Acoustic Music Matters in Paris presented
for one night only


Stacey Earle
& Mark Stuart


In Concert at

Tuesday 8 May 8 2001

set list
Mark
Boss Is Watchin' - Girl From Louisian - Lorraine - Midnight Special
Can You Come Back - Death Of An Artist - If You Want My Love
Stacey

How Do It - In My Way - Is It Enough (I Luuuv You) - Maybe That's Just Me
Makes Me Happy* - Wedding Night - Weekend Runaways - When I Cry
Must Be Love - Spinnin' Around - Go On Down - Tears That She Cries
Show Me How - Me And The Man In The Moon - Cross My Heart
Simple Gearle - Goodbye
encore
Goodnight

Turmoil and Triumph in Nashville : Stacey Earle, Still Moving On
By Mike Zwerin International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, June 6, 2001

This is like one of those TV soap operas, about a young mother struggling against poverty, illness and drug addiction to become a country music star — but better. Stacey Earle released her first record "Simple Gearle," in 1999, when she was 38, her second last year and her third in March.
.
Before that, increasingly worried that her late start did not leave her much of a shot, she'd been looking in the mirror and worrying that her age was showing. But having two children when she was in her teens and not starting to write songs until she had something to write about turned out to be an advantage. Anyway, she doesn't worry about it any more.
.
Earle's life as a singer/songwriter goes back to early 1990, when she was a 28-year-old single mother of two young boys trying to cope with hard times as a waitress in San Antonio, Texas. When her utilities were cut, she pretended to the kids that they were camping out. "Get the candles," she said. "We're going to have a party." She could turn just about anything negative into a positive.
.
When her car was totaled, she called her big brother Steve, a successful singer/songwriter in Nashville, to borrow $500 to buy another one. Steve Earle had a "new-country" hit album, "Guitar Town." He sent the money, she bought the car and it was stolen that very same afternoon. She could find nothing positive in that. At the end of her tether, she called her brother again.
.
He invited her to bring the kids and live with him in Nashville for a while. They were always close. Their father was an air-traffic controller and they had grown up moving around. The only problem was that Steve Earle had one of the more famous and destructive drug habits in the music business.
.
In Nashville, Stacey found herself being nanny to Steve's two kids in addition to her own. They each had a different mother, so she was dealing with him, his habit, his two former wives, all of their children and her own former husband. "People called me the biggest co-dependent person in the world," she says. "I call it love."
.
She got a job serving lunch in the same elementary school her sons attended. She spent her spare time hanging around the house with Steve's guitar collection for company. With no musical training, she memorized how the chords looked when fingered on the fretboard, and she wrote her first song, "Afraid of the Dark."
.
She began to sign up for "writer's nights," amateur nights, at Jack's Guitar Bar. That involved lining up at 4 p.m. with her kids on their way home from school. The door opened at six. She'd go in and sign up and have just enough time to rush home, feed the kids supper, pick up the baby sitter and get back to sing at eight.
.
Her intimate voice had an expressive twang, her style was somewhere between country and folk, and her songs were increasingly personal. The black-and-white artwork on "Simple Gearle" recalls Walker Evans's Depression-era photographs, and there are nostalgic vinyl-LP surface-crackles between tunes.
.
She met Mark Stuart, now her second husband and musical partner, performing his own songs at Jack's. She says they "haven't spent a day apart in 11 years." She calls him "my knight in shining armor, but instead of a horse he had a guitar." Record companies could never figure out a way to market her, so she releases her own records and sells them on her Web site, www.staceyearle.com, and through an international distribution system she built and maintains herself.
.
In 1990, when Steve Earle came off the road (he was then what is called a "functioning addict") to record his next album, "The Hard Way," he overheard Stacey singing around the house and asked her to sing backup. But she was still taking medication for epilepsy and was afraid having a seizure during expensive studio time. - BEFORE the boys were born she'd had her own fling with drugs. ''Drug and alcohol addiction runs in my family,'' she explains. ''But what stopped me was once when I got high I had like 30 seizures. Epilepsy saved me. I was lucky, I was sick. And then I got pregnant and that was the end of my drug problem.'' The other musicians called her ''a natural'' in the studio. Steve offered to take her on his next tour as rhythm guitarist and backup vocalist if she could learn the material on his four albums in six weeks. She practiced and memorized and brought in her former husband to take care of the children. To make a six-week story short, they opened in Sydney and performed her first song, ''Afraid of the Dark,'' for the first time at the last show in Los Angeles. Then came 10 years ''beating it to death'' in Nashville. Being Steve Earle's sister would get her in the door. Publishers patted her on the back and said, ''keep writing them girl.'' Steve, who was starting to kick his drug problem at the time, was still unpredictable. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to write if he stopped using. Stacey felt she had to protect her kids from him: ''But Steve's been clean for seven years now. My boys just adore him. He grows bonsai trees now. He's become the great, generous person I always knew he was. Steve is my hero, my hero of battles.'' She reflects for a beat and continues: ''And Joan Baez is my hero of Grace. I did a tour with her. I was with her when she turned 60. She'd stand and sing front and center with confidence, her voice was still young, it filled the house. She's making another record now. Joan taught me not to panic about my age. She inspired me. Now I know that me, too, I'll still be making records when I'm 60.''
