Steve Earle

It's ironic that alt-country folkster Steve Earle is performing in a venue called the Carefree Theater. If anyone represents the opposite of carefree, it's Earle, a turbulent voice of lefty political activism. Earle has been around for three decades and 11 Grammy nominations -- including two for his most recent album, The Revolution Starts... Now. During the 1980s, he followed the old-school Johnny Cash junkie/convict model for advancement in the music biz. Recently, he's been writing plays, fighting capital punishment, and playing the right-wing media's whipping boy for lyrics from a 2002 album that treated the infamous California Taliban kid like a human being. Earle was condemned then as un-Patriotic and has since become a national figure in the anticensorship scene. Listen to The Revolution Starts... Now (definitely not "carefree") for the love song "Condi, Condi" and "F the CC," written for our buds at the Federal Communications Commission.

Steve Earle plays at 8 p.m. Saturday, January 29, at the Carefree Theater, 2000 S. Dixie Hwy., West Palm Beach. Tickets cost $32.50. Call 561-966-3309.