Copperhead Road – Steve Earle

For me Steve Earle was the 80s version of Johnny Cash, great Country artist but singing songs with a purpose and a conscious. This song is epic, the way it starts so slowly and simply, then bit by bit it builds. Then suddenly there's an explosion of sound and the whole thing takes off. The use of bagpipes is amazing, so atmospheric. The guitar sound on this is so heavy and it rocks. I love the story telling in the words, you can just picture all the characters and almost taste the moonshine. The reference to Vietnam, again is Steve bringing in subjects other artists would run a mile from.

I heard this song on a number of Country compilations we had, always thought it was a bit out of place, more of a rock song than pure Country. But I've a couple of other memories of it, I did a tour of New Zealand as a part of a Contiki holiday. This was for young single travels, I met a bunch of strangers from all around the globe and set off on a two week coach trip to explore both islands. In Queenstown I did a white water rafting run and nearly came a cropper when my oar got wedged in a rock tunnels roof. My partner up the front of the eight man raft was a big Ozzie who didn't know his left from his right. When the huge Maui guide was shouting instructions at us from the back of the raft, he would paddle in the opposite way to what he was told. Anyway I was a bit annoyed with him until that night we went to a restaurant for our meal and this song was playing over the speakers, we found we both had a huge love for Mr. Earle and we made great friends. The other memory was there was this flash guy at work, he was the first one to discover music streaming and because of that he used to hog the communal stereo. Let's just say his music tastes and mine were worlds apart and then one day when I was particularly frustrated with the past five hours of James Brown remixes, he suddenly dropped Copperhead Road and all was forgiven.

 Apparently there was a Copperhead Road which the song was written about but they have since changed it's name as the street sign kept getting nicked. A whizz through Steve's Earle's greatest hits, you find other rockers like this, I especially love Guitar Town, but also heart aching ballads, but all with that emotion firmly heard in his vocals and lyrics.

Favourite lyric : He was headed down to Knoxville with the weekly load / You could smell the whiskey burnin' down Copperhead Road