Producers: Ray Kennedy, Richard Bennett, Richard Dodd.

Engineers: Ray Kennedy, Peter Coleman, Richard Dodd.

Recorded at Room & Board and Treasure Isle, Nashville, Tennessee. Includes liner notes by Steve Earle.

Personnel: Steve Earle (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Custer (vocals, drums, percussion); Logan, Lucinda Williams, The Fairfield Four (vocals); Richard Bennett (guitar, harmonica, harmonium, percussion); Ray Kennedy (guitar); Richard Grosjean, Carl Gorodetzky, Pamela Sixfin (violin); Lee Larrison (viola); Robert Mason (cello); Ken Moore (organ); Roy M. "Junior" Husky, Garry Tallent, Ric Kipp, Kelly Looney (bass guitar); Greg Morrow (drums, percussion); Rick Schell (drums); Dub Cornett (percussion).

Audio Mixers: Ray Kennedy; Richard Dodd.

Recording information: Room & Board, Nashville, TN; Treasure Isle Studios, Nashville, TN.

Photographers: Nancy Lee Andrews; Lee Andrews; Ray Kennedy.

Unknown Contributor Role: Siobhan Maher.

Arranger: Kris Wilkinson String Section.

Steve Earle quietly announced he was back in action and capable of making substantial, heartfelt music again with his 1994 acoustic album Train a Comin', but on 1995's I Feel Alright Earle showed he was truly back in fighting shape, and from the album's first moments he sounds ready to roar and holds nothing back. While Earle's battle with drug abuse and his brief stay in prison aren't explicitly addressed on this album (except on the harrowing "CCKMP," in which Earle confesses "cocaine cannot kill my pain" and "heroin is the only thing/the only gift the darkness brings"), the hurt brought to himself and others by his betrayals runs through many of these songs, sometimes with humor ("Hard Core Troubadour"), sometimes with regret ("Valentine's Day"), and sometimes with a painful self-awareness ("Hurtin' Me, Hurtin' You" and "The Unrepentant"). But I Feel Alright isn't about addiction and loss so much as recovery and starting over again, and if the songs often concern Earle's misdeeds, the strength of the music finds him confronting his demons without flinching and conjuring up some of the powerfully muscular rock and affecting country of his life. And like Train a Comin', I Feel Alright shows Earle finding the courage and confidence to make a record just the way he wants, and this may be Earle's finest hour in the studio -- the production is tough, resonant, and a perfect match for the material, the players bring their A game without showboating, and Earle's rough but passionate vocals are pure, honest, and direct on every cut. I Feel Alright affirmed that Steve Earle's brush with oblivion had not only failed to silence him, but he was a more courageous artist when he came out the other side, and no one who has heard this record is likely to argue that point. ~ Mark Deming

I FEEL ALRIGHT is country-rocker Steve Earle's first album of new material following a well-documented five-year residency on the wrong side of the Nashville tracks. Like TRAIN A COMIN', the acoustic set of folk and pop covers with which he made his quiet return a year earlier, this full-band record offers no apologies. It does offer a rocking reclamation of all the blues, folk and country Springsteenisms and Dylanisms that made Earle's return worth waiting for.

One of its highlights is a searing, acoustic blues number, "CCKMP," on which Earle declares himself free of most of his former demons. The title stands for "cocaine cannot kill my pain"; the incredibly dark punch line dryly notes that heroin still can. Earle's voice is a blurry twang in which all those demons seem to have left a residue. When on the rollicking opening cut he announces that, "I've been to hell and now I'm back again/I feel alright," you know he means it, but you don't know if he's strong enough to hold on. Which, ironically, is the source of I FEEL ALRIGHT's power. These are songs that seek, in folk and rock and blues, the kind of redemption that life itself can't always offer.