The Curmudgeon on SteveEarle, drivebytruckers & The Music of 'White Men without College Degrees'
If you’ve been reading the commentary about November’s election, you’ve often come across this phrase: “white men without a college degree.” This is a group of voters who gave large majorities to Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson before swinging their support to Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. It’s a huge group of voters with even more sway in the electoral college than in the popular vote.
So who is really the spokesman for white men without a college degree? Is it the artist who agrees with their support for the president? Is it the hot-country singer, the heavy-metal guitarist or the big-time rapper who offers comforting fantasy in the form of swimming-hole clichés or violent revenge? Or is it the songwriter who mirrors the daily life and earthy language of these men?
For the play, Earle sat on stage with his acoustic guitar, banjo and mandolin and sang the songs solo. For the album, Earle took his road band, the Dukes, into the studio and recorded the songs in every style from bluegrass to rockabilly, grunge-blues to old-time country. The steam drill took over, followed by even bigger machines, and “John Henry coulda told ‘em what that means.” The only thing that can change the conditions of the human workers is the union, Earle sings. “West Virginia miners voted union to a man; you’d never know it now, but that was then.”
Almost as powerful is “If I Could See Your Face Again,” which is sung on the album not by Earle but by his fiddler Eleanor Whitmore. It’s the musical monologue of a miner’s widow, who uses a pretty folk melody to make us see the face of the absent husband she’s singing to. “If I could see your face again,” she sings, “black with coal until your grin cuts like sunshine through the shadow of the mountain…. But tonight’s just like the night before, ain’t nobody walkin’ through that door.
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