Texas Music News — August 14, 2026
San Antonio gave hometown son Steve Earle its highest arts honor last week, just before he took the Stable Hall stage. Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones presented Earle with the city’s Emissary of the Muses award backstage. It happened during his Fifty One Years of Songs and Stories tour. The three-time Grammy winner grew up here, writing songs at 14. He was too young for bars, so he snuck into a downtown coffee house called the Gate House instead.
He even played gigs at Fort Sam Houston’s Service Club 2, entertaining medics during the Vietnam War. Many were conscientious objectors, assigned there instead of combat. “It’s a pretty powerful environment to grow up in musically,” Earle told the San Antonio Current backstage. He met his idol, Townes Van Zandt, at 17, then followed him first to Houston and later to Nashville. Earle also recalled two teachers who shaped him. Science teacher George Chambers fronted the best country band in town. Drama teacher Vernon Carroll later built a theater company in Laredo, Texas, for kids learning English.
Following Townes Out of the Alamo City
Earle also traced San Antonio’s deeper music lineage during the interview. He remembered Doug Sahm and Augie Meyers, whose Texas Tornados carried the city’s Tex-Mex sound around the world. Before he ever cut a record, Earle worked construction here for $1.60 an hour. Crews led by Chicano foremen worked past dark and earned more than white crews did. “You don’t have to eat that shit,” his boss’s wife told him. She swapped his bologna sandwich for tacos and carne guisada.
Earle has recorded 21 studio albums and toured the world for half a century. Still, he says Texas never really lets go. “Texas is terminal,” Earle said. “It’s incurable. There’s no cure for it.” Guy Clark felt the same pull, he added, and neither of them ever really came back. Fifty-one years into his career, San Antonio still shows up in every chord Earle plays.
Details at San Antonio Current.
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