This is like one of those TV soap operas, about a young mother struggling against poverty, illness and drug addiction to become a country music star — but better. Stacey Earle released her first record "Simple Gearle," in 1999, when she was 38, her second last year and her third in March.
.
Before that, increasingly worried that her late start did not leave her much of a shot, she'd been looking in the mirror and worrying that her age was showing. But having two children when she was in her teens and not starting to write songs until she had something to write about turned out to be an advantage. Anyway, she doesn't worry about it any more.
.
Earle's life as a singer/songwriter goes back to early 1990, when she was a 28-year-old single mother of two young boys trying to cope with hard times as a waitress in San Antonio, Texas. When her utilities were cut, she pretended to the kids that they were camping out. "Get the candles," she said. "We're going to have a party." She could turn just about anything negative into a positive.
.
When her car was totaled, she called her big brother Steve, a successful singer/songwriter in Nashville, to borrow $500 to buy another one. Steve Earle had a "new-country" hit album, "Guitar Town." He sent the money, she bought the car and it was stolen that very same afternoon. She could find nothing positive in that. At the end of her tether, she called her brother again.
.
He invited her to bring the kids and live with him in Nashville for a while. They were always close. Their father was an air-traffic controller and they had grown up moving around. The only problem was that Steve Earle had one of the more famous and destructive drug habits in the music business.
.
In Nashville, Stacey found herself being nanny to Steve's two kids in addition to her own. They each had a different mother, so she was dealing with him, his habit, his two former wives, all of their children and her own former husband. "People called me the biggest co-dependent person in the world," she says. "I call it love."
.
She got a job serving lunch in the same elementary school her sons attended. She spent her spare time hanging around the house with Steve's guitar collection for company. With no musical training, she memorized how the chords looked when fingered on the fretboard, and she wrote her first song, "Afraid of the Dark."
.
She began to sign up for "writer's nights," amateur nights, at Jack's Guitar Bar. That involved lining up at 4 p.m. with her kids on their way home from school. The door opened at six. She'd go in and sign up and have just enough time to rush home, feed the kids supper, pick up the baby sitter and get back to sing at eight.
.
Her intimate voice had an expressive twang, her style was somewhere between country and folk, and her songs were increasingly personal. The black-and-white artwork on "Simple Gearle" recalls Walker Evans's Depression-era photographs, and there are nostalgic vinyl-LP surface-crackles between tunes.
.
She met Mark Stuart, now her second husband and musical partner, performing his own songs at Jack's. She says they "haven't spent a day apart in 11 years." She calls him "my knight in shining armor, but instead of a horse he had a guitar." Record companies could never figure out a way to market her, so she releases her own records and sells them on her Web site, www.staceyearle.com, and through an international distribution system she built and maintains herself.
.
In 1990, when Steve Earle came off the road (he was then what is called a "functioning addict") to record his next album, "The Hard Way," he overheard Stacey singing around the house and asked her to sing backup. But she was still taking medication for epilepsy and was afraid having a seizure during expensive studio time. - BEFORE the boys were born she'd had her own fling with drugs. ''Drug and alcohol addiction runs in my family,'' she explains. ''But what stopped me was once when I got high I had like 30 seizures. Epilepsy saved me. I was lucky, I was sick. And then I got pregnant and that was the end of my drug problem.'' The other musicians called her ''a natural'' in the studio. Steve offered to take her on his next tour as rhythm guitarist and backup vocalist if she could learn the material on his four albums in six weeks. She practiced and memorized and brought in her former husband to take care of the children. To make a six-week story short, they opened in Sydney and performed her first song, ''Afraid of the Dark,'' for the first time at the last show in Los Angeles. Then came 10 years ''beating it to death'' in Nashville. Being Steve Earle's sister would get her in the door. Publishers patted her on the back and said, ''keep writing them girl.'' Steve, who was starting to kick his drug problem at the time, was still unpredictable. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to write if he stopped using. Stacey felt she had to protect her kids from him: ''But Steve's been clean for seven years now. My boys just adore him. He grows bonsai trees now. He's become the great, generous person I always knew he was. Steve is my hero, my hero of battles.'' She reflects for a beat and continues: ''And Joan Baez is my hero of Grace. I did a tour with her. I was with her when she turned 60. She'd stand and sing front and center with confidence, her voice was still young, it filled the house. She's making another record now. Joan taught me not to panic about my age. She inspired me. Now I know that me, too, I'll still be making records when I'm 60.''
