Justin Townes Earle was born in 1982, while his father was a journeyman songwriter in Nashville. is, in a sense, a double portrait of father and son. “I made the record because I needed to.” J.T. Recording the album “wasn’t cathartic as much as it was therapeutic”, Earle said. ![]() “Give my money to my baby to spend.”) Turn Out My Lights, about the phantom-limb ache for a former lover, takes on an eerie double meaning when Earle sings:Įven though I know you’re gone I don’t have to be alone now You’re here with me every night When I turn out my lights (“Tell my mama I love her/ tell my father I tried,” it goes. Harlem River Blues contemplates a drowning death. Photograph: Meghan Marin/The New York TimesĮarle’s craggy-voiced performance underscores dark themes that were there all along. “He was just one of those people that never felt like he was enough”: Steve Earle on his son his Justin Townes Earl. includes some of Justin Townes Earle’s best-known songs, such as Harlem River Blues, Champagne Corolla and The Saint of Lost Causes, the title track of his final album, released in 2019. Recorded with the Dukes, Earle’s longtime backing band – including Chris Masterson on guitar, Eleanor Whitmore on fiddle, Ricky Ray Jackson on pedal steel guitar, Jeff Hill on bass and Brad Pemberton on drums – J.T. During recording sessions in October, the official cause of his son’s death had still not been determined. was made while Earle’s pain was still raw. Townes was released in 2009, a dozen years after Van Zandt died Guy, a homage to songwriter Guy Clark, came out three years after Clark’s death in 2016. – Justin Townes Earle’s childhood nickname – is the latest entry in what has become a grim speciality for Earle: the tribute album for a departed musical confidant. He was just one of those people that never felt like he was enough.” “He was a way better singer than I am, a way better guitar player, technically, than I am. ![]() “His best songs were as good as anybody’s,” said Earle, whose Greenwich Village apartment is crammed with photos of his son, including one black-and-white shot on the wall showing him aged three chomping on a candy apple. Proceeds from the LP will go to a trust to benefit Etta. ![]() “I was connected to him in ways that, you know – he’s my first born he did the same thing I did and we both had this disease.” Within days of Justin Townes Earle’s death, Steve Earle (65) began work on what would become J.T., an album of 10 of his son’s songs, and one new track by Earle, that was released on January 4th, which would have been his son’s 39th birthday. ![]() “I’ve never loved anything in this world more than him,” Steve Earle said. He had watched Justin Townes Earle grow from a scraggly teenage hip-hop fan intrigued by Kurt Cobain to a rising star of Americana music – the fuzzy intersection in the Venn diagram of folk, country and rock, where Earle has long been a looming presence. “And he said, ‘I won’t’.” That night, Justin Townes Earle (38), died alone in an apartment in Nashville, Tennessee, of an accidental drug overdose an autopsy found evidence in his blood of cocaine laced with fentanyl, a powerful opioid.įor Steve Earle, the death of his eldest son set off waves of grief. “I said, ‘Do not make me bury you’,” the elder Earle recalled in an interview. In a phone call initiated by Earle's son, they caught up on family business, and Earle, the country-rock singer-songwriter who struggled with addiction for years, told his son – a lauded musician in his own right – that he would support him if he was ready to begin his own recovery. On the evening of August 20th, Steve Earle spoke to his son Justin Townes Earle for the last time.
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