01	Guitar Town						02:35
	02	Goodbye's All We've Got Left						03:25
	03	Hillbilly Highway						03:38
	04	Good Ol' Boy (Gettin' Tough)						04:01
	05	My Old Friend The Blues						03:09
	06	Someday						03:49
	07	Think It Over						02:17
	08	Fearless Heart						04:08
	09	Little Rock & Roller						04:52
	10	Down The Road						02:37

MCD 01888

DMCL 1888

MCAD-31305


1986 MCA Records, Inc.


Produced by Emery Gordy, Jr. and Tony Brown

Associate Producer: Richard Bennet


The Dukes:

Richard Bennet: Guitars, 6-string bass and Slap bass

Bucky Baxter: Pedal Steel

Ken Moore: Organ and Synthesizer

Emery Gordy, Jr: Bass and Mandolin

Harry Stinson: Drums and Vocals


with:

John Jarvis: Piano and Synthesizer

Paul Franklin: Pedal Steel on ""Fearless Heart""

and ""Someday""

Steve Nathan: Synthesizer


Digitally recorded at Sound Stage Recording Studio

using a Mitsubishi X-800 32 track digital

Recorded by Chuck Ainlay

Overdubs recorded by Steve Tillisch, Chuck Ainlay,

and Russ Martin at Emerald Studio

Mixed by Chuck Ainlay at The Castle

Second Engineers: Russ Martin, Mark J. Coddington,

Tim Kish, Keith Odle, and Robbie Rose


CD Master Tape prepared by Glenn Meadows and

Milan Bogdan at Masterfonics using the JVC Digital

Audio Mastering System


CD Art Direction: Simon Levy

CD Design: Camille Engel Advertising

CD Coordination: Katie Gillon, Sherri Halford

Photography: Alan Messer


Special thanks to Silverlin - Goldline Music

and Gibson Guitars


Harry Stinson plays P.D. Drums
On Steve Earle's first major American tour following the release of his debut album, Guitar Town, Earle found himself sharing a bill with Dwight Yoakum one night and the Replacements another, and one listen to the album explains why — while the music was country through and through, Earle showed off enough swagger and attitude to intimidate anyone short of Keith Richards. While Earle's songs bore a certain resemblance to the Texas Outlaw ethos (think Waylon Jennings in ""Lonesome, Orn'ry and Mean"" mode), they displayed a literate anger and street-smart snarl that set him apart from the typical Music Row hack, and no one in Nashville in 1986 was able (or willing) to write anything like the title song, a hilarious and harrowing tale of life on the road (""Well, I gotta keep rockin' while I still can/Got a two pack habit and motel tan"") or the bitterly unsentimental account of small town life ""Someday"" (""You got to school where you learn to read and write/so you can walk into the county bank and sign away your life""), the latter of which may be the best Bruce Springsteen song the Boss didn't write. And even when Earle gets a bit teary-eyed on ""My Old Friend the Blues"" and ""Little Rock 'n' Roller,"" he showed off a battle-scarred heart that was tougher and harder-edged than most of his competition. Guitar Town is slightly flawed by an overly tidy production from Emory Gordy Jr. and Tony Brown as well as a band that never hit quite as hard as Earle's voice, and Earle would make many stronger and more ambitious records in the future, but Guitar Town was his first shot at showing a major audience what he could do, and he hit a bull's-eye — it's perhaps the strongest and most confident debut album any country act released in the 1980s.