Steve Earle To Bring Outlaw Music To Huntington's Paramount

Steve Earle and the Dukes will be joined by Los Lobos at The Paramount tonight. Photo/Warner Bros. Records

By Connor Beach
cbeach@longislandergroup.com

Dynamic musician Steve Earle will continue a four decade legacy of diverse music styles featuring country, rock and bluegrass when he and Mexican-American band Los Lobos stop at The Paramount tonight.

Earle, 62, who will be joined by his band, The Dukes, for the one-night-only Huntington show said he and Los Lobos toured together about four years ago; the bands have complementary styles.

“I’ve known Lobos for a long time, and I think we push each other pretty good,” Earle said. On this tour Earle said the bands have been alternating the order in which they appear on stage, but either way the audience will have a lot of fun.

The concert will feature Earle’s new album, “So You Wannabe an Outlaw,” heavily, but he said songs from his 17 other records will also be played. The new album features several celebrity artist collaborations including Willie Nelson, Johnny Bush and Miranda Lambert.

“The two of us got together to write, and that song turned out really good,” Earle said of duet “This is How it Ends” with Lambert.

Although the singer has strong roots in Texas, Earle has been living in New York for the last 12 years. He’s excited to play at The Paramount for the first time as a transplant New Yorker.

“I occasionally played on Long Islander before, but you get a different perspective on the place when you live there,” Earle said.

The recent devastation of Hurricane Harvey has affected the band, which contains four Texans. Earle, whose sister lives in Houston, said he got his start playing music in Texas. “Everyone we know is OK, but there is going to be a lot of rebuilding down there,” he said.

In addition to being a three-time Grammy winning musician Earle is known for his political activism, including his song “Mississippi, It’s Time,” which criticized the state for refusing to remove the Confederate flag from its flag.

“We’ve been playing that song every night since the incident in Charlottesville,” Earle said. “It’s terrible to have that kind of thing happen in Charlottesville, and it’s insulting to the kind of people who actually live there.”

Earle said he is expecting good energy from the fans in Huntington and throughout the rest of his tour.

“Come and see a couple of really great bands; we’ve been looking forward to it and it’s going to be a great time,” Earle said.

Tickets are $29.50-$69.50 and can be purchased at the box office or from Paramountny.com. Doors open tonight, Sept. 14, at 7 p.m. for the 8 p.m. show.