Dire Straits lightly gravitated toward country music with songs like “Southbound Again” and “Down To The Waterline” from their self-titled debut. And while they were fans of country, it was the artists in the genre that took a keen liking to Dire Straits’ more countrified songs.
In 1989, the Judds‘ covered the band’s “Water of Love,” and featured Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler on guitar, for their fifth album, River of Time. By the early 1990s, Mary Chapin Carpenter also released her version of Dire Straits’ “The Bug” in 1992, while country singer John Anderson covered the band’s “When It Comes to You” on the album Seminole Wind, and took it to No. 1 on the Country chart.
Josh Turner also shared their rendition of the band’s 1978 classic “Sultans of Swing,” while Brad Paisley covered the band’s 1985 hit “Walk of Life.” On November 29, 2020, Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real pulled out the Dire Straits classic “Romeo and Juliet” during a Soundcheck Songs performance.
Knopfler also had plenty of country crossovers collaborating with the Notting Hillbillies and Chet Atkins and contributing vocals to Kris Kristofferson‘s cover of Bobby Bare’s “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends” from The Austin Sessions in 1999. Througout the years, Knopfler also performed the band’s Brothers in Arms classic “So Far Away” with Emmylou Harris in 2006, and the two released the collaborative album All the Roadrunning.
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“Setting Me Up”
While Waylon Jennings was working on his 1986 album Never Could Toe the Mark, he was also trying to get sober after decades of drug addiction. On the album were several covers including Billy Joel’s 1974 Streetlife Serenade single ‘The Entertainer,” and “Sparkling Brown Eyes,” the 1937 Bill Cox and Cliff Hobbs song popularized by George Jones in 1960.
Also on the album was Jennings’ cover of Dire Straits’ country-bent song about a dysfunctional love, “Setting Me Up,” from the band’s 1978 self-titled debut.
You say I’m the greatest, bound for glory
Well, the word is out, and I learned
I got the latest side of the story
You’re pulling out before you get burned
Well, your hands are squeezing me down to the bone
I never saw you breaking no law
Stands to reason, I’ve got to leave you alone
What do you take me for?
You’re just setting me up to put me down
You’re just making me out to be your clown
Setting me up now, to put me down
You better give it up (give it up), yeah, give it up
Quit your messing around
You think I care about your reaction
You think I don’t understand
All you wanted was a piece of the action
Now you talk about another man
Though never released as a single by the band, there were other artists who appreciated Dire Straits’ lonesome ballad throughout the years, including Eric Clapton, who featured “Setting Me Up” on his double live album Just One Night in 1980.
In 1988, the country group Highway 101 covered “Setting Me Up” and took Dire Straits to the Country chart at No. 7.
Photo: Larry Hulst/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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