Steve Earle Album: “I Feel Alright”

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Personnel: Steve Earle (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Custer (vocals, drums, percussion); Lucinda Williams, The Fairfield Four, Logan (vocals); Kris Wilkerson (conductor, arranger); Richard Bennett (guitar, harmonium, percussion); Ray Kennedy (guitar); Carl Gorodetzky, Pamela Sixfin, Richard Grosjean (violin); Lee Larrison (viola); Robert Mason (cello); Ken Moore (organ); Kelley Looney, Garry W. Tallent, Roy Huskey, Jr., Ric Kipp (bass); Greg Morrow (drums, percussion); Rick Schell (drums); Dub Cornett (percussion). <p>Producers: Ray Kennedy, Richard Bennett, Richard Dodd. <p>Engineers: Ray Kennedy, Peter Coleman, Richard Dodd. <p>Recorded at Room & Board and Treasure Isle, Nashville, Tennessee. Includes liner notes by Steve Earle. <p>I FEEL ALRIGHT is country-rocker Steve Earle's first album of new material following a well-documented five-year residency on the wrong side of the Nashville tracks. Like TRAIN A COMIN', the acoustic set of folk and pop covers with which he made his quiet return a year earlier, this full-band record offers no apologies. It does offer a rocking reclamation of all the blues, folk and country Springsteenisms and Dylanisms that made Earle's return worth waiting for. <p>One of its highlights is a searing, acoustic blues number, "CCKMP," on which Earle declares himself free of most of his former demons. The title stands for "cocaine cannot kill my pain"; the incredibly dark punch line dryly notes that heroin still can. Earle's voice is a blurry twang in which all those demons seem to have left a residue. When on the rollicking opening cut he announces that, "I've been to hell and now I'm back again/I feel alright," you know he means it, but you don't know if he's strong enough to hold on. Which, ironically, is the source of I FEEL ALRIGHT's power. These are songs that seek, in folk and rock and blues, the kind of redemption that life itself can't always offer.