Spare the rod, spoil the tour

Steve Earle is here to indulge two of his passions.

Steve Earle isn't touring here again 18 months after his last New Zealand tour just to push another album.

And the man variously labelled "the new Dylan/Springsteen/Johnny Cash" over the years, isn't back to play to the folks left out in the cold at last year's oversold Christchurch show.

Though the Texas-bred country rocker and political firebrand ("If I were a rock star, I would be Steve Earle" says doco-maker Michael Moore) is doing just that.

No, he's also been here to help do his bit to reduce Lake Taupo's trout population.

Yes, the gentle art of fly-fishing is something Earle is clearly as passionate about as his angry, articulate protest songs and the big-twang music behind them.

"I really wanted to get [to New Zealand] two records in a row," he says down the line from New York, "and I didn't want to lay my guys [his backing band The Dukes] off right before Christmas and I wanted to [expletive] go fishing.

"Taupo has the best trout fishing I have ever seen and I've fished over half the world.

"It's amazing. It's where trout fishermen go to die."

And just like his approach to music, he's not one to take the, er, mainstream.

"Of course the best thing is to fish with Maori guys because they can take you places no one else can."

Earle's recent songs have a way of doing that too - whether they're shouting up the American corridors of power or essaying the lives of those actually fighting the war on Iraq.

Though the title song of his 2004 latest album The Revolution Starts ... Now might well feel like a discarded placard from the 2004 US election campaign.

Earle admits singing the pre-election rhetoric of Revolution feels bittersweet now. He's proud of what he achieved though. "... We did really good work and we got a lot of people involved in the political process.

"We did some swing states right before the election and after the election was over we went to Europe and we came back and basically the tour became this post-election recovery room for a certain segment of the population.

"This record and [its predecessor] Jerusalem aren't quite as relevant outside the US.

"To tell you the truth, this music is more fun to play [in the US] than other places in the world.

"There are things that this record and Jerusalem were about that people who live in real democracies have trouble even understanding."

Despite his liberal anti-war stance, Earle says he has a growing fan club among those fighting in Iraq.

"It's really important to remember that's what these songs are about - soldiers do not make policy.

"People who join the army are people who can't find a job where they live or people who simply want an education.

"I have heard from individual soldiers - these guys are National Guardsmen and reservists who never counted on going into a war zone.

"You run into them at airports. I've received several letters and they are gratifying."

Earle laughs, saying his own sons won't be going to Iraq because he makes too much money. One of his boys was part of the band crew on the last tour. He won't be coming this time because he's got his own band.

"I try to stay out of it because it's not like he's going to listen to me anyway," he laughs. "Anyway, how do you rebel when you're my kid?"

Um, join a trout-preservation society?

"Well, at one point he took up golf - a sport that I kind of object to. It's Republican sport.

"It's white and you hit and it goes away and then you chase it all day - it's too much like cocaine and I try to avoid that."

In the early 90s Earle had some dark drug days which landed him in jail where he kicked his heroin habit.

Since then he's had an increasingly diverse career, and not just musically. He's had a book of short stories published and says he's halfway through his first novel.

Before coming to New Zealand he was involved in the New York production of his play Karla, about Karla Faye Tucker the first woman to be executed under Texas' death penalty since the US Civil War.

Sounds like Earle, the pinko protest singer, is also on his way to earning another label: renaissance man.

He says he's learned from writing in other forms. "I think the songs that I write now are the best songs that I have ever written and part of it is that I write other things.

"I decided about 11 years ago when my life changed pretty drastically to do things that I had never done before."

This year Earle turned 50 which he says he's already celebrated by moving to New York (though he still keeps a place in Tennessee).

And when he gets to Australia next week, he intends to mark the milestone by learning to surf. Even if it mean he risks joining the other end of the fish food-chain.

"I'm going to Byron Bay. There's not as many sharks."

* Steve Earle and The Dukes perform at the Opera House, Wellington tonight; St James, Auckland, tomorrow