Maverick country-rocker Steve Earle has had his hands full since his release from jail a couple years ago. He’s already released two well-received albums and toured extensively, and he’s now finishing songs for his next record and writing a collection of short stories, both of which may be available before the end of 1997. Lately, though, nothing has commanded Earle’s attention as much as E-Squared, the Warner Bros.-funded label that he runs with former Jason & the Scorchers manager Jack Emerson.
During the two years that E-Squared has been in existence, fans and industry types alike have wondered whether the venture would blossom into a bona fide label or whether it would prove little more than an imprint for Earle’s own records. Some suspected that Earle, not known for his diplomatic skills, might fare poorly operating the business, especially since record companies often live or die by the compromises inherent in deal-making. But after hearing him talk about everything from the virtues of analog recording to the particulars of his label’s contract with Warner Bros., it’s obvious that E-Squared is much more than the latest outlet for Earle’s addictive personality. “I like producing records,” he said last month from his office just off Music Row. “I’ve had more fun in the last two years doing this stuff than I’ve ever had in my life.”
E-Squared already has a full roster of artists. In addition to Earle, the label has signed Knoxville rockers The V-Roys, alternative-country band 6 String Drag, former Human Radio mainstay Ross Rice, and ex-Blood Oranges singer Cheri Knight. Over the past year, though, the band most talked about in connection with Earle’s label may be the one that got away: the Louisville-by-way-of-Chicago country four-piece Freakwater.
As far back as the 1996 NEA Extravaganza, when Freakwater joined Earle and The V-Roys for a sold-out show at the Exit/In, rumors have been circulating about whether Freakwater would sign with E-Squared. By summer an agreement seemed imminent, especially after a blurb in the alt-country bimonthly No Depression said that Freakwater and the Nashville-based label had all but inked a deal. Autumn came and went without further news; then, around the time that The V-Roys and Earle made holiday appearances in Chicago, a story in the Chicago Reader reported that Freakwater and E-Squared had broken off negotiations.
Freakwater maintains that the falling out was over artistic control. Frontwomen Catherine Irwin and Janet Bean mostly objected to Emerson’s and Earle’s suggestion that Freakwater “take things to the next level” by firing their current band and recording with Norman Blake, Roy Huskey Jr., and Peter Rowan. Earle contends that creative control was never on the bargaining table. The deal went sour over money, he says, arguing that Freakwater wanted more than the $100,000, plus recording costs, that E-Squared offered them to sign with the label.
After considerable media and online discussion of the affair, including some unsavory verbal jousting between the two parties themselves, both Freakwater and E-Squared now want to put the matter behind them. And well they should—the negotiations were undoubtedly more complicated than observers realize. (Freakwater, for example, found the prospect of recording with Blake and Huskey exciting—they just didn’t think it necessitated firing their band—while Earle’s contract with Warner Bros. doesn’t even give him final creative control over his own recordings.)
In the end, there’s nothing extraordinary about what happened with E-Squared and Freakwater. Deals between record labels and artists fall apart all the time. What makes this situation unique is that the conflict took place between artists—even though, in this case, Earle acted on behalf of a corporation—and that, to varying degrees, both sides came out on the losing end. Freakwater kept their integrity but missed out on what might have been a career-making deal. Even though the band’s current label, Thrill Jockey, is now in a position to market them more aggressively, one can’t help thinking that Warner Bros.’ financial support might have exposed Freakwater to a wider audience.
Even so, E-Squared is arguably the bigger loser. Emerson and Earle not only blew a chance to sign a band that possesses, in Catherine Irwin, a singer-songwriter of prodigious moral and artistic reach, Earle also forfeited the opportunity to work with someone who shares his strong proletarian leanings. Fans of both performers can only ponder what might have been.
Meanwhile, Freakwater plays the Exit/In Wednesday, Jan. 29, with Richard Buckner, whose follow-up to his exquisite 1995 debut Bloomed is due out this spring on MCA. Nashvillians with strong loyalties to Emerson and Earle would do well to put their feelings aside for the evening. Though it’s still only January, Wednesday’s show promises to be one of 1997’s more memorable double bills.
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