Steve Earle Plots ‘Copperhead Road’ 30th Anniversary Tour

Steve Earle and his longtime band the Dukes return to the road this week with a series of City Winery shows across the country, leading up to next month’s launch of the Copperhead Road 30th Anniversary Tour. 

The newly announced trek will feature the songs from Earle’s third album, issued to widespread acclaim in October 1998. A mixture of hard-driving political tunes and conventional love songs – with the former including the Reagan-era indictment “Snake Oil” and “The Devil’s Right Hand,” (later covered by both Waylon Jennings and Bob Seger) – the bluegrass-meets-metal album garnered Earle considerable airplay at rock radio. The upcoming tour celebrating the anniversary launches in El Dorado, Arkansas, and runs through April 15th in Peekskill, New York. See the list of tour dates below.

In addition to performing

in its entirety, the three-time Grammy winner will include tunes from his 2017 release So You Wanna Be An Outlaw. From June 25th to 28th, he’ll host his fourth annual Camp Copperhead, a songwriting workshop at the Full Moon Resort in Big Indian, New York. One of this year’s special guests will be New Orleans singer-songwriter Anders Osborne (Brad Paisley, Kim Carnes, Aaron Neville).

While the camp is an opportunity for aspiring songwriters and artists to get helpful advice from seasoned professionals, Earle believes his work has benefited as much from the advice he didn’t listen to as a young songwriter.

“Everybody told me my songs had to have choruses,” Earle told Rolling Stone Country in 2016. “I have three songs that are probably going to be around after I’m gone – ‘Galway Girl,’ ‘Guitar Town‘ and ‘

‘ – none of them have choruses. I just wish that everybody could have somebody that believed in them. I had [music publisher] Bob Beckham. He was the only person I called ‘Mister.’ I didn’t write for him but he was incredibly encouraging. I learned a lot and I just wish everybody could have somebody that believes in them and that really knows what they’re doing and talking about when it comes to songs.”

City Winery dates:

February 8-9 – Atlanta, GA February 10 – Nashville, TN
February 12-13 – Chicago, IL
February 16 – Boston, MA
February 19 – New York, NY
February 26 – New York, NY

Copperhead Road Anniversary Tour dates:

March 16 – El Dorado, AR @ Griffin Music Hall
March 17 – St. Louis, MO @ Delmar Hall
March 20 – Omaha, NE @ The Waiting Room
March 21 – Minneapolis, MN @ Pantages Theatre
March 23 – Des Moines, IA @ Hoyt Sherman Place
March 24 – Sioux City, IA @ Anthem at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
March 25 – Madison, WI @ Barrymore Theatre
March 27 – Iowa City, IA @ The Englert Theatre
March 28 – Green Bay, WI @ Meyer Theatre
March 30 – Milwaukee, WI @ Pabst Theater
March 31 – Chicago, IL @ Old Town School of Folk Music
April 2 – Cleveland, OH @ Music Box Supper Club
April 3 – Alexandria, VT @ The Birchmere
April 4 – Hopewell, VA @ The Beacon Theatre
April 5 – Bethlehem, PA @ Musikfest Café
April 7 – East Greenwich, RI @ Greenwich Odeum
April 8 – North Tonawanda, NY @ Riviera Theatre and Performing Arts Center
April 10 – New Haven, CT @ College Street Music Hall
April 11 – South Burlington, VA @ Higher Ground
April 12 – Northampton, MA @ Academy of Music Theatre
April 14 – Portland, ME @ State Theatre Portland
April 15 – Peekskill, NY @ Paramount Hudson Valley