Stephen Fain Earle was born on 17 January 1955, in Fort Monroe, Virginia USA, and is a rock, country and folk singer/songwriter, record producer, author and actor, who rose to prominence with his 1986 album “Guitar Town” and went on to establish a remarkable career.
So just how loaded is Steve Earle? Sources state that Earle has earned a net worth of over $10 million, as of early 2017, accumulated during his music career which began in the mid-1970s.
Steve Earle Net Worth $10 Million
Earle grew up mainly in San Antonio, Texas. He learned to play guitar at the age of 13, being influenced by acclaimed musicians such as Townes Van Zandt. He reportedly ran away from home at 14, and left school at 16, eventually moving to Houston, and then to Nashville, Tennessee, where he began performing at small venues. He also played bass guitar in Guy Clark’s band and worked as a staff songwriter at a publishing company. Several years later, he left Nashville to return to Texas and form a band called The Dukes. However, he eventually moved back to Nashville to continue his career as a songwriter.
In the early ’80s, Earle began to record his own material, signing with MCA Records and releasing his debut studio album, “Guitar Town”, in 1986. The album immediately became both a commercial and critical success, especially with its title song as well as the song “Goodbye’s All We Got Left”, becoming Top 10 singles. It brought Earle two Grammy Award nominations, earning him a great following and contributing significantly to his net worth.
His second album, “Exit 0”, featuring The Dukes, came out in 1987, and brought Earle two more Grammy nominations. Two more successful albums followed, after which the singer went on a four-year hiatus, battling with severe drug addiction, which even led him to spend some time in prison.
Earle returned in 1995, after overcoming the heroin addiction that derailed his career, and released a new, Grammy-nominated album entitled “Train a Comin'”. The following year he formed his own record label, E-Squared Records, and went on to release several more albums, among them his 2000 release “Jerusalem”, which caused much controversy, due to Earle’s expressing his politically left ideas, his anti-war and anti-death penalty views, but still adding to his net worth.
His 2004 album – “The Revolution Starts Now” – earned Earle his first Grammy Award, and he received two more Grammy Awards with “Washington Square Serenade” and the Van Zandt-tribute, “Townes”, reinforcing his status as a legendary singer, and greatly improving his wealth. His most recent album – one of duets with Shawn Colvin = was released in 2016.
Aside from his career in music, Earle has also written poetry and fiction. He released a collection of short stories, “Doghouse Roses” and a novel entitled “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive” in 2011. He has also written and produced a play entitled “Karla”, covering the first Texas woman since the Civil War to get the death penalty. Earle has appeared in the HBO series “The Wire” as an ex-addict named Walon, and has gained some radio experience as well, hosting a talk show on the short-lived Air America channel and his “The Steve Earle Show: Hardcore Troubadour Radio” on Sirius Satellite Radio. All added to his wealth.
In his less-than-private personal life, Earle has been married seven times, firstly in 1974 to Sandra Henderson when he was 18 – they divorced in 1977. He later married Cynthia Dunn (1977-80), then Carol-Ann Hunter (1981-87) with whom he has a son, the singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle. His fourth wife was Lou-Anne Gill (1987-88) with whom he also has a son. Earle later married an A&R executive for Geffen Records, Teresa Ensenat, and after their divorce in 1992, he re-married Lou-Anne Gill, but they divorced again in 1997. In 2005 he married singer-songwriter Allison Moorer, with whom he has his third son; the couple separated in 2014.
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