Getting your head around Steve Earle can be likened to that old story about the blind men and the elephant: Who he is at any given moment depends entirely upon your particular perspective.

Sure, he's best known for consistently creating groundbreaking country rock music, but Earle also has wrote a book of short stories, crafted a play, is hosting his own radio show and just started work on a novel.

His new album (remember, music is still something he leaves time for) is titled "The Revolution Starts...Now," and it is - just in time for the election - a politically motivated release. Always seemingly where the action is, Earle called from New York City for this interview.

"I'm kind of camped out here for a month," he explains. "The record's out, and I had to do a bunch of press anyway, and I wanted to get into town before the convention started because they're not going to let pinkos in here in a couple of days."

Earle jokingly calls himself a pinko since his political viewpoint is significantly to the left of fellow Texas native, George W. Bush. Still, one has to wonder just what Earle means by this revolution referred to in his album's title.

"The Revolution Starts...Now" meaning when we wake up and realize that it's always going on and when we involve ourselves again," Earle elaborates. "I don't like the way the country's going. And I think the country's going in a fundamentally different direction than it was when I was growing up. But I don't think it's because of them - because of the people that think differently than I do. I think it's because the people that think like I do went to sleep. And I just think that's a part of our democracy. We sort of surrendered the playing field. So I blame that on us, not them."

He agrees with the statement that Democratic Party is not as vigilant as it ought to be. But it's also worth noting that keeping the Democratic Party unified is a difficult task in Earle's view.

"There's always been a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans, in that the Republican Party runs more on ideology, more on a central ideology. The Democrats were always a big, messy coalition of people that covered a lot more ground, which made them less competitive, and they started acting more like Republicans. I voted for Clinton twice, which is the only Republican I've ever voted for," he says laughing.

"For me," he continues, "(Sen. John) Kerry's much more of a real Democrat than Bill Clinton ever thought about being. So I'm more comfortable with Kerry than I ever was with Clinton."

"The Revolution," with its social and political overtones, is certainly a forward-looking album. Nevertheless, Earle has dedicated it to two iconic musical figures that recently passed on: Johnny Cash and Warren Zevon.

"Yeah, we lost them kind of within weeks of each other," Earle notes sadly. "So that was kind of a rough couple of months there. I knew Warren casually because we were on the same label (Artemis). But I was a huge fan. Cash was the godfather of all of us in Nashville that make music that's about anything. And he was incredibly generous to me and incredibly nice to me. And I got to work with him. He recorded one of my songs on his very last record. I have a hard time still, imagining what the world is like without Johnny Cash in it. I still can't get my head around it."

"Johnny's Cash's television show in '68 was the first time I realized I wasn't all that weird 'cause I had long hair and cowboy boots. The first time Bob Dylan was ever on TV was on that show. He had Neil Young on that show and Linda Ronstadt. It was a great music show.

"It's no coincidence that songs such as "Rich Man's War" from the new album have an uncanny resemblance to the more political work of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Like that influential band, Earle is also adept at writing from the 'everyman' perspective.

"I grew up when CCR was the greatest American singles band," Earle recalls with delight. "Fantasy (Records) signed CCR thinking they were signing a psychedelic band and what they ended up with was the greatest singles band in American history. Growing up where I grew up, all bands played Creedence songs. Rock cover bands played Creedence songs, and country cover bands played Creedence songs. It crossed all lines, even then. Every country band in San Antonio did 'Proud Mary' and 'Bad Moon Rising,' which I think is kind of funny because 'Bad Moon Rising' is my favorite John Fogerty lyric. And it's a scary song. It's about the end of the world. And that's what we were faced with every day in those days - the end of the world."

While in New York, Earle was hoping to catch a few ballgames featuring his beloved Yankees.

"I'll be 50 in January, and baseball didn't come to Texas until 1962," says Earle. "The game of the week was the Yankees or the Dodgers. That was the baseball you got on television. And plus my grandfather had lived in New York right after he got out of the army, and he grudgingly came back to Jacksonville, Texas when his father died, when he had to take over the family hardware store. So I got my first transistor radio for the 1961 World Series. It was my first year in school, and that was the only time you could carry radio to school. So my grandfather made sure I had a radio so I could listen to the series. I've been a Yankees fan ever since."

