thrashing title track about a Vietnam War veteran who enters the marijuana business, sounded like nothing else at the time (it still doesn’t.) Earle convincingly stepped into the shoes of any character he wished: a homeless alcoholic on “The Wall” or a conman Reagan fan (“Snake Oil”). The album also featured “The Devil’s Right Hand,” an effortless tale of gun violence, that was recorded by Waylon Jennings, Bob Seger and Johnny Cash. Rolling Stone gave Copperhead Road four stars, saying it was “…like a twangy version of the Stones’ Exile on Main Street.” Earle was playing arenas and getting played on MTV.

Earle has published both a novel I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011) and Dog House Roses, a collection of short stories (Houghton Mifflin 2003). Earle produced albums for other artists such as Joan Baez (Day After Tomorrow)and Lucinda Williams (Car Wheels On A Gravel Road) 

As an actor, Earle has appeared in several films and had recurring roles in the HBO series The Wire and Tremé. In 2017, Earle appeared in the off-Broadway play Samara, for which he also wrote a score that The New York Times described as “exquisitely subliminal.” Earle wrote music for and appeared in Coal Country, for which he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. Earle is the host of the weekly show Hard Core Troubadour on Sirius Radio’s Outlaw Country channel. 

In 2020, Earle was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. And in 2023, Steve was honored by the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music.