Over the phone, Steve Forbert comes across exactly as you'd expect him to: Uncommonly affable, decidedly soft-spoken, unmistakably Southern, and unabashedly down-to-earth. After all, that's the overall impression he's conveyed through his music for the better part of the last 35 years or so, ever since his debut album Alive on Arrival offered an auspicious introduction and his sophomore set Jackrabbit Slim yielded his signature song, "Romeo's Tune." It was enough to kick-start the career of a young man from Mississippi, newly arrived in New York City and trying to purvey his homespun blend of folk and country even in the full flush of punk's '70s insurrection.
"That was part of the initial struggle to label me," Forbert protests. "Loudon Wainwright got that. John Prine got that. I could see that coming because it was a bit of a cliché. I wanted to make it clear I wasn't going to take that label literally or seriously. I certainly didn't do anything to adhere to it. It was preposterous. Nobody's going to be the new anyone. I just wanted to be myself. I had my own ideas."
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