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Steve Earle & The Dukes: So You Wannabe An Outlaw

Holly Gleason, Paste, 12 June 2017

SOMEWHERE IN THE SWAGGER STAGGER opening chorus of the cautionary title track of Steve Earle's return to the majors, the multi-Grammy winner half bellers/half brays "You can never go home…" over and over. With a beat that shuffles and buckles, this lurching kind of honky tonk purveyed by Billy Joe Shaver and celebrated by Waylon Jennings lit the fuse of raw stripped down rock/country roadhouse music that ignited the Outlaw movement. Fiddles reel, steel guitars puddle and electric guitars resonate with the kind of bottom that'd make Beyonce envious. It also reprises Earle's own twangy opening salvo Guitar Town.

Total word count of piece: 454

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