Steve Earle And The Dukes: The Hard Way CD Track Listing

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Steve Earle And The Dukes The Hard Way (1990)
Originally Released 1990\n\nAMG EXPERT REVIEW: "I defend The Hard Way to the death, because I almost died in the process of making it," Steve Earle told a reporter in 2000, and he wasn't just being melodramatic. Earle's well-documented addiction to heroin and cocaine was spiraling out of control in 1990 while he was holed up in Memphis recording The Hard Way. And while his 1988 album Copperhead Road showed him moving away from country and more toward hard rock -- and earned him a minor crossover hit in the process -- his record label was hoping for a major commercial breakthrough so that his sales might begin to match his good press. The resulting album is a bit of a mess, often sloppy and overbearing, where his country sides had been dynamic and precise, and Earle's voice was starting to show the strain of his lifestyle. Even his songwriting, usually peerless, wasn't at its best here, with "When the People Find Out," "Regular Guy," and "Justice in Ontario" sounding like they were tossed together fast to round out the album (the latter sounds like a transparent stroke to his Canadian fan base, where Copperhead Road went multi-platinum). But even his weakest studio album has plenty to recommend it, especially the swaggering title cut, the all-too-biographical "Have Mercy" and "West Nashville Boogie," and "Billy Austin," a deeply moving ballad about a man on death row. The Hard Way isn't much of an album by Earle's standards, but it's still got enough heart, soul, and fire to prove Earle couldn't throw away his talent, no matter how hard he tried. -- Mark Deming\n\nAmazon.com Product Description\nSpecial low price import edition of his 1990 album released through MCA. 'I defend The Hard Way to the death, because I almost died in the process of making it', Steve Earle told a reporter in 2000 & he wasn't just being melodramatic. Earle's well-documented addiction to heroin & cocaine was spiraling out of control in 1990 while he was holed up in Memphis recording The Hard Way. 13 tracks in all. \n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nHey Nashville, This aint country, January 3, 2007\nReviewer: Dave Dalton "Song Seeker" (Michigan)\nFor all the fog and dim that engulfed his personal life, Steve Earle found a way to take the words and music in his head to the studio and bring it to life with a undefineable mix of growling guitars, flittering mandolins, punctuated snare hits, with his distinctive vocal approach that defies the listener to dare question his honesty. First person, "I am living this song" attitude throughout, it invites you to participate in more than just a casual manner. Earle moves closer to his own influences, invoking George Harrison's Gretsch guitar jangle and Beatles harmonies in Promise You Anything, and then on to the current darker places with "Esmeralda's Hollywood"; revealing his own shadows. Included is the masterful "Billy Austin" exploring the intracacies of a murderer's thinking process and the subsequent followup, "Justice in Ontario. \n\nDifferent from his first offerings, in that pedal steel prominence has been replaced with authoritative six strings attacked with more than a nod to the arm flailing of a Pete Townsend, The Hard Way brings us straight ahead rock and roll. Borrowing a crunch from fellow Texan Billy Gibbons, "This Highway" starts out with a blues rock riff and a narrative that warns of danger and salvation at the same time only to resurface in the apt titled, "West Nashville Boogie". "Country Girl" takes us back to a honkey tonk setting and then he hints at the forebearer of his Celtic fascinations to come, Regular Guy. Earle picks up whatever instrument serves his purpose and cares not one iota if it fits any notion of formula. \n\nAn epic in terms of dramatic pacing and tempo, Steve Earle arrives near the top of America's song writing precipace and gives us a look over the edge. A "must have" collection for anyone who is serious about whats behind the music.\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nGreat songs, too much bombast, September 29, 2006\nReviewer: Billy Austin "avid listener" (New York, NY USA)\nSteve Earle was coming off the release of "Copperhead Road," before he made this album. That disc showed him turning from a countrified Bruce Springsteen to a straight-out rocker with an eye for the mindset of the underdog. "The Hard Way" continues the trend - detailed story-songs like "Justice In Ontario" and "Billy Austin," an anti-death penalty tale that is among Earle's top works. The Dukes sound like bobcats in a bag snarling to get out, all broken glass and motorcycle engines (one of which would have better if it had been absent from the song "This Highway's Mine"). Some of the production seems done just to made Earle seem big and bad, and Id be rather interested in hearing how a song like "Hopeless Romantics" would sound if it were included on one of his later discs. Listeners get a sense of some of Earle's personal problems in songs such as "West Nashville Boogie." It's a wonderful album, but with some flaws not present on other Earle discs.\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nThe Hard Way, Indeed...., September 14, 2005\nReviewer: Jeffrey A. Hopson (Garland, TX USA)\nThis was the last Steve Earle cd I thoroughly enjoyed and incidentally, was the last one he did (that we're aware of...)while indulging in the "ecstacies" of drug addiction. This Steve was emaciated, unpredictable, and, in my opinion, at the peak of his creativity. It was the last recording session that incorporated that trademark 80's Steve Earle sizzle : razor sharp, digital production, with what I consider to be the best version of the Dukes ever assembled, Steve's fiery, angry and deliberate vocal delivery, and guitar power that peeled the paint off the walls. Man, I miss that. The only "political" reference would be the anti-death penalty "Billy Austin" in which Earle sings, in the first person, about a 29 yr old that's "quarter Cherokee I'm told" who kills a service station attendant while robbing the place and won't say "...I don't deserve to die". Earle's gift has always been putting flesh on stories about real people in real life, dealing with real situations without being "preachy" and this work follows that direction. "Have Mercy" is a little collage of three different stories in which reasonably good people do bad things for reasons that we tend to offer a little mercy to once we've heard their perspectives. The opening track, "The Other Kind", is my favorite with classic lines galore: "I'm the apple of my Momma's eye, and my Daddy's worst fears realised". "Esmerelda's Hollywood" is a truly great piece of penmanship in which the title character is representative of the many young female hopefuls who came to Tinsel Land with big dreams and wound up ghosts, haunting the corner of Hollywood and Vine. I don't like the stuff Earle has done after "El Corazon" as it is too lo-fi and garagy sounding with Earle mumbling and hardly singing at all; I dearly love everything from "The Hard Way" back: full of fire, hunger, and an intense desire to portray simple life as if it were on the big screen of a small town drive-in. John Steinbeck would have been proud.\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nFourteen years later, hard to listen to, but well worth it, May 6, 2004\nReviewer: William J. Eichelberger "I will not go quietly" (Ft. Thomas, KY)\nSteve Earle was rapidly spinning out of control around the time of this album's recording, and despite it's brilliance I find myself occasionally unwilling to pull it out when I'm in the mood for some of his earlier stuff. The Hard Way just reeks of pain, probably because I know his history, but then it was never a ray of sunshine to begin with. "The Other Kind" is one of the greatest hard rock tunes ever penned, and Steve rips into it as though his life was on the line. Other highlights include "Hopeless Romantics", "This Highway's Mine", and "Regular Guy", but even after "Hopeless Romantics" raises your spirits, there's always a song like "Have Mercy" or "West Nashville Boogie" to drag you back to earth. Great songs, but hardly easy listening. His anti-death penalty song, "Billy Austin" remains another of my favorites, despite my total lack of sympathy for the main character's plight. Though not one to be taken lightly, The Hard Way remains one of his early masterpieces, and the fact that it is the album that lost him a recording contract shows just how stupid the record companies are. The Hard Way is a precursor of the brilliance to come.\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nCan't give Steve Earle anything but five stars, March 5, 2002\nReviewer: Catherine S. Vodrey (East Liverpool, Ohio United States)\nI seem to be constitutionally unable to give a Steve Earle album anything other than five stars, but it's not difficult to do once you've given his work a listen. "The Hard Way" continues in the Steve Earle tradition of eminently listenable tracks, all of which have the added bonus of literate, crushingly good lyrics. Earle may sum up his family's worst fears about him in the brilliant line from "The Other Kind" in which he sings, "I'm still the apple of my mama's eye/I'm my daddy's worst fears realized." One of the last albums Earle recorded before a substantial stint in jail, "The Hard Way" seems to address his need to do everything, well, the hard way. If there's an easy way to do it, he generally doesn't want anything to do with it. As always, Earle is fascinated with and inspired by life on the road, as evidenced in his Foghat/Thin Lizzie-tinged "This Highway's Mine (Roadmaster)." "Billy Austin" tells the story of a young man in jail. Earle, as always, manages to squeeze a world of detail into just a few words: "My name is Billy Austin/I'm twenty-nine years old/I was born in Oklahoma/Quarter Cherokee I'm told." "Have Mercy" and "When People Find Out" address Earle's ongoing wrestling match with heroin addiction--a match that, by the look of the album's cover photograph, he hadn't yet won. Even though he's going down by this album, Earle manages to turn out what lesser mortals wouldn't be able to produce in their finest hours.\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nThe Hot-blooded Hillbilly, April 13, 2000\nReviewer: dev1 (Baltimore)\nSteve Earle has been called "The Outlaw Country Singer," but I'd prefer to call him "The Hot-blooded Hillbilly." His voice is closer to the hills of Tennessee than the Black Hat Nashville Boys that make up the Top-10 Country Chart. The Hard Way rocks like the tough hitting music of early Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. You'll also find heavy doses of Bruce Springsteen craftsmanship (Promise You Anything, Hopeless Romantics). The blues guitar grove on 'West Nashville Boogie' would make B. B. King proud. No one has charged a two-step dance number with as much electricity as "Regular Guy.' And 'When The People Find Out' is so spiritual that it would be welcome in any God-fearin' Southern Baptist Church.\nSteve and The Dukes may rock with the brawn of a Peterbuilt, but Steve's lyrics have a softer touch. It's not necessary to listen to 'Hopeless Romantics' to realize that Steve is, well, a sensitive guy. You may give a second thought concerning the death penalty after the poignant 'Billy Austin.' And the miscarriage of vigilante justice is examined in 'Justice In Ontario.' Lastly, 'Close You Eyes' is a solemn anthem to living one day at a time. Steve Earle does just that - making kinetic music like there was no tomorrow.\n\nROLLING STONE REVIEW\nOn "The Other Kind," the first track on The Hard Way, Steve Earle sings about "not suffering from a lack of love/There's plenty more where that came from." Meanwhile, on "Close Your Eyes," which ends the album, Earle observes that there are "Thousands of people searchin' out there/Most of 'em lookin' for love.... In time we'll all get our share." Whether Earle really believes this is another question, because in between these songs he paints portraits of desperate characters whose capacity to love or be loved is dicey at best.\n\nAs on 1988's stirring Copperhead Road, Earle is involved in politics and history. But the epic feel of that album is narrowed here to a personal look at a solitary man's travails in an America where the qualities of mercy and justice are strained indeed. While there's no single song to match the historical sweep of Road's "Johnny Come Lately," several tunes gel in impressive fashion. "Regular Guy" finds the band rollicking

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