I’ve come to be untroubled in my seeking
And I’ve come to say that nothing is for naught
I’ve come to reach out blind, to reach forward and behind
For the more I seek, the more I’m sought

These lyrics, from Joe Pug’s “Hymn 101,” might as well be the tagline for Pug’s current year-long tour, which has taken him from tooling around the local circuit in his hometown, Chicago, to tailing alt.-country legend Steve Earle’s tour bus on a swing down through Texas and back up toward the Great Lakes. From there, he’ll take a brief sojourn to Norway then take up with Josh Ritter for an upper-Midwest tour before heading west for festival season. “I rent a room in Chicago,” he tells me Tuesday after a set in Richmond, “but I’ve probably slept in it about 20 times this year.”

So far, Pug’s seeking has prompted plenty to seek him in turn—not least, Earle himself. “The way I understand it is, Steve’s manager played Steve my album, and Steve said, ‘Yeah, let’s go,’” says Pug. We’re sitting in the green room at The National, in Richmond—I on the slick leather sofa, Joe on the edge of a matching chair adjacent. The furniture looks like it might have been lifted from the set of Scarface, and Pug looks out-of-place in a plaid shirt, faded jeans fraying at the knees, and tan work boots. “It’s cool, a lot of great musicians have come through here,” he says. His tone matches his general comportment: humble, polite—but with supreme confidence lurking just beneath, every so often leaking to the surface like oil from plain earth. He had filled the role of opener that night with consummate deference: playing well, thanking the audience, then helping clear out his gear so the roadies could ready the stage for Earle. I had to wait for him afterward while he hawked his album in the lobby, stuffing a fistful of rumpled bills into his jeans. He’s not a star yet. But when he says plenty of great musicians have come through here, he’s certainly not apologizing for his own presence.

“Bob Dylan is someone I’ve been compared to a lot,” he says when I ask him about his influences, surprising me with his lack of shyness about this fact. (These comparisons are not for nothing: You can hear echoes of Dylan’s sneer, his indulgent harmonica breaks, and his poet-advocate m.o. in Pug’s music. But to liken someone to Dylan implies far more than musical similarities—and musicians, who are generally more sensitive to this fact than their fans, tend to distance themselves from such comparisons.) Pug also counts among his influences John Hiatt, Warren Zeavon, and Beck—“songwriters that don’t really adhere to a genre, they just write songs that connect to people.” But ultimately comparisons will not do, not even flattering ones. “You hear an athlete say they want to get to a point where they’re only competing against themselves,” he says. “As a musician, you want people to compare your music not to other musicians, but to the rest of your catalog.”

Pug’s catalog is currently only seven songs long. He recorded his debut EP, Nation of Heat, for free at a Chicago studio courtesy of a friend who worked there, and put out the album himself last summer. You can’t find it in stores, only on the Internet and at shows. “Your industry and mine are both changing,” Pug says to me, taking a drag in the smoking pen outside the National. That’s for sure. Here’s a guy who recorded seven songs and put them on the Internet, bypassing “the industry” altogether, and now he’s touring with Steve Earle and Josh Ritter. He’s been sought by plenty of labels, but has seen no compelling reason to sign. “I’m making a very good living just doing what I’m doing now,” Pug says, “and I have complete control over what I make.” He says there might come a time in his life where he’ll seek the stability of a label, but he’s in no hurry. “I really want one that’s into what I do,” he says, “not one who wants me to write choruses.”

Yes, it’s a different world: different than the world Dylan and the others played in—different than the world they described, and different than the one that rewarded them with fame. It’s easy to read the lyrics of Pug’s “I Do My Father’s Drugs” to mean that folk’s battle has been fought and won.

When hunger strikes are fashion, and freedom is routine
And all the streets in Cleveland are named for Martin Luther King
You will see me at the protest, but you’ll notice that I drag
I burn my father’s flag

But when I wonder aloud whether a ‘60s-style folk musician can thrive in the 21st century, Pug’s rebuke is polite but firm: “I think it’s sort of a misconception to call it ’60s-style folk,” he says. Pug describes folk not as an era-specific phenomenon but as continuum—one that manifested in Irish troubadours, then southern bluesmen, then the ‘60s discontents. What I take Pug to mean is that the tradition did not end; it still exists wherever there is restlessness and doubt and disillusionment and people who would use music to confront these things rather than to escape them.

In any case, it is far too early in the development of Pug’s music to know how popular it will be. He says he recorded his LP (scheduled for a fall release) with a backing band, meaning the album that will serve as most people’s introduction to Joe Pug might sound much different than Nation of Heat.

Pug’s set in Richmond included two new songs from that album, “Bury Me Far From My Uniform” and “Not So Sure.” You can check them out below, courtesy of Laundromatinee.com:

The National, in Richmond, is a decorous little theater with a semiformal air. But on Tuesday night, when Steve Earle played a set of mostly Townes Van Zandt covers from his new tribute album, peppered with anecdotes from his 25-year friendship with its eponymous hero, the venue assumed the close familiarity of a living room.

Earle’s speaking voice—deliberate, avuncular, devoid of pretense—sounds as though it was engineered for the specific purpose of perpetuating folk legends. When he says he got the idea for the tribute album when one night from his tour bus he saw Van Zandt’s ghost riding his old horse Amigo through the Colorado fog, you take him at his word. At Tuesday night’s show in Richmond, Earle deployed folk’s discursive oral tradition in the service of contextualizing Townes.

Earle had been “stalking” Van Zandt for awhile before they officially met, he explained, during a gig Earle was playing at a Texas dive in 1972. Townes, drunk, was loudly demanding that he play the folk standard “Wabash Cannonball,” a standard the 17-year-old Earle did not know. “He said, you call yerself a country singer and you don’t know Wabash cannonball?” At a loss, and upset at being upbraided by his unknowing hero, Earle launched into a Van Zandt song called “Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold,” a breathless gambling allegory punctuated with the final line,

This is what this story’s told
You feel like Mudd, you’ll end up Gold
You feel like lost, you’ll end up found
So amigo, lay them raises down.

Earle and Van Zandt each played both Mudd and Gold over the course of their lives and careers, imbuing their relationship with the sort of solidarity and candor that made possible the sort of confrontation they had at Earle’s house in the 1980s, when Earle was taking a beating from a heroin habit.

“I had a home at the time,” said Earle. “But there weren’t anything in it. I pull up into my driveway one day and there’s Townes’s truck, and I’m like ‘Oh, boy.’ I knew I was in trouble, getting a lecture on temperance from Townes Van Zandt. He goes, ‘You look like shit.’ I go, ‘I know.’ He says, ‘How’s yer arm?’ I look down and say, ‘Not too good’ … Townes takes out his guitar and says, ‘I wanna play you something I wrote a few days ago.’”

Earle then made like Townes did then and began picking a dark tune called “Marie,” which chronicles the deeply unromantic plight of a drifter-musician couple clawing for dignity in a world that wants to distance itself from them as much as they want to distance themselves from it.

Introducing the songs with these personal anecdotes recruited us into the cradle of Earle’s memory and allowed us to all but shake hands with Townes–to touch his empathy (“Townes was notorious for bringing homeless people home .. then when he didn’t have a home, he brought them home to other people’s homes”), his mischievousness, and his sadness. It made us feel as though we had more at stake in each song, making certain lyrics—such as this one from “To Live is to Fly”—to land a little deeper in the chest:

Everything is not enough
And nothin’ is too much to bear
Where you’ve been is good and gone
All you keep’s the getting there

It was a night for poignant, lyrics-driven folk, as Greenbelt native Joe Pug set off Earle’s weary wisdom with the angsty passion of his opening set. I had been deeply intrigued by Pug since hearing his debut EP a few weeks ago, and I spent some time with him after his set; details in tomorrow’s post.

• X, Steve Soto & the Twisted Hearts. 9:30 club. $25. All ages.
• Alex Rhoads, Midnight Ride. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Dean & Britta, Cheval Sombre. Black Cat. $15. All ages.
• Viva Voce, Cut Off Your Hands. IOTA Club & Cafe. $15. +21.
• The Kennedys. Jammin’ Java. $18.
• Threat Signal w/ The Agonist, Flatline, Thy Will Be Done, Cab Ride Home, Kysmet, Murder the Element. Jaxx. $12–$14. All ages.
• Capital Jazz Fest 2009: Alonzo Bodden, Natalie Cole, Fourplay. Merriweather Post Pavilion. $39.50–$100.
• Rock Solid: The Champions Production Hip-Hop and RNB showcase w/ Crimestoppers, City Limits, and the Ian Walters Project with Angel B. The Red & The Black. $8. +21.
• A Place To Bury Strangers, Caverns, True Womanhood. Rock and Roll Hotel. $12. All ages.
• Like Bells, Kadman, Stella Schindler. Velvet Lounge. $8. +21.
• PJ Harvey and John Parish. Warner Theatre. $45.
• Sunsets with a Soundtrack: The U.S. Army Concert Band. West Steps U.S. Capitol. Free.
• John Prine, Steve Earle. Wolf Trap. $25–$42.
• Liberation Dance Party w/ Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. DC9. $8. +18.
• Subatomic Sound System, Dubblestandart, Jahdan Blakkamoore, Paul Zasky. Comet Ping Pong. $10. All ages.

