He may not sell a ton of product though his album sales usually reach six figures but he's always done well in Chicago. He's huge in the Darned Good White North, bigger than back bacon. Elsewhere, he's a blip except in Nashville, where he's sort of a resident alien. He burst from there in 1986 with Guitar Town, which reached number one on the country charts and then just like in the wet dream dreamed down along music row in Nashville every night since Patsy died crossed over and rose up the pop charts, whereupon he was proclaimed the fleshy incarnation of New Traditional Country, only to be excommunicated from the Holy Church of the Opry when Music Row realized that not only was Earle a skanked-out needle junkie, he also refused to sport a big hat and churn out formula pap. His hillbilly tuxedo is still hanging in the Country Music Hall of Fame, but the town has never forgiven him for the sin of caring about his songs.
Some songs are just about girls, and some songs are just about cars, and that's perfectly okay.
But Nashville has a long history of cloning bad pop music. I don't care what's happening in the mainstream of country music. I haven't in a long time. On the cover of Guitar Town , he was lean, hatchet-faced. At his best in Billy Austin , which says more about the death penalty in six minutes than Dead Man Walking did in two hours, and in Ft.