Doghouse Roses: Stories

by Earle, Steve

• ISBN13: 9780618040261
• ISBN10: 0618040269
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-06-01
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

Steve Earle does everything he does with intelligence, creativity, passion, and integrity. In music, these strengths have earned him comparisons to Bruce Springsteen, the ardent devotion of his fans, and the admiration of the media. And Earle does a lot: he is singer, songwriter, producer, social activist, teacher.... Hes not only someone who makes great music; hes someone to believe in. With the publication of his first collection of short stories, DOGHOUSE ROSES, he gives us yet another reason to believe. Earles stories reflect the many facets of the man and the hard-fought struggles, the defeats, and the eventual triumphs he has experienced during a career spanning three decades. In the title story he offers us a gut-wrenchingly honest portrait of a nearly famous singer whose life and soul have been all but devoured by drugs. "Billy the Kid" is a fable about everything that will never happen in Nashville, and "Wheeler County" tells a romantic, sweet-tempered tale about a hitchhiker stranded for years in a small Texas town. A story about the husband of a murder victim witnessing an execution addresses a subject Earle has passionately taken on as a social activist, and a cycle of stories features "the American," a shady international wanderer, Vietnam vet, and sometime drug smuggler - a character who can be seen as Earles alter ego, the person he might have become if he had been drafted. Earle is a songwriters songwriter, and here he takes his writing gift into another medium, along with all the grace, poetry, and deep feeling that has made his music honored around the world.

Author Biography

STEVE EARLE is a singer-songwriter who has released ten critically acclaimed albums since his 1986 debut album, Guitar Town, burst onto the Nashville scene and made him a star overnight. A prolonged struggle with drug addiction resulted in jail time in the early 1990s, but Earle’s recovery and comeback albums, beginning wth the 1995 Grammy-nominated Train A Comin’, have all been critical and commercial successes. His latest album is Transcendental Blues. Earle also works on behalf of a number of political causes, which have been the subjects of his songs for decades. In the struggle to end the death penalty, he serves as a board member of the Journey of Hope and is affiliated with both Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CUADP) and the Abolitionist Action Committee. He is also a supporter of the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World and the Kensington Welfare Rights Union. He has been the subject of recent profiles in Esquire and Men’s Journal and has appeared on Nightline and CBS Sunday Morning. He is a frequent guest on David Letterman’s and Jay Leno’s shows.

Table of Contents

Doghouse Roses	1	(26)
Wheeler Country	27	(21)
Jaguar Dance	48	(30)
Taneytown	78	(10)
Billy the Kid	88	(19)
The Internationale	107	(9)
The Red Suitcase	116	(20)
A Eulogy of Sorts	136	(8)
The Reunion	144	(29)
The Witness	173	(31)
A Well-Tempered Heart	204

Excerpts

DOGHOUSE ROSESPick any means of transportation, public or private, over land, sea, or air. No matter which direction you travel, it takes three hours to get out of L.A. Yeah, I know there are all those folks with a head start for the Grapevine out in Northridge and Tarzana, but hell, to those of us in the trenches, the real Angelenos, those places are only luminescent names on big green signs seemingly suspended in midair above the 101 Freeway. Yeah, yeah, I know all about the good citizens of Encino and Toluca Lake who are always bragging about the convenience of friendly little Burbank Airport, but lets get real -- theyre not going anywhere anyway. Im talking about the other side of the hill -- Downtown, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice, and Silver Lake -- the transient heart of the city, the L.A. of Raymond Chandler, Chet Baker, and Tom Waits. A place where folks come to do Great Things -- make movies and records, write screenplays and novels, which they hope will become screenplays someday, because thats where the money is. And every- fucking-bodys got a "treatment" that theyre working on, including half of the L.A.P.D. Most of these folks only wind up as minor characters in the work of the fortunate few. Youve seen them -- aging bit players with tough, brown hides, mummified from years of sitting around motel swimming pools waiting for the phone to ring. The drug-ravaged former rock stars in raggedy-ass Porches and Saabs on an unending orbit of the downtown streets. Even the lucky ones only get as far as the Hollywood Hills or maybe Malibu, where they live out their lives with their backs to the worlds widest and deepest ocean, waiting for wildfire to rain down from the canyons above. And should they decide to get out? Well, like I said, it takes three hours, and most people simply dont have the resolve. Bobby Charles certainly didnt. He left L.A. in disgrace, low- riding in the passenger seat of his soon-to-be ex-wifes BMW. Not that he wanted to go, but this town kicked his ass so thoroughly there was simply no fight left in him. Kim West (she had never taken Bobbys last name, for professional reasons) had finally given up on her talented but troubled husband of five years, and now she just wanted him out of her town. When Kim and Bobby met, he was a country-rock singer whose first marriage had already begun to buckle under the stress of constant touring, the distance alone taking a considerable toll. His wife and two kids were back in Nashville, but his real home was a forty-foot Eagle bus he shared with his band and crew. At age thirty- five Bobby was somewhat of a cult figure, the kind of recording artist who, thanks to a loyal following, sold one hundred thousand records per release, although this was barely enough to recoup his recording costs. The critics loved his work, however, and he lent a certain amount of integrity to a record labels roster. Before Kim came along, he had always considered L.A. a nice pla

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Excerpted from Doghouse Roses: Stories by Steve Earle
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