RECAP: Steve Earle / Zandi Holup @ Universal Preservation Hall, 6/5/2025

Words by Steven Stock.

Billed as “Fifty Years of Songs and Stories: Solo and Acoustic,” Steve Earle’s performance in Saratoga Springs last Thursday seemed like a victory lap of sorts for the first hour or so. Armed at first with his trusty Martin acoustic guitar and some harmonicas, Earle opened with “Tom Ames’ Prayer” and “Ben McCulloch” before unleashing a string of early hits, almost as if he was establishing his credentials.

“The Devil’s Right Hand,” “Guitar Town,” “My Old Friend the Blues,” and “Someday” made Earle a star of the alt-country regiment in the mid- and late-’80s, alongside Dwight Yoakam and Lyle Lovett. Happily, these songs have stood the test of time, and even in these stripped-down arrangements, the tunes resonated beautifully in the lovely confines of the Universal Preservation Hall. 

Earle enlivened “I Ain’t Ever Satisfied” with some high lonesome harmonica playing and cajoled the audience into singing along. Despite the lovely melody, “I Ain’t Ever Satisfied” is not really a sentiment conducive to declaiming with much gusto, and in turn, the crowd sounded a bit tentative. While the songs themselves were polished gems, with nary an extraneous note or thought, Earle’s stories were rambling and discursive, with maybe a little too much “the album didn’t do as well as the previous one” and music industry gossip about behind-the-scenes figures such as Irving Azoff and Jimmy Bowen.

The stories worked better as the show went on, and they became more personal. An extended riff about being bullied in a San Antonio high school until a football player named Bubba took a shine to Earle set up “No. 29” quite effectively.  After a rousing raucous version of rocker “Copperhead Road,” (“I made a different kind of record,” noted Earle with a touch of pride) the set list became markedly less predictable and the show even more compelling.

After recounting his stint in rehab, Earle confided, “I wrote the first song I’d ever written sober” before launching into “Goodbye,” a deeply affecting performance that was enlivened by some of Earle’s best finger-picking of the night and another lovely harmonica solo. “South Nashville Blues” was another harrowing tune inspired by Earle’s struggles with addiction and despair. 

As a 70-year-old man, Earle has learned a thing or two about pacing and variety, so he switched to a 12-string guitar for “CCKMP” and man oh man the sound in the UPH was just glorious! Earle’s confident singing and the 12-string sounded great on the subsequent “Transcendental Blues” as well, and in an odd way, the guitar switch served to underscore the show’s narrative arc.

Earle then switched to the bouzouki (aka octave mandolin) for “City Of Immigrants.” Inspired by the last 20 years or so that Earle has spent living in New York City,  “City…” was an implicitly political call-to-arms in the current environment, and the crowd sang “all of us are immigrants” with rather more zeal and ardor than they had summoned for “…Satisfied.” The bluegrass excursion of “The Mountain” made for a nice segue into “It’s About Blood,” about a 2010 disaster at the (non-union, Earle pointedly noted) Upper Big Branch Coal Mine in West Virginia. The roll call of 29 victims’ names near the end of the song had a certain understated power, acknowledged by the audience with the first of two standing ovations.

For the first encore, opener Zandi Holup, a Southern belle blessed with a lovely voice that benefits from a few grains of grit, sang a duet with Earle on their new and hitherto unreleased composition “I’m Not Missing Anything But You.” It was another highlight, evoking the sound of Emmylou Harris’ and Gram Parsons’ soulful duets on “GP” and “Grievous Angel” some 50-odd years back. “Tell Moses,” from Earle’s 2016 collaboration with Shawn Colvin, and “The Galway Girl” capped a marvelous evening.