Steve Earle and John Prine singing Townes Van Zandt’s “Loretta” at the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, Tennessee on October 26, 2013. As the video says: Bless you, John and Steve.

Ballroom Marfa is proud to present Steve Earle and the Dukes at the Crowley Theater on June 14, 2015.

A protégé of legendary songwriters Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, Earle quickly became a master storyteller in his own right, with his songs being recorded by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Travis Tritt, The Pretenders, Joan Baez, and many others. 1986 saw the release of his debut album, Guitar Town, which shot to number one on the country charts. What followed was a varied array of releases including the biting hard rock of Copperhead Road (1988), the minimalist beauty of Train A Comin’ (1995), the politically charged masterpiece Jerusalem (2002), and the Grammy Award-winning albums The Revolution Starts…Now (2004), Washington Square Serenade (2007), and Townes (2009).

On his 16th studio album, Terraplane, Earle pays tribute to the blues, influenced by the blues giants he saw growing up in Texas — Lightnin’ Hopkins, Freddy King, Johnny Winter, Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Canned Heat, and Billy Gibbons. Recorded in Nashville, the new collection is his homage to the music that he calls “the commonest of human experience, perhaps the only thing that we all truly share,” and a record he has wanted to make for a long time.

It has long been a dream of ours to bring Earle to Far West Texas; we hope you can join us for this special evening with a country legend. Ballroom Marfa members and tri-county residents can purchase tickets for $15 by stopping by or calling the Ballroom Marfa gallery until May 1. Tickets are available to the general public for $30 at the Ballroom Marfa website.

Explore Steve Earle’s canon on YouTube (his 1991 concert at McCabe’s is heartbreaking), and read BOMB Magazine‘s interview with him from 1998.