Singer-songwriter-author-actor-non-shaver Steve Earle has announced the release of his new album, "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive,' due on April 26 via New West Records.  The 11-track album was produced by the ubiquitous T-Bone Burnett, and will be followed in two weeks by a novel of the same name.

With both a pedal-steel and fiddle player present for the five-day recording session, Earle admits the album "inadvertently" features a prominent country sound. He also reports that the songs, much like his new book, "are all, as far as I can tell, about mortality in one way or the other; death as a mystery rather than a punctuation mark or at least, a comma rather than a period."

Depending on the filming schedule for his current role on the HBO series 'Treme,' Earle is expected to tour -- with a full band for the first time in a while -- starting this June in support of 'I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive.'

If you don't want to wait to see a singing Earle on the road, you can go catch Steve's son, Justin Townes Earle, who's out on the road in support of his critically acclaimed album 'Harlem River Blues' right about now.

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