Review: Earle an articulate, modern-day agitator

By DAVE TIANEN dtianen@journalsentinel.com Take the articulate anger of Greenwich Village Dylan, the roughhewn populism of Bruce Springsteen and the renegade heart of Waylon Jennings and you have a good start on Steve Earle. But as he demonstrated again Sunday night at the Pabst Theater, there is another crucial element to Earle. He may be a contemporary alt-country icon, but in many ways he is a throwback to the 1940s, an old-fashioned agitator with a guitar in the mode of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. That was an easy point to make Sunday night; in fact, Earle made it himself, twice — once at the very beginning with “Christmas in Washington,” a musical summons to bring back Woody’s ghost, and then near the end with “Steve’s Hammer.” The latter is a kind of answer song to Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer,” with Earle looking to... [read full story]