Disc 11. Feel Alright 2. Hard-Core Troubadour 3. More Than I Can Do 4. Hurtin' Me, Hurtin' You 5. Now She's Gone 6. Poor Boy 7. Valentine's Day 8. Unrepentant, The 9. Cckmp 10. Billy and Bonnie 11. South Nashville Blues 12. You're Still Standin' There - (with Lucinda Williams)
Label: Warner Bros. Records (Record Label)
Release Date: 02/20/1996
Original Release Date: 1996
Recording Mode: Stereo
Recording Type: Studio
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)
Personnel: Steve Earle (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Custer (vocals, drums, percussion); Lucinda Williams, The Fairfield Four, Logan (vocals); Kris Wilkerson (conductor, arranger); Richard Bennett (guitar, harmonium, percussion); Ray Kennedy (guitar); Carl Gorodetzky, Pamela Sixfin, Richard Grosjean (violin); Lee Larrison (viola); Robert Mason (cello); Ken Moore (organ); Kelley Looney, Garry W. Tallent, Roy Huskey, Jr., Ric Kipp (bass); Greg Morrow (drums, percussion); Rick Schell (drums); Dub Cornett (percussion).
Producers: Ray Kennedy, Richard Bennett, Richard Dodd.
Engineers: Ray Kennedy, Peter Coleman, Richard Dodd.
Recorded at Room & Board and Treasure Isle, Nashville, Tennessee. Includes liner notes by Steve Earle.
I FEEL ALRIGHT is country-rocker Steve Earle's first album of new material following a well-documented five-year residency on the wrong side of the Nashville tracks. Like TRAIN A COMIN', the acoustic set of folk and pop covers with which he made his quiet return a year earlier, this full-band record offers no apologies. It does offer a rocking reclamation of all the blues, folk and country Springsteenisms and Dylanisms that made Earle's return worth waiting for.
One of its highlights is a searing, acoustic blues number, "CCKMP," on which Earle declares himself free of most of his former demons. The title stands for "cocaine cannot kill my pain"; the incredibly dark punch line dryly notes that heroin still can. Earle's voice is a blurry twang in which all those demons seem to have left a residue. When on the rollicking opening cut he announces that, "I've been to hell and now I'm back again/I feel alright," you know he means it, but you don't know if he's strong enough to hold on. Which, ironically, is the source of I FEEL ALRIGHT's power. These are songs that seek, in folk and rock and blues, the kind of redemption that life itself can't always offer.
Rolling Stone (3/7/96, p.47) - 4 Stars (out of 5) - "...Though much of the album offers a tour of one man's hell--with Earle as a roadhouse Dante--the songwriter's creative resurgence ultimately supplies his redemption..."
Spin (9/99, p.158) - Ranked #75 in Spin Magazine's "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s."
Spin (4/96, p.105) - 9 (out of 10) - "...A cautionary threat, I FEEL ALRIGHT gives grief to anybody who doesn't acknowledge life's tragic ambiguity--defeat always shadows victory, sadness always mirrors happiness....He's a passionately volatile SOB and there's a hint of menace in almost every lyric he gets near, no matter how damp with sentiment..."
Entertainment Weekly (3/8/96, p.64) - "...If I FEEL ALRIGHT doesn't deliver the grit that has been Earle's gift to rock and country, his roots-rock joie de vivre sends no apologies, only a healthy message for the '90s: Don't feel bad about feeling good." - Rating: A
Alternative Press (3/01, p.104) - Included in A.P.'s "10 Essential Alt-Country Albums" - "...Earle comes across as a fork-tongued renegade, constantly defiant."
Musician (4/96, p.84) - "...there's a grim undercurrent to Earle's patented bad-boy drawl as he swaggers through these 12 dour Canterbury tales....But Earle...still has a fluid way with a pop-twanging hook that slaps most of his material across..."
Village Voice (2/25/97) - Ranked #6 in the Village Voice's 1996 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll.
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