Steve Earle plays to a new generation . . . Tracey Bryn of the Beehive, (expletives deleted) . . . Jeff Healey Band: plucking all the right strings . . . : Crossing the Line

In the grand tradition of Sam Cooke switching from gospel to pop and Bob Dylan going electric, Steve Earle has risked alienating his core audience relatively early in his career.

Having made a name as a genuine country star with his first two albums (“Guitar Town” and “Exit 0”), the Nashville maverick has just released a third effort, “Copperhead Road,” in which songs that are still very recognizably country songs are played like rock ‘n’ roll songs. Meaning that, in some regions, anyhow, a lot of older folks may be giving up on Earle just about the time their sons and daughters may be turning on to him.

“With the South, one of the problems (in reaching younger audiences) definitely was that country was their parents’ music,” said the Nashville-based Earle. “And so it tended to polarize people. . . . The fact that I had actually been a country artist and been played on country stations, and their dad or their uncle went around humming ‘Guitar Town’ definitely made them suspicious. But we seem to be overcoming that.”

Indeed. The title song of Earle’s new album is zooming the album-rock radio charts, with programmers finding him both musically and politically to be in the Springsteen/Mellencamp vein of raucous social consciousness. But considering that Earle had several Top 10 country songs in the last two years, won’t MCA Records still work his album in the country market too?

“Well, that’s a matter of contention right now,” he replied. “Nothing’s been shipped (to country radio), even though I still consider myself to be just as valid a country artist on this record as I’ve ever been. . . .

“I probably couldn’t have a Top 20 country single right now--just because a lot of those people would use the excuse that I used them to get to rock radio, which is ludicrous. I mean, I don’t see how you could use country radio to get to rock radio. Having been played on country radio was something we had to overcome on some rock stations.”

Perhaps the biggest obstacle Earle faces in the country market is not his style, but his substance. Once mistaken for a “mega-redneck right-winger”--partly because of his first-person characterizations of disenfranchised Americans, and partly just because of his accent--Earle is determined to lay that misconception to rest. Thus, more overtly political songs on the new album, like “Snake Oil,” which portrays Ronald Reagan as the ultimate snake-oil salesman.

“To me the most interesting phenomenon of this Reagan Administration is that he really has succeeded in convincing people that he is for the working man. They really believe it, man. They bought it. And you can’t turn it around. It was the most frustrating thing in the world for me. That’s where ‘Snake Oil’ came from. . . .”