Press Release

Doghouse Rosesby Steve Earle

• Introduction• A short biography of Steve Earle• Praise for Steve Earle and Doghouse Roses• Endorsements for Doghouse Roses

"As he does in his songs, Earle finds the tenuous points of emotional connection between characters who are living not only on the edges of their own ability to cope, but often on the very margins of society itself . . . Earle is obviously not the only musician to venture successfully beyond the world of music . . . but rarely has it been done with the grace, modesty and stylistic command of Doghouse Roses." — Anthony Decurtis, Rolling Stone

"Earle's widening reputation as a musician is soon to be rivaled by his renown as a talented storyteller." — Library Journal

Introduction

The world of a touring musician holds a unique, gritty, road-weary romance, colored by the dust of long nights on the road and the sounds of a well-played guitar. Singer-songwriter Steve Earle is no stranger to this world — he's been immersed in it since his 1986 debut album Guitar Town — and his collection of short stories, Doghouse Roses, holds the same allure. Shot through with that lonesome, country flavor that Earle's many fans find so appealing, these stories are about hope and despair, last chances, broken hearts, and burning wanderlust.

"Never love a writer, cheri, especially a good one," says a character in one of

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his stories. "Fall in love with one and he will break your heart and then reduce your pain to grist for his typewriter." Earle, however, uses his own heartbreak as grist for the typewriter, in a style similar to that of his acoustic-guitar lyrics. The eleven stories in Doghouse Roses resonate with the strife and circumstances of Earle's own life story. Difficult relationships, drug addiction, and the price of success in Nashville all are transposed to the page.

These stories also illuminate Earle's personal and political ideals, such as the struggle to end the death penalty and the drive to remove land mines around the world. Earle has fought for these causes in a number of ways, from speaking at rallies to performing at fund raisers. His short story "The Witness," several of his songs, and his play about Karla Faye Tucker, who was executed by lethal injection, contain moving arguments against capital punishment.

Steve Earle has a huge following among fans of alternative country music and is being discovered by a mainstream audience as well. His most recent album, Sidetracks, filled with movie soundtrack songs, demos, live takes, and previously unreleased tracks, was issued on April 18. His album Transcendental Blues reached the number-one spot on Billboard's independent album bestseller list in 2001 and was nominated for a Grammy. Earle has been the subject of recent profiles in Esquire, Men's Journal, The New Yorker, GQ, and Vanity Fair and has appeared on Nightline and CBS Sunday Morning. He is a frequent guest on David Letterman's and Jay Leno's shows.

To mark the paperback publication of Doghouse Roses, Earle will tour the South, stopping in Raleigh-Durham, Atlanta, Jackson, New Orleans, and Nashville.

A short biography of Steve Earle

With eight Grammy nominations, including one for the Best Contemporary Folk Album, for his 2000 release, Transcendental Blues, singer-songwriter Steve Earle has long been in the public eye with his music, which encompasses elements of country, rock, folk, Celtic, and bluegrass.

Earle began playing the guitar at the age of eleven. Three years later he joined his uncle in Texas, where he immersed himself in the music scene. At the age of nineteen Earle moved to Nashville, where he played with a variety

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of bands and worked odd jobs until the 1986 release of his debut album, Guitar Town.

Despite a struggle with drug addiction in the early 1990s, Earle returned to the music scene in 1995 with his critically acclaimed album Train a Comin'. Shortly afterward, he started his own label, E-Squared. His recent album Transcendental Blues hit the Top Ten list of RollingStone.com, GQ, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, and B&N.com.

In addition to his current music tour and the upcoming paperback release of Doghouse Roses, his first collection of short stories, Earle continues to participate in a number of political causes. In an effort to fight the death penalty, he serves as a board member of the Journey of Hope and is affiliated with Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CUADP), the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killings (TCASK), and the Abolitionist Action Committee.

Earle's activism extends to international causes. Not long ago, he visited Vietnam and Cambodia as part of his work for the Campaign for a Landmine Free World (in conjunction with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation). Along with Emmylou Harris, Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Bruce Cockburn, Earle participated in five benefit concerts to increase local awareness of the 100 million unexploded land mines that remain in the ground in sixty-eight countries.

Musical releases includeSidetracks 2002Transcendental Blues 2000The Mountain 1999El Corazon 1997I Feel Alright 1996Train a Comin' 1995Shut Up & Die Like an Aviator 1991Copperhead Road 1988Exit 0 1987Guitar Town 1986

Praise for Doghouse Roses

"Engaging . . . an appealing collection." — Kirkus Reviews

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"Steve Earle has always told a great story in song . . . Turns out he puts 'em down on the page pretty well, too." — Boston Globe

"With Doghouse Roses, he's reached another milestone." — Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"An absolute gem . . . Earle leaves you wanting more, not only because of his uncanny gift for vivid detail, panoramic settings, and conversational language, but also because of the unexpected turns each of the eleven stories takes . . . he's one hell of a writer." — Penthouse

"The characters in Steve Earle's latest work are plenty familiar to fans of the country music maverick. They're struggling addicts, uncompromising musicians, and men observing codes of honor that don't always agree with the law. There's one big difference, however. These characters aren't set to music. With his surprisingly fine short story collection Doghouse Roses, Earle joins the growing ranks of songwriters who have made the conversion to just plain writers." — San Francisco Chronicle

"The tales, like his songs, are by turns tough, tender, gritty, autobiographical, stark, bold, opinionated and, in spots, even funny." — San Antonio Express-News

"Earle's writing never lacks heart." — New York Times Book Review

Endorsements for Doghouse Roses

"Doghouse Roses is a beautiful and moving collection of short stories by one of our greatest American songwriters. I'm tempted to say it reads like a collaboration between Steinbeck and Kerouac and Bukowski, but really, I can't think of anything else quite like it. Steve Earle has taken the great American road song and set it to prose." — Jay McInerney, author of The Last of the Savages

Could be I'm just some big-city sucker for a hard-rocking, Nietzsche-reading, Che Guevara–quoting redneck country singer but . . . if Steve Earle isn't a Great American, he'll have to do until the real thing comes along." — Mark Jacobson, Men's Journal

"From L.A. glitz to Nashville grit, from street dealers to eighteen-wheelers,

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from the ecstasies of absinthe to the long shadows of Death Row — here are eleven sweet, tough, provocative tales from a writer who refuses to give up on either humankind or literature." — Terry Bisson, author of The Pickup Artist

"Steve Earle writes with remarkable clarity and compassion about an America whose existence most of us can only guess at. Doghouse Roses is a wondrous celebration of down-and-out drifters, struggling musicians and songwriters, drug runners and backcountry outcasts and Death Row victims of a system gone haywire. Earle is a natural-born storyteller who writes from a depth of experience and a place in his heart only the bravest and best artists ever reach." — Howard Frank Mosher, author of The Fall of the Year

"She buzzed the tape forward to Steve Earle's 'Fearless Heart,' with its intricate swagger. No one but Steve Earle for her in the worst of times. There was a thump in her blood, a sexual hip in her movement, when she heard any of his songs of furious loss." — from Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost

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