Two heaping slices of Americana were served to Prince George music fans this weekend, courtesy of Steve Earle on Saturday at Vanier Hall and John Mellencamp on Sunday at CN Centre.
The similarities between the two men are extensive.
They were both born in the early 1950s and grew up far away from the bright lights of the big city, in Texas and Indiana respectively. Breakthrough success didn't come to either man until they were nearly 30.
Most importantly, they proudly represent aspects of American life and culture that are rapidly disappearing.
In Earle's case, he may be the last true country music outlaw, cut from the same cloth as Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. He did jail time for drugs and guns offences, kicking his heroin habit while behind bars. His politics would stand up well at any NDP policy meeting, meaning he's a socialist radical in the conservative world of modern country music world, not to mention Texas.
He proudly rails against his home country's military-industrial complex and its racist, anti-immigrant conservatism, in person and in his music. He opposes the death penalty and became a believer in gun control after his teenage son stole the gun hidden in his bedroom, a story he told with his typical bluntness at Saturday's show.
Earle simply refuses to shut up and sing, to quote the Dixie Chicks. The older he gets the more prolific he gets, with a book of short stories under his belt, and a punishing touring and recording schedule he cracks jokes about.
He is the artist as conscientious objector, a "hardcore troubadour" as he once called himself in a song. He sings passionately about all forms of injustice, mixing in the occasional heartbreaking love songs that ache with sincerity, because he still wants to change the world, one song, one show, one heart, one mind at a time.
His first hit, I Ain't Ever Satisfied, still sums up his artistic and personal ethic.
Like Earle, Mellencamp is devoted to the plight of the less fortunate but it's a side interest. Mellencamp has made a career out of expressing smalltown sentimentality about love and home and family. Even when it's laid on thick, it is always real and sincere.
Despite their career trajectories, they steadfastly cling to their visions of individualism and proud men and women living decent, honest lives. Mellencamp has sold tens of millions of records and is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while many music fans have trouble naming a Steve Earle song other than Copperhead Road.
What Earle and Mellencamp forbid in their music is cynicism and hopelessness.
Even the bleakest of Earle's songs, like the tragic Billy Austin that he performed for a hushed audience Saturday, ends with a protagonist who still proclaims his name proudly and hopes that his short, terrible life wasn't lived in vain.
Mellencamp's stories are more like Norman Rockwell paintings, all safe, gentle and familiar. His characters hurt but not too much and even when times are tough, the good old days are right around the corner.
There's no one left under 50 in modern popular music who sings about the trials and rewards of rural life like Mellencamp or about enduring the pain and suffering of rural life like Earle.
The world is faster now , more modern, more global and most music, in all its diversity, reflects the pace and gloss of the urban setting, with its manic energy.
It's like both men went to the bright lights of the city to find their careers and musical voices but just couldn't forget what they left behind.
They are the last of their breed.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