This is like one of those TV soap operas, about a young mother struggling against poverty, illness and drug addiction to become a country music star — but better. Stacey Earle released her first record "Simple Gearle," in 1999, when she was 38, her second last year and her third in March.
.
Before that, increasingly worried that her late start did not leave her much of a shot, she'd been looking in the mirror and worrying that her age was showing. But having two children when she was in her teens and not starting to write songs until she had something to write about turned out to be an advantage. Anyway, she doesn't worry about it any more.
.
Earle's life as a singer/songwriter goes back to early 1990, when she was a 28-year-old single mother of two young boys trying to cope with hard times as a waitress in San Antonio, Texas. When her utilities were cut, she pretended to the kids that they were camping out. "Get the candles," she said. "We're going to have a party." She could turn just about anything negative into a positive.
.
When her car was totaled, she called her big brother Steve, a successful singer/songwriter in Nashville, to borrow $500 to buy another one. Steve Earle had a "new-country" hit album, "Guitar Town." He sent the money, she bought the car and it was stolen that very same afternoon. She could find nothing positive in that. At the end of her tether, she called her brother again.
.
He invited her to bring the kids and live with him in Nashville for a while. They were always close. Their father was an air-traffic controller and they had grown up moving around. The only problem was that Steve Earle had one of the more famous and destructive drug habits in the music business.
.
In Nashville, Stacey found herself being nanny to Steve's two kids in addition to her own. They each had a different mother, so she was dealing with him, his habit, his two former wives, all of their children and her own former husband. "People called me the biggest co-dependent person in the world," she says. "I call it love."
.
She got a job serving lunch in the same elementary school her sons attended. She spent her spare time hanging around the house with Steve's guitar collection for company. With no musical training, she memorized how the chords looked when fingered on the fretboard, and she wrote her first song, "Afraid of the Dark."
.
She began to sign up for "writer's nights," amateur nights, at Jack's Guitar Bar. That involved lining up at 4 p.m. with her kids on their way home from school. The door opened at six. She'd go in and sign up and have just enough time to rush home, feed the kids supper, pick up the baby sitter and get back to sing at eight.
.
Her intimate voice had an expressive twang, her style was somewhere between country and folk, and her songs were increasingly personal. The black-and-white artwork on "Simple Gearle" recalls Walker Evans's Depression-era photographs, and there are nostalgic vinyl-LP surface-crackles between tunes.
.
She met Mark Stuart, now her second husband and musical partner, performing his own songs at Jack's. She says they "haven't spent a day apart in 11 years." She calls him "my knight in shining armor, but instead of a horse he had a guitar." Record companies could never figure out a way to market her, so she releases her own records and sells them on her Web site, www.staceyearle.com, and through an international distribution system she built and maintains herself.
.
In 1990, when Steve Earle came off the road (he was then what is called a "functioning addict") to record his next album, "The Hard Way," he overheard Stacey singing around the house and asked her to sing backup. But she was still taking medication for epilepsy and was afraid having a seizure during expensive studio time. - BEFORE the boys were born she'd had her own fling with drugs. ''Drug and alcohol addiction runs in my family,'' she explains. ''But what stopped me was once when I got high I had like 30 seizures. Epilepsy saved me. I was lucky, I was sick. And then I got pregnant and that was the end of my drug problem.'' The other musicians called her ''a natural'' in the studio. Steve offered to take her on his next tour as rhythm guitarist and backup vocalist if she could learn the material on his four albums in six weeks. She practiced and memorized and brought in her former husband to take care of the children. To make a six-week story short, they opened in Sydney and performed her first song, ''Afraid of the Dark,'' for the first time at the last show in Los Angeles. Then came 10 years ''beating it to death'' in Nashville. Being Steve Earle's sister would get her in the door. Publishers patted her on the back and said, ''keep writing them girl.'' Steve, who was starting to kick his drug problem at the time, was still unpredictable. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to write if he stopped using. Stacey felt she had to protect her kids from him: ''But Steve's been clean for seven years now. My boys just adore him. He grows bonsai trees now. He's become the great, generous person I always knew he was. Steve is my hero, my hero of battles.'' She reflects for a beat and continues: ''And Joan Baez is my hero of Grace. I did a tour with her. I was with her when she turned 60. She'd stand and sing front and center with confidence, her voice was still young, it filled the house. She's making another record now. Joan taught me not to panic about my age. She inspired me. Now I know that me, too, I'll still be making records when I'm 60.''
