The new millennium hasn’t been too kind to Steve Earle’s career, although his genius didn’t fade completely. We saw him playing the role of a reformed junkie in “The Wire” and this year he dedicated a whole album of covers to Townes Van Zandt. However, his best moment came after 9/11, providing like many other voices of his country a reflective call over those terrible events. Avoiding the clichés of heated patriotism and elegiac chants to lost heroes; instead he tried to portray the viewpoint of one of the US Muslims involved, which enraged the most conservative part of America and got him exiled from country radio stations of every state of the union. A true example of integrity.