Guitar Town

Buck Norris sings “Guitar Town” by Steve Earle. This has to be the hardest song to do ever, the timing is so messed up it is almost impossible to get it right but I like the song none the less. While he was in Nashville, Earle worked blue-collar jobs during the day; during the night, he wrote songs and played bass in Guy Clark’s backing band, appearing on a cut on Clark’s 1975 album Old No. 1. Steve stayed in Nashville for several years, making connections within the industry and eventually landing a job as a staff writer for the publisher Sunbury Dunbar. After staying in Nashville for a few years, he grew tired of the city and returned back to Texas. There he assembled a backing band called the Dukes and began playing local clubs. A year later, he returned to Nashville, where he married his second wife, Cynthia. The marriage was short-lived and he quickly married Carol, who gave birth to Earle’s first child, a son named Justin Townes Earle. Carol helped straighten Earle out, at least temporarily; for a while, he cut back on substances and concentrated on music. Publishers Roy Dea and Pat Clark signed Earle as a songwriter in the early ’80s. Dea and Clark brought “When You Fall in Love” to Johnny Lee, who took the song to number 14 on the country charts in 1982; shortly before the success of “When You Fall in Love,” Carl Perkins cut Steve’s “Mustang Wine,” and Zella Lehr recorded two of his songs. With his reputation as a songwriter growing, Earle wanted to become a …