Critic's pick: Steve Earle

Among the many tales told about Townes Van Zandt was a yarn recounted to me years ago by one-time Lexington troubadour Frank Schaap. As he explained it, the fabled Texas songwriter, hopelessly high or inebriated or both after a show, sought to settle his bar tab. Penniless at the time, Van Zandt offered a gold filling in his mouth as payment.

Aghast, the bartender said Van Zandt's drinks were on the house. Having none of that, Van Zandt went to the parking lot, grabbed pliers and performed dental surgery on himself. But the tooth he extracted wasn't the one with the filling.

Fact or fable? Probably a bit of both. Van Zandt, much like the inhab itants of his songs, often led a dangerously spontaneous life. Whether he doubled as his own tooth fairy is pure conjecture. What remains, though, 12 years after Van Zandt's death, are immensely literate, haplessly emotive and often relentlessly desperate songs that any serious Americana artist in or out of Texas views with justifiable reverence.

Among his more direct disciples is Steve Earle, the Grammy- winning renegade songsmith who wrestled with his own rings of fire over the years but lived to achieve the kind of notoriety than generally escaped Van Zandt during his lifetime.

On Townes, Earle offers a tribute to his mentor that is by no means easy or obvious. Vocally, it is as ragged as anything Earle has recorded. On one of Van Zandt's most deceptively upbeat songs,White Freight Liner Blues (upbeat, that is, until you scan the despondency of the lyrics), Earle sounds as if he is left almost breathless by the tune's giddy pace. Elsewhere on Townes, Earle's Texas drawl sweeps over the music like fog. http://www.kentucky.com/lexgo/music/story/794280.html