Stacey Earle & Mark Stuart
For husband and wife recording artists Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart, marriage was easy. Becoming a musical duo took awhile longer. Although guitarist Mark Stuart backed up Stacey Earle when she toured as well as holding down a day job as six stringer in her brother Steve Earle’s band, figuring out that they belonged together musically wasn’t a foregone conclusion.
“I had always seen it as Stacey’s show” Stuart explains over the wire from their Nashville home, “and I was her sideman in a way. But over the course of time it really grew into a duo.”
“It took touring without each other to realize that we had developed a sound” adds Earle. “When two people tour with each other for something like fourteen years you’re going to lock in and a sound is going to be developed. There’s a definite Stacey Earle sound, a definite Mark Stuart sound and then there’s the sound we make together.”
That sound brings together the country roots that Stuart picked as a boy while gigging in his father’s bands as well as Earle’s singer-songwriter twang. The end result isn’t pure country or pure verse-chorus-verse songwriter laments. It’s a fairly unclassifiable middle ground which Earle learned can be tricky to walk on.
“Unfortunately it’s very dangerous in the music industry sense” she explains. “They said we had to have a category. And I didn’t understand that for some time. But one day I walked into a record story and realized that if you don’t have a category they don’t know where to put you. Where are we gonna fit in that record store? They can’t market you to everyone. That’s kind of why we did our own records on our own label. The record companies didn’t know what to do with us! “
Earle pauses and then adds with a laugh, “We refer to ourselves as one of everything!”
One thing that Stacey Earle is not is her brother Steve. “I do a different thing” she shrugs when asked about the comparisons. “He does his thing. Nothing alike. He’s a boy. I’m a girl. Every once in awhile I see a review that says something like ‘well she’s a bit folkie’”. Earle chuckles, adding “And I’m like ‘duh!'. Maybe they want me to get up there and sing ‘Copperhead Road or something!”
“When we first started touring Stacey’s record we would get like a contingency of people, curiosity seekers we called them” recalls Stuart. “They were fans of Steve’s. But slowly and surely they’ve fallen away. We have sort of our own army of a fan base and it’s smaller than Steve's but they come to hear our stuff so we’re not dogged by that at all.”
Although they recently released another Earle & Stuart studio disc, they’re currently busy putting together another live disc as well as a tour which brings them to the London Music Club on February ??. “We’re performers” explains Earle. “Records come second. We do the best we can do to get it on tape but our thing is live performance.”
“The audience always gravitates toward that and wants to take that home at night” adds Stuart. “What they saw and heard, the energy and the magic.” Stacey Earle laughs lightly and adds, “It’s kind of like vaudeville to me!”
“I had always seen it as Stacey’s show” Stuart explains over the wire from their Nashville home, “and I was her sideman in a way. But over the course of time it really grew into a duo.”
“It took touring without each other to realize that we had developed a sound” adds Earle. “When two people tour with each other for something like fourteen years you’re going to lock in and a sound is going to be developed. There’s a definite Stacey Earle sound, a definite Mark Stuart sound and then there’s the sound we make together.”
That sound brings together the country roots that Stuart picked as a boy while gigging in his father’s bands as well as Earle’s singer-songwriter twang. The end result isn’t pure country or pure verse-chorus-verse songwriter laments. It’s a fairly unclassifiable middle ground which Earle learned can be tricky to walk on.
“Unfortunately it’s very dangerous in the music industry sense” she explains. “They said we had to have a category. And I didn’t understand that for some time. But one day I walked into a record story and realized that if you don’t have a category they don’t know where to put you. Where are we gonna fit in that record store? They can’t market you to everyone. That’s kind of why we did our own records on our own label. The record companies didn’t know what to do with us! “
Earle pauses and then adds with a laugh, “We refer to ourselves as one of everything!”
One thing that Stacey Earle is not is her brother Steve. “I do a different thing” she shrugs when asked about the comparisons. “He does his thing. Nothing alike. He’s a boy. I’m a girl. Every once in awhile I see a review that says something like ‘well she’s a bit folkie’”. Earle chuckles, adding “And I’m like ‘duh!'. Maybe they want me to get up there and sing ‘Copperhead Road or something!”
“When we first started touring Stacey’s record we would get like a contingency of people, curiosity seekers we called them” recalls Stuart. “They were fans of Steve’s. But slowly and surely they’ve fallen away. We have sort of our own army of a fan base and it’s smaller than Steve's but they come to hear our stuff so we’re not dogged by that at all.”
Although they recently released another Earle & Stuart studio disc, they’re currently busy putting together another live disc as well as a tour which brings them to the London Music Club on February ??. “We’re performers” explains Earle. “Records come second. We do the best we can do to get it on tape but our thing is live performance.”
“The audience always gravitates toward that and wants to take that home at night” adds Stuart. “What they saw and heard, the energy and the magic.” Stacey Earle laughs lightly and adds, “It’s kind of like vaudeville to me!”
posted by bk @ 5:38 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home