Steve Earle and The Dukes
Barbican Hall
Silk Street
London EC2
★★★★★

At 63 Steve Earle is still an irresistible force of nature and at the Barbican hits the stage running, assisted by the intuitively symbiotic Dukes, at this last assignment this side of the pond.
 
Looking like a Herculean Hell’s Angel, Earle’s gruff, craggy voice is tonight melodious and expressive — forceful and explosive one minute and tender and mellow the next. Although Waylon Jennings is his declared influence, and the similarities are many, Earl’s been able to breathe new life into the largely diminished legacy of progressive country music that ended with the Highwaymen.
 
Much of it stems from his passionate embrace of the vigour and uptempos of rock with blazing guitar work from himself and Chris Masterson anchored masterfully by bassist extraordinaire Kelly Looney and intelligent drumming from Brad Pemberton, while Eleanor Whitmore on fiddle and Ricky Jay Jackson on pedal steel guitar put in the engrossing subtle colouring phrases that cement impressively this “wall of sound.”

 
It is, however, Earle’s novelesque lyrics that are the essence of his conversation with the audience. Often painfully raw, confessionary elsewhere, honest in every observation, they make him trustworthy — a man of his word who wears his heart on his sleeve.
 
The unexpected nostalgic rendition of Johnny Come Lately — first recorded with the Pogues in north London in 1988 — elicits loud cheers as will later a meaty and dense Earlesque Hey Joe unexpectedly concluding that he Earle needs to go “way down south, way down Mexico way … before that asshole builds his wall.”

In between take your pick from I Ain’t Ever Satisfied, I’m Still in Love with You, You’re the Best Lover I Ever Had, News From Colorado, Walkin’ in LA, Sunset Highway, Goodbye Michelangelo — a tribute to Guy Clark — Fixin’ to Die or The Firebreak Line, movingly dedicated to the four firefighters killed so far in California’s continuing wild fires.