New York, NY (Top40 Charts / UMe) Steve Earle's four MCA Records studio albums, 'Guitar Town,' 'Exit 0,' 'Copperhead Road,' and 'The Hard Way,' have been remastered from the original tapes by Robert Vosgien and cut for vinyl by Ron McMaster at Capitol Mastering for LP release on May 6. An expanded 30th Anniversary Edition of 'Guitar Town' will be released this fall in 2CD and digital audio packages. Details will be announced.
"Guitar Town was his first shot at showing a major audience what he could do, and he hit a bull's-eye -- it's perhaps the strongest and most confident debut album any country act released in the 1980s." - AllMusic.com
Released in 1987, Earle's follow-up album, Exit 0, was recorded with his touring band, The Dukes. The album hit the Top 20 of Billboard's Country Albums chart and earned Earle two more GRAMMY nominations: Best Male Country Vocal Performance for the album and Best Country Song for "Nowhere Road." Another single from the album, "I Ain't Ever Satisfied," made the Top 25 of Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart.
Copperhead Road followed in 1988, achieving what Earle has described as a blend of heavy metal and bluegrass, and what Rolling Stone dubbed "power twang." The album's guest artists include
The Pogues on "Johnny Come Lately," Strength In Numbers' Sam Bush (mandolin), Jerry
Douglas (dobro), Mark O'Connor (violin), and Edgar Meyer (bass violin) on "Nothing But A Child," Bill
Lloyd of Foster &
Lloyd on acoustic guitar, and guest vocalists including singer/songwriter
Maria McKee and John Cowan of New Grass Revival. Time magazine praised Copperhead Road, saying Earle "takes long chances with big themes...and does them proud." The album peaked at No. 7 on Billboard's Country Albums chart, and went triple-Platinum in Canada and Gold in the U.S.
Earle was again joined by The
Dukes for 1990's The Hard Way, the last album he released before a "hiatus" that stretched into four troubled years away from the studio and the stage. The aptly-titled album was recorded in Nashville as Earle was struggling with severe drug addiction. Earle later told an interviewer, "I defend The Hard Way to the death, because I almost died in the process of making it." In 2015, the album's "When The People Find Out" was used as the end credits music for the HBO miniseries, "Show Me a Hero," written by
David Simon and
William F. Zorzi and directed by Paul Haggis.
An expanded 30th Anniversary Edition of Guitar Town will be released this fall in 2CD and digital audio packages. Details will be announced.
