I've been thinking a lot about Steve Earle lately.

He's been one of my favorite musicians from the get go. Actually got to meet him a couple of times back when I worked at WNCW. He was always a real nice guy.

Anyway, Steve has been part of the Nashville music scene since 1975. He was 19 when he first got there and it took about eleven years for him to break through with Guitar Town in 1986. It's a fun record that kicks off with the following words:

Hey pretty baby are you ready for me
It's your good rockin' daddy down from Tennessee

Check it out.

Fast forward 21 years. A lot can happen to a good rockin' Nashville guy in that time: wives, kids, drugs, politics, more wives, jail time.

The upshot is that throughout all the drama Steve has made the most honest and well-received music of his career. Classics, I'd say: Copperhead Road, El Corazón, I Feel Alright, Train A Comin', and Jerusalem -- just to name a few.

Then in 2007 Steve made a record called Washington Street Serenade. Having lived in New York City with his seventh wife, singer Allison Moorer, for a couple of years had an intense effect on him.

The first song on the record, "Tennessee Blues," begins as such:

Sunset in my mirror, pedal on the floor
Bound for New York City and I won’t be back no more
Won’t be back no more, boys, won’t see me around
Goodbye guitar town

And then the kicker:

Fare thee well I’m bound to roam
This ain’t never been my home

Have a listen.

This ain't never been my home. Wow, man. Strong words.

I gotta say that I know how the guys feels. Life can change you profoundly. It can make a man whose life and music were synonymous with Nashville kiss the town goodbye and realize that it had never really been the place for him.

Sometimes you figure that out quickly, other times you go to hell and back several times before you do. But when you do figure it out and you take action you end up happier than you've ever been. Steve is living proof.

Goodbye guitar town, indeed.

My friend Dani Burns recently interviewed me for her video conversation series, The Green Room. Dani is super smart, super cool, and a great person to spend an hour or two with talking about anything and everything. So it was a pleasure being her first victim -- er, I mean, guest -- for The Green Room.

Thanks, D.

Miguel Piñero was a Puerto Rican poet, playwright, actor, ex-con, ex-addict, and co-founder of the Nuyorican poetry movement.

Piñero's most well-known poem -- A Lower East Side Poem -- is an elegy to the gritty and depraved Lower East Side of Manhattan in the '70s and '80s. The first stanza:

Just once before I die
I want to climb up on a tenement sky
to dream my lungs out till I cry
then scatter my ashes thru
the Lower East Side.

And the last stanza:

I don't wanna be buried in Puerto Rico
I don't wanna rest in long island cemetery
I wanna be near the stabbing shooting
gambling fighting & unnatural dying & new birth crying
so please when I die
don't take me far away
keep me near by
take my ashes and scatter them thru out
the Lower East Side.

That's just what his friend and fellow Nuyorican poetry movement co-founder Miguel Albarín did when Piñero died in 1988. Here is the story of that procession.

Another of Piñero's great poems is Seekin' The Cause.

he never gave his love to children
he never gave his heart to old people
& never did he ever give his soul to his people
he never gave his soul to his people
because he was busy seekin' a cause
busy
busy perfectin' his voice to harmonize the national anthem with spiro t agnew
busy perfectin' his jive talk so that his flunkiness wouldn't show
busy perfectin' his viva-la-policia speech
downtown, uptown, midtown, crosstown
his body was found all over town
seekin' a cause
seekin' the cause

Check out Piñero himself reading part of Seekin' The Cause in this video.

It's pretty powerful stuff.

This is what life is like as a photographer/vendor.

You know it’s true.