Country icon Steve Earle has spoken about his hard hitting new track ‘The Gulf Of Mexico’.
Steve Earle is becoming a genuine renaissance man. The country singer is preparing to publish his first novel, while work on the acclaimed television show ‘Treme’ – featuring a guest role from Earle – is ongoing.
Filmed in the gulf of Mexico, ‘Treme’ captured a community coming to terms with the after effects of Hurricane Katrina. Suddenly, the crew became involved in a new natural disaster after a BP oil spill devastated the region.
An eye witness to the chaos caused by the spill, Steve Earle has poured his feelings into new track ‘Gulf Of Mexico’. Taken from his new album ‘I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive’ the track is a hard hitting epic clocking in at some fifteen minutes.
“People around here want the drilling again to start immediately, and it’s sort of telling the story of people that are dependent in it” he told SpinnerMusic.
“I believe that they’re being had, that they’re being lied to, but I do understand. It’s about the hope that those people might get jobs, and they just don’t want that hope taken out of their lives.”
Continuing, Steve Earle explained that he believed America would have to become less reliant on oil to prevent such disasters re-occurring. “We’re going to have to use less (oil) or things are going to go badly. But you are dealing here with people that make a living from it and I try to be sympathetic to that.”
“I do understand why they believe what they believe. I don’t think they’re bad people. The people that are in BP are bad people. I truly believe that. But I don’t think the people that work on the oil rigs are. I think they’re just trying to feed their families.”
Finishing, Steve Earle described the current state of New Orleans. “There’s 100,000 less people than there were before the storm. It is coming back, it is resilient. There’s a part of it that always been apart from the rest of the country and I think that makes it more resilient than some places.”
Steve Earle’s new album ‘I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive’ is out now.
