Earle gets bluesy

The blues-based, 11-track set is the follow up to the 2013 album "The Low Highway" and features Earle's longtime band The Dukes, comprised of Kelly Looney, Will Rigby, Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore. The album, Earle's 16th, was produced by R.S. Field (Buddy Guy, John Mayall), engineered by Earle's longtime production partner Ray Kennedy and recorded at House of Blues Studio D in Nashville.

"Terraplane" will be available as a single compact disc, deluxe CD/DVD, digitally, as well as 180g vinyl. The deluxe version of the album will include 24-bit high-res audio of the album as well as a long-form interview between Earle and journalist Mark Jacobson, three live, acoustic songs filmed on the porch of House of Blues Studio D and a behind-the-scenes short film about the making of the album.

"Terraplane" takes its title from the 1930s Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit model, which also inspired the Robert Johnson song "Terraplane Blues."

Earle wrote a third of the album, while he toured Europe alone for five weeks with just a guitar, a mandolin and a backpack. Earle, who was raised outside of San Antonio before migrating to Houston, said of Texas blues, "There was Fort Worth where the model was Freddy King, and there was the Houston scene, which was dominated by Lightnin' Hopkins. Two very different styles." He saw both of these giants, and was also exposed to Johnny Winter, Jimmy and Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Billy Gibbons, all of which make their influence heard here.

Earle states in the Terraplane album liner notes, "...the blues are anything but superficial. In fact, they run so deep and dark and close to the bone that folks walk around everyday with the blues as though it were perfectly natural for a human being to go on living with a broken heart (apologies to Tony Kushner)." He continues, "For my part, I've only ever believed two things about the blues: one, that they are very democratic, the commonest of human experience, perhaps the only thing that we all truly share and two, that one day, when it was time, I would make this record."

Songs on the CD are:
1. Baby Baby Baby (Baby)
2. You're The Best Lover That I Ever Had
3. The Tennessee Kid
4. Ain't Nobody's Daddy Now
5. Better Off Alone
6. The Usual Time
7. Go Go Boots Are Back
8. Acquainted With The Wind
9. Baby's Just As Mean As Me
10. Gamblin' Blues
11. King Of The Blues

Earle will play a four-show residency at City Winery in New York on Jan. 5, 12, 19 and 26.

He will return for his second year of Camp Copperhead. The four-day-long immersion songwriting camp led by Earle, debuted last summer in upstate New York will be July 20-24.

Earle also will publish his memoir, "I Can't Remember If We Said Goodbye" (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group) next year.