Ms. Earle will no doubt have a few more mouths to feed on her next visit, a date at Carrboro's The ArtsCenter at the end of January. Granted, The ArtsCenter attracts the same type of attentive and appreciative music fans as the house concert circuit, but you can pack a few more folks into its mini-auditorium than you can into your average living room. It's safe to assume that almost every song from a writer's pen has at least a small piece of the author in it somewhere, but with Stacey Earle you feel like you're getting a big helping, which goes a long way toward building that connection. It's pretty much all me. My enjoyment is sitting down and putting my day down on the guitar.
Some people keep journals.
Instead, I write songs. The personal nature of those songs was actually a detriment when it came to her job as a staff writer. It wasn't about the hook, and some of them were too poetic. I was writing 'em, but you'll never hear them getting covered on the radio. The ArtsCenter audience will be treated to some new slices of Stacey Earle's life as she rolls out the songs from the upcoming Dancing With Them That Brung Me, which she finished recording the night before we spoke.