This is like one of those TV soap operas, about a young mother struggling against poverty, illness and drug addiction to become a country music star — but better. Stacey Earle released her first record "Simple Gearle," in 1999, when she was 38, her second last year and her third in March.
.
Before that, increasingly worried that her late start did not leave her much of a shot, she'd been looking in the mirror and worrying that her age was showing. But having two children when she was in her teens and not starting to write songs until she had something to write about turned out to be an advantage. Anyway, she doesn't worry about it any more.
.
Earle's life as a singer/songwriter goes back to early 1990, when she was a 28-year-old single mother of two young boys trying to cope with hard times as a waitress in San Antonio, Texas. When her utilities were cut, she pretended to the kids that they were camping out. "Get the candles," she said. "We're going to have a party." She could turn just about anything negative into a positive.
.
When her car was totaled, she called her big brother Steve, a successful singer/songwriter in Nashville, to borrow $500 to buy another one. Steve Earle had a "new-country" hit album, "Guitar Town." He sent the money, she bought the car and it was stolen that very same afternoon. She could find nothing positive in that. At the end of her tether, she called her brother again.
.
He invited her to bring the kids and live with him in Nashville for a while. They were always close. Their father was an air-traffic controller and they had grown up moving around. The only problem was that Steve Earle had one of the more famous and destructive drug habits in the music business.
.
In Nashville, Stacey found herself being nanny to Steve's two kids in addition to her own. They each had a different mother, so she was dealing with him, his habit, his two former wives, all of their children and her own former husband. "People called me the biggest co-dependent person in the world," she says. "I call it love."
.
She got a job serving lunch in the same elementary school her sons attended. She spent her spare time hanging around the house with Steve's guitar collection for company. With no musical training, she memorized how the chords looked when fingered on the fretboard, and she wrote her first song, "Afraid of the Dark."
.
She began to sign up for "writer's nights," amateur nights, at Jack's Guitar Bar. That involved lining up at 4 p.m. with her kids on their way home from school. The door opened at six. She'd go in and sign up and have just enough time to rush home, feed the kids supper, pick up the baby sitter and get back to sing at eight.
.
Her intimate voice had an expressive twang, her style was somewhere between country and folk, and her songs were increasingly personal. The black-and-white artwork on "Simple Gearle" recalls Walker Evans's Depression-era photographs, and there are nostalgic vinyl-LP surface-crackles between tunes.
.
She met Mark Stuart, now her second husband and musical partner, performing his own songs at Jack's. She says they "haven't spent a day apart in 11 years." She calls him "my knight in shining armor, but instead of a horse he had a guitar." Record companies could never figure out a way to market her, so she releases her own records and sells them on her Web site, www.staceyearle.com, and through an international distribution system she built and maintains herself.
.
In 1990, when Steve Earle came off the road (he was then what is called a "functioning addict") to record his next album, "The Hard Way," he overheard Stacey singing around the house and asked her to sing backup. But she was still taking medication for epilepsy and was afraid having a seizure during expensive studio time. - BEFORE the boys were born she'd had her own fling with drugs. ''Drug and alcohol addiction runs in my family,'' she explains. ''But what stopped me was once when I got high I had like 30 seizures. Epilepsy saved me. I was lucky, I was sick. And then I got pregnant and that was the end of my drug problem.'' The other musicians called her ''a natural'' in the studio. Steve offered to take her on his next tour as rhythm guitarist and backup vocalist if she could learn the material on his four albums in six weeks. She practiced and memorized and brought in her former husband to take care of the children. To make a six-week story short, they opened in Sydney and performed her first song, ''Afraid of the Dark,'' for the first time at the last show in Los Angeles. Then came 10 years ''beating it to death'' in Nashville. Being Steve Earle's sister would get her in the door. Publishers patted her on the back and said, ''keep writing them girl.'' Steve, who was starting to kick his drug problem at the time, was still unpredictable. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to write if he stopped using. Stacey felt she had to protect her kids from him: ''But Steve's been clean for seven years now. My boys just adore him. He grows bonsai trees now. He's become the great, generous person I always knew he was. Steve is my hero, my hero of battles.'' She reflects for a beat and continues: ''And Joan Baez is my hero of Grace. I did a tour with her. I was with her when she turned 60. She'd stand and sing front and center with confidence, her voice was still young, it filled the house. She's making another record now. Joan taught me not to panic about my age. She inspired me. Now I know that me, too, I'll still be making records when I'm 60.''

