Steve Earle 24/10/11

A new venue for me - the utilitarian but not unpleasant St David's Hall or Neuadd Dewi Sant as they call it here in Wales. Front row seats helped.

Steve Earle started promptly at 7:30 with no support. It was a great band with Alison Moorer on various instruments and vocals and a duo called the Mastersons (Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore) also playing various instruments and on vocals and with a rhythm section of bass and drums.

They kicked off with a few tracks from the latest album and Steve and the band were instantly in the groove. 'Waitin' for the Sky' and 'Gulf of Mexico' were good but 'Mollie-O' was sublime. Live the track gained some real power and I can now see what he was aiming at when he wrote it. They moved on to some classic Earle tunes including another very powerful performance of 'Jerusalem' and the always good 'My Old Friend the Blues'. Everyone in the band was an accomplished musician and they all moved seamlessly between various instruments. Steve plays everything with strings superbly - he delivers what a song needs whether he has an old acoustic guitar or a bazouki. Eleanor played a lot of atmospheric fiddle and also guitar and Chris played a twangy guitar with a hint of Duanne Eddy and pedal steel. Right after a rousing version of 'Guitar Town' Steve and Alison sang a duet 'Day's aren't Long enough' and then Alison took centre stage and delivered three songs, the last of which just took my breath away. 'A Change is Gonna Come' is a classic and she extracted every ounce of its yearning. It was faultless.

The second half had more stuff from the new album and more Earle classics and songs from the bassist and the Mastersons. Highlights for me were 'Meet me in the Alleyway' which is just a great song that perfectly suits Steve's gruffer vocals and also a duo of songs from his album with Del McCoury 'Harlan Man' and 'The Mountain'.

The encore was three songs and then we got a second encore which delivered a couple more highlights, firstly Steve Earle doing one of my favourite ever Dyan songs, 'It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry'. That was a privilege. He finally finished off with 'Devil's Right Hand' around three hours after he started or more than two and a half hours of music and his inimitable chat which included how he had finally embraced gun control, labour unions, mining tragedies, Iraq and many other subjects. As always a privilege and a great pleasure.