Review: Tragedy, tributes and troubadours fill Steve Earle's solo-acoustic set at the Dakota

You could tell how quickly Steve Earle was trying to tear through the first half of his solo-acoustic set Thursday night at the Dakota by how short his comments were between the tunes.

"This song goes out to what's-her-name, wherever the hell she is," was all he said before "Now She's Gone."

"Same girl, different harmonica," he then offered before the next song, "Goodbye."

And after his show-opener cover of the Pogues' "If I Should Fall From the Grace of God," he said of the band's leader Shane MacGowan, "He's one of the best songwriters ever, but nobody can understand it when he sang it." Then to introduce his second number, "Devil's Right Hand" (one he usually has a lot to say about) he simply said, "Now if I could get more people to understand this song."

Returning to the Dakota for the second summer in a row — he later explained that he now mostly only tours around the school schedule of his youngest son, John Henry — the 68-year-old Texas songwriting hero blazed through a dozen songs in under an hour to start his first of two nights at Minneapolis' jazz-club-turned-songwriter's-haven. (Friday's show was a hair away from being sold-out at press time.)

You could base a yearlong songwriting class on — and glean dozens of hard-learned life's lessons from — the tunes played in the first half. Others included "My Old Friend the Blues," "Someday," "Guitar Town," "I Ain't Ever Satisfied," "Taneytown" and "Sparkle and Shine."

The second half of Thursday's set, however, saw Earle slow down and open up more. After "South Nashville Blues," which chronicles his decline into drug addiction and eventually jail time in the early '90s, he talked about nearing the 29-year mark of going sober.

"That song makes that particular part of my life sound a lot more fun that it really was," he bleakly added.

He also talked about his last all-original album, 2020's "Ghosts of West Virginia," which is derived from one of two theater projects he's been heavily involved in (the other, he said, is a musical adaptation of "Tender Mercies," the 1983 movie that earned fellow Texan Robert Duvall his only Oscar). Introducing the song "It's About Blood," Earle spoke up about 2010's Upper Big Branch coal mine disaster, in which 29 coal miners were killed in an explosion at the only major mine in West Virginia not under the watch of a workers union.

"That's exactly what unions do: protect workers," he bluntly summarized.

Then he opened up about his own recent personal tragedy. After covering "Mr. Bojangles" in honor of Jerry Jeff Walker — whose songs he covered for a 2022 tribute album — Earle then began talking about the death of his son, Justin Townes Earle (also a reputable songwriter), to whom Steve also paid tribute with a heart-tugging 2021 tribute album, titled "J.T." He talked candidly about how Justin died of an accidental overdose caused by fentanyl being spiked in cocaine.

"The only good I can get out of it is to stand up here and say this," he said, delivering a vehement warning of fentanyl. "It's out there, and it's [expletive] dangerous, and it's in everything."

A singalong version of Justin's "Harlem River Blues" then led beautifully, warmly into more audience participation for the Pete Seeger tribute "Tell Moses." Earle joked about his own voice sounding more ragged nowadays — it got better as the set breezed along Thursday — and thus he was trying to copy Seeger more.

"Pete had it down: He could get the audience to sing everything," he quipped.

After that came another run of Earle's own classics, including "Galway Girl," "Copperhead Road" and "Hard-Core Troubadour." The latter was played with a nod to the Band's Robbie Robertson, whose death at age 80 was announced a day earlier. The sold-out crowd did not need any coaching to sing along to that one.