Saturday

• Doves, Wild Light. 9:30 club. SOLD OUT. All ages.
• Hey Norton, Doug Parks and the Lone Wolves. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Lowen & Novarro, El Fin Del Camino. Birchmere. $29.50.
• Denali, Ki:Theory, Pygmy Lush. Black Cat. $13. All ages.
• Buster Brown & the Get Down. Fireflies. Call for price.
• King Wilkie. IOTA Club & Cafe. $10. +21.
• Early show: The Friday Night Boys (CD Release) with The Downtown Fiction, Bobby Faithful. $10–$12. Late show: The Fif, Violet Says 5, The Echo Boom. $10–$12. Jaxx. All ages.
• Washington Men’s Camerata: “Thanks for the Memories.” Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. $30.
• Shakin’ The Blues Away w/ Doug Bowles, Alex Hassan, Cindy Hutchins. Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Free.
• Capital Jazz Fest 2009: Will Downing, George Duke, Norman Brown, Marion Meadows, Roy Ayers, Joey Sommerville, The Underground Divas. Merriweather Post Pavilion. $39.50–$100.
• BSO: Marin Alsop conducts violinist Hilary Hahn in a program of Beethoven, Higdon, and Dvorak. Music Center at Strathmore. $30–$85.
• The Black Hollies, The Breakups, DJ Bobby Babylon. Rock and Roll Hotel. $10-$12. All ages.
• Mittenfields, Typefighter, Vox Pop. Velvet Lounge. $8. +18.
• David Byrne, Devotchka. Wolf Trap. $25–$42.
• DJ Dk. Cafe Saint Ex.

Sunday

• Blues Jam with the Idle Americans. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
• Zac Brown Band. Birchmere. $25.
• Blind Pilot, Local Natives. Black Cat. $13.
• Disappears, Dangerosa. DC9. $8. +18.
• Capital Jazz Fest 2009: Al Jarreau, Kirk Whalum, Lalah Hathaway, Marcus Miller & Friends, Pieces of a Dream with special guest Phil Perry, En Vogue. Merriweather Post Pavilion. $39.50–$100.
• Louisiana Swamp Romp. Wolf Trap. $25.
• Thunders, Caustic Casanova, Seamonsters. Velvet Lounge. +21.
• Warm Gun, Another Empty Box. The Red & The Black. $6. +21.
• The Fairfax Wind Symphony. Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Free.
• DJ Eskimo. Cafe Saint Ex.

Photo of PJ Harvey and John Parish via IslandRecords.com.

Country musician Steve Earle once famously pronounced Townes Van Zandt “the best songwriter in the whole world, and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” So how come the only people who ever give Townes his propers are his contemporaries and the odd independent filmmaker? Maybe because even when started started writing iconic country-folk standards, he stayed holed up in a tin-roofed shack outside Houston, planting flowers and playing to dive crowds. Maybe because his songs usually only became famous after being covered by other, more entrepreneurial country stars. Or maybe because his ambling melodies have been ground to grains beneath the tire treads of the endless Chevy commercial that is modern country music.

Earle has not forgotten Townes, though; and he’s doing his best to make sure the rest of us don’t either. His latest LP, Townes, is a 15-song memorial to his mentor. The album revisits some of Townes’ most characteristic tunes–including “Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold,” which was the first Van Zandt song Earle ever played (he did it the night they first officially met, to stop Townes from heckling him), and “To Live is to Fly,” enduring ballad that doubles as the late singer’s epitaph.

The album’s most poignant tribute comes at the beginning, with “Pancho and Lefty.” “Pancho and Lefty” is a heartbreaking song about a pariah who sets out with his faithful sidekick in pursuit of a vagabond dream. Pancho is a mischievous but ultimately good-natured bandito, who “wears his gun outside his pants for all the honest world to feel.” The federales pity him and indulge him his fantasy, until Pancho is finally killed on the high sands of Mexico–”Nobody heard his dying words, that’s just the way it goes”–and Lefty is forced to flee to the unromantic bosom of Ohio. For Van Zandt, the manic-depressive heir to an oil fortune who underwent shock treatment as a young man and sought to escape his demons by becoming a rambler, the song has definite strains of autobiography. The sadness of the song is deeply personal. Ironically, “Pancho and Lefty” became popular only after Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard covered it in the ’80s.

With the exception of “Lungs“–a diabolical little tune he spices up with a voice filter, digital drums, and what sounds like turntable-scratching–Earle declines to stray far from Van Zandt’s original arrangements. The most distinct difference, aside from the clearer sound and the occasional variation on the finger-picking, is Earle’s voice. Where Townes possessed an eminently mild timbre, Earle’s instrument is more nasal, occasionally gravelly, and tends to grip each word with his more-pronounced drawl as if wringing sweat from a handkerchief.

By comparison, this affect might seem indulgent. But it is plainly love, not vanity, that is the driving force behind this album. Earle, 11 years Townes’ junior, idolized the man, even giving his son, Justin, “Townes” for a middle name. Covers are often about reinventing a song–celebrating new styles by bending old forms. Townes, on the other hand, is not so much a seizure of inheritance as a loving genuflection at the headstone of a master. It is Lefty promising Pancho that his last words will be heard, after all.