Don’t believe any reviews that hint that Steve Earle takes a break from his political passions and social unease on his latest album The Low Highway.

Just because Earle views the world through a long lens doesn’t mean he is any less concerned about the economic and political turmoil in the United States and the devastation it has brought to many. He just takes a more sophisticated view of it than most, weaving history and personal stories throughout.

Earle is nothing if not a student of the world who not only empathizes with the downtrodden but works for change. The songs on this album fully underscore his relentless sorrow over the government missteps he believes have rocked the foundation of the United States and devastated many of its people.

Just as his latest album was released, Earle took time out of his always-hectic schedule to talk a bit about his music, his memoirs, a potential project with the Punch Brothers and why he can relate more fully to Woody Guthrie than ever before.

So what prompted you to first enter the studio and record the material that appears on The Low Highway

It started with a few songs I wrote for Treme, that I had not recorded, that there hadn’t been full versions of, especially songs from the second season. The main thing was that I wanted to write a record for my band to play.

The band I had out supporting me for [my 2010 release] I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive is the best band I ever had. They deserved a record. I started writing songs for Treme. Those start out as the story of New Orleans, which is largely the story about economic times in the U.S.

The important part of the story is what hasn’t happened in New Orleans since the storm. Not much has happened. The progress has been very slow. We found out why when Hurricane Sandy hit New York. Even though there’s way more money in New York – way more money and more attention and more intention aimed at New York – there are still people in pretty bad shape in Staten Island and The Rockaways and The Jersey Shore because there aren’t any funds to deal with an emergency like that.

We just tried to take over the world and lower taxes at the same time. No other empire has ever done that in the history of man. The British didn’t do it that way. The Romans didn’t do it that way. And that is why we are broke. We aren’t broke because of entitlements. We are broke because of empire building. Those songs are kind of what hard times are doing to the people in New Orleans.

I am writing on the road. When I was out the second summer of the tour, I started looking out and I had this epiphany that what I was seeing was something I had never seen in my lifetime. Times are that hard.

I am doing a job invented by Bob Dylan when he was inventing himself in Woody Guthrie’s image. All of us that do the singer songwriter job [are aware] that started during the Depression and the ‘30s but none of us have witnessed it first hand before. All of a sudden dawned on me that I am seeing what Woody saw, though I am it from a quarter million dollar tour bus instead of a box car, but I’m seeing times that hard. That’s what this record is about.

Would you say that did the Occupy Movement figured into your songwriting for this album?

Absolutely. Occupy is a really important moment. There are a lot of people sitting around saying ‘Well that didn’t turn out to be anything.’ Well it did. The Occupy Movement drastically affected the outcome of the last election. I really, truly believe that. People started thinking in terms that there are really people out there suffering. It made people aware of it for the first time. Some people might have gotten scared. It definitely woke Wall Street up. Did it change anything permanently? No, probably not. We talked about it though. We had a conversation about it for the first time in a long time.

Some of the people that formed the heart and soul of Occupy are going on and doing other things now. They aren’t occupying parks anymore. [Many of them are] media and technology savvy and they happened to be unemployed at the time. That made them dangerous. Some of them are going on and forming networks with other people. Those people are going to be heard from. I truly believe that.

What is your mission on this tour? Is it anything along the lines of your tour behind your 2004 album The Revolution Starts Now ?

The Revolution Starts Now, that tour ended up being a big triage ward for people who had the shit kicked out of them working in that [Presidential] election and losing. This is different. This is like hard times have settled in and settled in for a long time and hopefully people will still come out to the shows. I hope they keep coming. It’s tough out there. I appreciate everybody that turns up. God knows it’s not a necessity go out and hear music. It’s good for you. But when times are hard people have to really think twice about what they spend their money on. I think also music helps. It helps us feel somebody out there feels the same way we do.

It seems obvious, but let me ask if Woody Guthrie influenced your songwriting for this album?

Yes, I listened to a lot of Woody Guthrie last year because Woody was 100 years old last year…and I was involved in a lot of those events. I am pretty Woody-centric anyway.

So what are your thoughts about reviews of this album that say you are channeling Bruce Springsteen or Neil Young on some of these songs?

I don’t read reviews. I don’t read articles about me either. I decided a long time ago that wasn’t healthy. I am a press driven act and appreciate that people write about me. But if people don’t like you, they hurt your feelings and if they do like you, you end up being Ryan Adams or something so I decided not to read them.

So you won’t Google yourself, just to see what people are saying.

I would never Google myself. I am very proud to say I am not on Twitter. I am not on Facebook. There are accounts because my record label thinks I need to have them but it’s not really me. I have never ever Googled myself. I Google other people, though.

I understand you are working on a memoir. I’ve read before that you said you’d never do one. Why the change of heart?

My little boy has autism and the school is really expensive. The memoir is worth a lot of money. John Henry [his three year old son with wife Alison Moorer] is doing great. He is not speaking but he is making eye contact and is very social. He is in the best school there is but it is incredibly expensive. I am not rich. People think I am but I’m not. I called my editor back and said ‘What would a memoir be worth?’ and he said ‘A lot’ so I made a two book deal – for the novel I was planning and memoir. So that’s why – for John Henry’s school. That will get us through about a year anyway.

Were there any reasons you didn’t want to write a memoir?

I definitely didn’t want to write an autobiography. Nobody gives a fuck what you did when you were 8. I don’t give a fuck what I did when I was 8. I just basically didn’t like fucking myself out of material I could use in prose and songs. That was my main objection to it. But Patti Smith and Bob Dylan’s books sort of demonstrated to me there can be literary memoirs that are really art. Patty’s book is one of the best I ever read. Bob’s book is pretty fucking great too.

The bar is high; I am going after Bob and Patty, not Keith Richards. That is the deal. That is what I am trying to write.

It has got a structure to it. It’s in three acts about mentors, for better or worse. The first part is about Townes [Van Zandt]. The second part is about two of my cousins that were both drug dealers and kind of kept me alive during one period of my life not because they loved me but because they were competing for me as an asset. The third part is about recovery. My grandfather started most 12-step meetings in Northeast Texas. I grew up with the 12 steps and with the Serenity Prayer on the wall. When I finally decided to get clean, it suddenly dawned on me who those guys were who were sleeping on my granddad’s couch.

The tentative title is I Can’t Remember if We Said Goodbye.

And can you tell me about the novel?

Alamo Joe. A journalist on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo discovers there was a slave called Joe who belonged to William Travis. That part is true. He was only 17 years old and was never heard from again. He hears that Alamo Joe claims to have survived the Alamo and lives in New Orleans so he goes looking for him.

Slavery was illegal in Mexico. It was illegal everywhere except the U.S. at that time. They were told to release slaves and they were holding slaves so they attacked them. You don’t learn those things in school. You don’t learn those things in East Texas.

You’re also shooting a movie now?

It’s called The World Made Straight. It’s a tough shoot. It’s not the biggest budget movie in the world. It has what it needs to be to get the story told. We shoot during the springtime in the mountains of North Carolina. The first half of the shoot it [felt like] winter and now [it feels like] summer. The weather has changed a lot! But it’s cool. It’s a good script. I’m a bad guy. I’m the baddest guy you can possibly imagine playing so it’s kind of fun.

*With all that you do – act, write fiction, write songs, sing – how do you define yourself? *

I am a songwriter. That is my strength. I am a better songwriter than anything and I always will be because I have been doing it longer.

What do you want to do next?

I want to make another bluegrass record and I want to make it with The Punch Brothers. Chris Thile and I have talked about it. We have to see if we can get together and write the songs and do it right.