Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band

The partnership began with one track on Earle’s El Corazón (Warner Bros./E-Squared, 1997): “I Still Carry You Around,” on which Earle and Del McCoury play guitar and sing with Ronnie McCoury, who also plays mandolin, and Rob McCoury on banjo, Jason Carter on fiddle and Mike Bub on bass. The same musicians played “Carrie Brown” together at Farm Aid in Tinley Park, Illinois, on 3 October 1998.

The Mountain was recorded at Room & Board in Nashville with that lineup, Earle on guitar and on mandolin for some tracks, and was released on 23 February 1999. Earle, Ray Kennedy and Ronnie McCoury produced it. Earle sings lead throughout, with Del McCoury singing tenor on “Carrie Brown,” “Leroy’s Dustbowl Blues” and “Long, Lonesome Highway Blues” and Ronnie McCoury on “The Graveyard Shift,” “Harlan Man” and the title song. Guests included Stuart Duncan on second fiddle, Jerry Douglas and Gene Wooten on Dobro, Iris DeMent singing on “I’m Still in Love with You,” and, on the closing “Pilgrim,” a chorus of Emmylou Harris, Sam Bush, Kathy Chiavola, Tim O’Brien, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. The album reached the top twenty of Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart and was nominated for the Best Bluegrass Album Grammy at the 2000 ceremony.

The two acts toured together in 1999, appeared on The Tonight Show, and spent about thirty days in Europe, including a show at the Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry, England, on 21 May 1999. The tour did not run its course: Earle left it early, and a rift that arose partly over his language on stage ended the partnership.