INFLUENCER:

Earle makes it clear that Jerry Jeff Walker always was the man, "I wanted to be Jerry Jeff Walker more than anything else in the world at one point, long before I ever even met those guys. He's the glue to all of that for me." In fact, thanks to Walker he had his first experience with hitchhiking, "He was the first person I ever hitchhiked to go see," he recalls. "I went up to Austin on his birthday one year and I crashed his birthday party."

Eventually, while living in Nashville at the ripe old age of 19, he became Walker's driver. "He'd reached a point where he couldn't afford to get stopped in Nashville anymore. So, he'd come and get me to drive for him, which may or may not have been smart. But I didn't have as many dings on my license." What Earle learned could fill a book, or in this case, a CD.

His feel for the music of Walker is spot on, part of the credit going to The Dukes who have played with Earle for over a decade. Three of them are Texans and there's a connection to Walker's music just by being a part of that Texas culture. A song like "Getting' By" exists because Walker was able to capture the essential parts of what it means to be alive in that state of life. The Dukes play with a casual grace highlighting the musical landscape. The fiddle solo segues into the pedal steel perfectly with the kind of casual grace Walker always had.

While Walker was a great interpreter of other people's material (especially the songs of Guy Clark) Earle keeps the focus tightly on Walker as a writer.

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