Copyright © 2001 the International Herald Tribune All rights reserved     

With Simple Gearle, her refreshingly unadorned 1998 debut, Stacey Earle introduced herself to the music world as an endearingly evocative singer with a deceptively "simple" approach to songwriting. Plain-spoken, humble and brutally honest, Stacey addressed the tough issues beneath the surface of love (whether lost, found or frayed), friendship, duty, responsibility and familial loyalty.

Not surprisingly, those qualities and concerns remain at the forefront of the singer-songwriter's elegant follow-up release on Gearle Records, the label she co-owns with her husband, Mark Stuart.

Aptly titled Dancin Earle's sophomore disc once again finds Mark Stuart--her husband, soul mate and inseparable musical side-kick--playing a major role as arranger, backing vocalist and, especially, ace picker of all-things-stringed.

The family ties are further extended as The Jewels' (named for Stacey's 95-year-old grandmother) drummer on this go-around is Stacey's son, Kyle Mims, who Mom plans to fire this autumn so he can attend college. More family stuff: Stacey covers her celebrated brother's, "Promise You Anything," a touching reprise of her first professional recording--then as a duet on Steve Earle's The Hard Way in 1990.

Production is handled by Stacey and Mark with an assist from Michael Webb, who also returns to provide accordion, mandolin, organ and bass. Sterling upright bass is provided by Byron House (Emmylou Harris, Julie Miller) and the Del McCoury Band's Mike Bub, and a special guest lends her voice to Stacey's on the tender "Kiss Her Goodnight."

Despite it's spare arrangements, Dancin' With Them That Brung Me boasts a measurably richer, fuller sound than its predecessor, a fact that Earle attributes to almost endless touring.

"I won't say I was reaching for a little bit more, but this one may have a little bit more to it," Stacey offers with typical humility. "They'll hear tighter music, tighter arrangements, and there may be a little more flavor to it, 'cuz the music grows with you--it grows up with you. And we played 274 dates last year, working on a lot of the new songs because that's how I get 'em in the pocket--playing 'em on the road and testing 'em on people.

"When we went in and cut this record, we had it so down. Mark and I have now played together eight solid years, almost every single night. So some people may listen to it and say, 'Is she slickin' up?,' but no, it's a natural tightening up."

The minimal arrangements also make for easier replication on the road, admits Stacey. "There's only so much I can do on the record, and we never wanna slap more on there than we can re-do on-stage.

"It all truly goes down live. People have got to see the live show. I tell the people stories about the songs to fill them in, but then I tell them, 'Take it home and make it yours now.' I always give them something to run with, because I don't write these songs from nothing--there's always a story.

"A lot of the songs I write mess with people's emotions a bunch," Earle admits, "but all I'm doin' is what I call a priority check. I do it because I'm doin' it to myself, too. I do a priority check on me all the time. People say, 'Oh, you're having this success--is it going to change you?' And I doubt my conscience would allow it; my heart would beat me to a pulp."

Stacey is unabashed in her admiration for Mark Stuart, who released his own Songs From A Corner Stage on Gearle Records last year.

"I want people to recognize Mark on this record. I got a lot of credit in my press about doing all of this myself, but I didn't. Apart from all the folks who help with booking, publicity, distribution and promotions, Mark is half of what I do. On the road, at home and in the music, he's half the thought, half the arrangement; it just wouldn't do what it does without him," she states matter-of-factly. "He opens all our shows with his own set before joining me for mine. He's helped me the most of anyone."

hen all is said and done, it's no surprise that folks have a little trouble when they attempt to put this uniquely-gifted artist in a box--after all, Stacey Earle isn't so sure herself...

"I do not claim to be country, I do not claim to be pop, I do not claim to be folk, totally--even though most of my circuit is folk," says Earle. "It's just kinda people's music, and there's a little something there for everyone.

"I have a lot of hopes for this record," she admits. "It tormented me--this record was tough to make. We'd come in for a week and then go out on tour again. It was tough to make, but it's had its rewards, too.

"Whatever people make of Dancin' With Them That Brung Me, I think it's fine, because I know in my heart that I did my very best, and Mark did his very best, and that's the most important thing."

More www.staceyearle.com


Stacey Earle & Mark Stuart

Wednesday 3rd May 2000



Set List
Mark Stuart
1/Boss Is Watching 2/ It's Not Me 3/ Girl From Louisian 4/ Lorraine
5/ Before You Accuse Me 6/ Digging For Gold 7/ Memories ?
Stacey Earle
8/ How Do It 9/ Wedding Night 10/ Losers Weep
11/ Simple Gearle 12/ Is It Enough (I Luuuv You)
13/ How I Ran 14/ In My Way 15/ Must Be Love
16/ Weekend Runaways 17/ Show Me How
18 / Kiss Her Goodnight
19/ Mark You're Gonna Love Me Some Day
20/ Makes Me Happy 21/ Tears That She Cried
22/ Next Door Down
?
Cried My Heart Out / Goodbye / You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

"Simple affecting country music sung with a sweet but raw, twangy voice… songs that are personal vignettes of small-town American life… why she had to wait so long to cut her own album is a mystery." Mojo

"Stacey Earle's guitar has never been washed or wiped off… every teardrop, coffee stain and scratch tells a story… bare bones melodic music." Billboard

"The line she shares with her brother Steve is that of tough, sardonic song-writing. Affecting story lines that find echoes in any corner of the world." Q Magazine

"Mark Stuart is the real deal… the freshest sound I've heard in a while on and off stage he's an ace." Bo Ramsey

"Stuart's voice is a sound that's dear without being precious, like a cold stone that's pressed into your palm, a needed night of rest."Leaf Chronicle

One day Steve gave Stacey some brotherly advice saying "why don't you sing like your damn self?" Who she was singing like at the time is not known but today Stacey has one of the most distinctive voices in country and folk music plus the songs to put it to good use. Accompanied by seasoned Nashville session guitarist Mark Stuart they deliver great songs in genuinely moving voices with sensitive and accomplished playing.

More www.staceyearle.com