Steve Earle Returning to His Forte

Good news: Steve Earle demonstrated Thursday night at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano that he is on the way back artistically.

That declaration may puzzle those fans who don’t believe the Texas-spawned country-rocker has ever been away, but Earle’s two albums since “Guitar Town” have lacked the warm, original tone of that highly acclaimed 1986 debut.

In “Guitar Town,” Earle wrote about society’s outsiders who were raised to believe in the American Dream but have had trouble finding their own place in it. The songs, in part, grew out of the Nashville-based artist’s own frustrations of having his music labeled “too country” by much of the rock Establishment and “too rock” by the country world.

If radio programmers were wary of Earle, critics responded in 1986 with an enthusiasm not seen for a country-rock hybrid since fellow Texan Joe Ely arrived on the scene in the late ‘70s.

So convincing was the blue-collar focus in such deeply affecting songs as the wry “Good Ol’ Boy” and spunky “Someday” that critics invariably linked him with such rock populists as John Fogerty, John Cougar Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen. Sample lines from “Good Ol’ Boy”: “Gettin’ tough / Just my luck / I was raised in the land of plenty / Now there ain’t enough.”

Unfortunately, Earle took the praise literally and came up with songs on his “Exit O” album in 1987 and “Copperhead Road” album in 1988 that too often sounded like warmed-over Springsteen and Mellencamp.

Instead of the personal, understated regional vision of “Guitar Man,” there was a darker, more heavy-handed tone in his music as he traded the intimacy and irony of his themes for more obvious imagery and sweeping social commentary.

The Southern color in his songs became frequently cliched and many of his themes seemed simply worn. “No. 29” spoke of faded glories, but without the humor of Springsteen’s “Glory Days,” while “The Rain Came Down” sounded like a reject from Mellencamp’s “Scarecrow.”

Despite the general decline, there were a few moments in each of the last two albums when Earle seemed in touch with his earlier vision. The question Thursday night at the Coach House was whether Earle was moving back toward the “Guitar Town” originality or racing further from it.

The opening number was not encouraging: “Copperhead Road,” a belabored song that tries to weave some significance out of the fact that a Vietnam vet now transports dope along the same backwoods roads his moonshine-running grandpappy once raced.

Then, however, Earle reached back for “Good Ol’ Boy”--the first of six songs from “Guitar Town” that he included in the first hour of his two-hour-plus set. Because he had to fill another hour with post-”Guitar Man” tunes, Earle had to rely on some of the more ham-fisted songs from the other albums, including “Back to the Wall.”

But the way Earle placed other songs from “Guitar Man” and the more appealing songs from the last two albums (including the tender “Nothing but a Child” and the playful “The Week of Living Dangerously”) in strategic places in the show suggested he once again realizes where the strength in his music rests.

He and his vigorous six-piece band, the Dukes, closed with “It’s All Up to You,” an especially graceful song that even seemed to acknowledge the importance of Earle once again looking inside himself for inspiration.

If he takes the words to heart--as this show suggests he is doing--his next album may be a return to the originality and heart that made his work once seem so promising.

Earle, an agreeable, hard-working performer, was scheduled to perform Friday night at the Palace and headlines Tuesday night at the Ventura Theatre in Ventura.

LIVE ACTION: The Grateful Dead’s back for three nights at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, April 28-30. Tickets on sale Sunday. . . . Bon Jovi has added a second night at the Forum, April 27. Tickets on sale now. . . . Three shows for the Wiltern Theatre go on sale Monday: David Crosby (May 5), the Fixx (May 12) and Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians (May 20). . . . Bunny Wailer will top a reggae bill at Irvine Meadows on April 16. . . . The Palace has added Joe Ely on April 27 and the Dead Milkmen on April 28.