"Baseball's the one thing that doesn't have anything to do with politics," Earle states emphatically. "I have a theory that - just as all bikers want to be Hell's Angels - all baseball players want to be New York Yankees, secretly somewhere on the cellular level."

Unlike some diehard Yankees fans, however, Earle at least has a little sympathy for Boston Red Sox fans, which are fans of the Yankees' biggest rival."I love Boston fans," Earle confesses. "For one thing, they have the greatest ballpark. It's the last of the 2 100-year old parks. I feel for 'em. I say that now, but in another month, it'll be, like, -- 'em."

Earle has come a long way from being six years old and listening to baseball on his transistor radio. Now he's hosting his own Air America Radio program.

"It's so strange because I'm used to being (the one) interviewed! It's largely a music show, so that makes it easy. It's called "The Revolution Starts...Now." It uses a guest DJ format. It's not all musicians. In fact, I haven't had a musician on yet. I had Bobby Muller, who's the president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Association, and I've got (director) John Sayles this week. They bring their records, you know, and they pick the songs that we play. And we talk about stuff. In the near future, we'll have Patti Smith, Janeane Garofalo. Janeane...I never thought to ask her because she's got a show on Air America. But she called us because she doesn't get to play music on her show. Then we'll have Ian MacKaye (of Fugazi) sometime in the future. It's fun."

Earle, who himself does a little acting now and again, recently watched his play, "Karla," performed in Nashville. Its story surrounds the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War era. Earle - a writer-of-all-trades, if you will - is also working on a novel. But theatre is probably his favorite form of writing - of the variety that doesn't also go along with a beat and a tune, at least.

"I finished it, and by they time I'd finished it, we put it up in Nashville," Earle remembers. "And it was the hardest thing I'd done up to that point: writing in 3-D. And I swore I'd never do it again. I recently did a reading of 'Karla' here in New York - it's the first step toward trying to get 'Karla' produced here. I was really shocked - when listening to the play read by some really good actors - that I didn't want to rewrite anything. I was pretty proud of it. I suddenly wanted to start writing a play again."

"In fact, what I'm thinking now - once I finish this novel and at the end of this (next) tour - I'm probably going to buy a place here in New York. My child support and alimony ends this year, and believe me, it's enough money that I can afford an apartment in New York. I've always wanted to live here, at least part time. I think that's what I'll do is keep place in Tennessee, and buy a place here.""And my non-musical writing, after I finish this novel I'm working, will probably be...I've always loved theatre. It's something that sort of keeps itself pure because you're not going to get rich doing it. It's the most collaborative art form I've ever been involved in. I was never in a band, and it's probably a little too late for me to do that now just because I've kind of gotten used to doing that the same way, which is not very democratic when you get right down to it. I just think it (theatre writing) is good for me, and I really, really love it."

One has to wonder when (or if) Earle finds time for the little things in life such as, say, eating and sleeping.

"I only really do three things: I go to baseball games, I go to plays, and I fish - a little."

It's not as if Earle ever planned to have his fingerprints all over so many different artistic pursuits. But he's now starting to see the various ways many of his passions are interlinked.

"I never wanted to be anything but a singer and a songwriter," he says. "I didn't even really want to be a cowboy or a fireman. 'Warrior' (from the new album) would have never been written without my involvement in theatre. I would have never written a spoken word piece in iambic pentameter and put it on one of my records if I hadn't been involved in theatre the way I have for the last five or six years."

Earle is also adding to his acting resume, yet another career item on what must certainly be one of the longest and most varied work experience records in all of modern show business.

"I don't do a lot of it. I was on the first season of 'The Wire.' And I've done a few live theatre things. I performed a monologue in a thing called 'Vampire Monologues' that one of our theatre company members wrote with the theatre company in Nashville. And I did 'The Exonerated' here in New York and in Nashville. And I'm going to be on (the TV show) 'Deadwood.' I don't know how many episodes. I love that show. I think it's the best show on television. The writing's incredible. I lobbied pretty heavily to get on that because I just want to be around those writers and say those words."

In contrast to so many of the rich and famous celebrities he rubs shoulders with, Earle's overflowing plate leaves little room for Caribbean cruises, exotic beaches and the such.

"A vacation is where I go someplace and I only concentrate on one project," he only half-jokes.

The revolution may have just started, but this revolutionary artist has been going a long time now and shows no signs of either slowing down or stopping anytime soon.