In this world that I live in, our mantra is: You know one person with autism, you know one person with autism. Bojangles” is the one Jerry Jeff Walker song that most people will likely have heard of.
The political stuff is a little different. I was making a country record on purpose when I made Guitar Town. How did Neil respond?He liked “Illegal Cargo” and I think I played some stuff later. Just as I got old enough to play a bar, I was playing “Charlie Dunn.” My band grew up listening to this stuff too. I write more songs about girls than I do anything else. He defined what we call the spectrum now, the beginnings of it. I just meant it’s arrived at the same way. He learns everything, but he learns it very slowly. Before that, I was just taking money under false pretenses. I didn’t mean that in any sort of derogatory fashion at all. I was a pain in the ass, no doubt about it. We weren’t really interested in the genre. The student is always engaged one-on-one with someone that knows what the fuck they’re doing, not babysitters. He wanted me to play a David Olney song called “Illegal Cargo.” Because he knew that I knew it because I champion other people’s songs, too. The stereotype of people with autism that makes me angry is that there’s a lack of empathy. I do what I do for a reason, the same reason Neil did what he did with the Bridge School. I’ve had the same question asked when it comes to political music. Walker was our connection to Greenwich Village. But what stuck with me is that I got brought up there to play a David Olney song. “I hope I don’t have to make any more tribute records,” says Earle, who’s currently working on a stage adaptation of the Oscar-winning 1983 film Tender Mercies. I wanted to be Jerry Jeff Walker more than anything else in the world for several years.
I looked up halfway through and every cell phone in the balcony was lit and by the time I was done, the downstairs was lit too.
#Complicated song lyrics series#
According to Earle, Jerry Jeff (out May 27th on New West Records) is the final covers album in a series that includes his other mentors, Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, and last year’s tribute to his late son, the singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle.