''The Low Highway'' is the 15th studio album by singer-songwriter

Steve Earle Stephen Fain Earle (; born January 17, 1955) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, author, and actor. Earle began his career as a songwriter in Nashville and released his first EP in 1982. Initially working in the country music g ...

, released in 2013. The album features two songs co-written by Earle and Lucia Micarelli: "Love's Gonna Blow My Way", "After Mardi Gras". Two songs from the album, "After Mardi Gras" and "That All You Got?", are featured in the

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

TV Series ''Treme''. The album debuted at No. 12 on Top Country Albums, and No. 39 on Billboard 200, selling 11,000 copies in the first week. It has sold 42,000 copies in the US as of February 2015.

Reception

The album garnered generally positive critical response. Neil Spencer of '' The Guardian'' wrote, Earle's "playing is immaculate and the songcraft admirable". The song, "Invisible", was nominated for

Best American Roots Song The Grammy Award for Best American Roots Song is an award category at the annual Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to recording artists for quality songs in the American Roots Music ...

at the

56th Grammy Awards The 56th Annual Grammy Awards presentation was held on January 26, 2014, at Staples Center in Los Angeles. The show was broadcast on CBS at 8 p.m. ET/PT and was hosted for the third time by LL Cool J. The show was moved to January to avoid com ...

Track listing

''All songs written by

unless otherwise noted.'' # "The Low Highway" – 3:59 # "Calico County" – 2:59 # "Burnin' It Down" – 2:57 # "That All You Got?" – 3:00 # "Love's Gonna Blow My Way" (Earle, Lucia Micarelli) – 2:49 # "After Mardi Gras" (Earle, Lucia Micarelli) – 4:04 # "Pocket Full of Rain" – 3:15 # "Invisible" – 4:19 # "Warren Hellman's Banjo" – 1:47 # "Down the Road Pt. II" – 2:36 # "21st Century Blues" – 3:40 # "Remember Me" – 4:35

Personnel

Musicians

– guitar,

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

, piano and

vocal The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production i ...

* Allison Moorer – piano,

organ Organ may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a part of an organism Musical instruments * Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone ** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument ** Hammond ...

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

, harmonium and vocal * Chris Masterson – guitar,

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a Console steel guitar, console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all s ...

* Eleanor Whitmore –

fiddle A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, th ...

, baritone fiddle, mandolin and the thing *Kelley Looney – upright bass and electric bass * Will Rigby –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, percussion *

Siobhan Kennedy Siobhan Maher Kennedy (born 11 January 1964) is an English singer and songwriter. She was the lead vocalist of the Liverpool-based band River City People during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The band released two albums, '' Say Something Good'' ...

Production

Produced Producer or producers may refer to: Occupations *Producer (agriculture), a farm operator *A stakeholder of economic production *Film producer, supervises the making of films **Executive producer, contributes to a film's budget and usually does not ...

by Steve Earle and Ray Kennedy *Recorded, mixed and mastered by Ray Kennedy at Ben's Studio and Room and Board - Nashville, Tennessee *Additional mastering for vinyl by George Ingram at NRP - Nashville, Tennessee *Assistant engineer - Leslie Richter

Artwork

*Cover artwork by Tony Fitzpatrick *Design by Paul Moore *Photos by Ted Barron

Chart performance

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Low Highway, The 2013 albums Steve Earle albums New West Records albums