Found dead of a suspected drug overdose on August 20th, the Nashville singer/song-writer Justin Townes Earle will be greatly missed, not least by me.
On stage he possessed a strange magnetism: striking in appearance but not really attractive, intense in manner but still shy, smoothly awkward might be the best (if slightly oxymoronic) rendering of how he performed.
In early life he had a rough go of it -- broken family, descent into hard drugs, trauma and pain. But by his late twenties he seemed to have at least partially surmounted those handicaps; and from there began recording a string of fantastic country-blues albums.
His was a unique Nashville sound. He didn’t get a lot of pop-country radio play, for reasons difficult to discern; but his talent was as evident as his musical heart was full. Check out this tune, with its upright bass and 1930s New Orleans swing feel: “What’s Goin’ Wrong.” The slow build to bring in the keyboard and sax just gets me. It includes this great line: “If there’s one thing you should never do, it’s put it past a man to be a fool.”
Conjecture on my part, but one wonders if JTE’s death counts as one of those euphemistically referred to as of “external cause.” Not CV-19, not heart attack, not diabetes: suicide and overdose. External.
What saved him from addiction and depression was the simple joy of playing good music for audiences. Most of us, I wager, can relate to the deep human warmth that flows from lively performances. That has been taken away from us, by a combination of biological pathogen and government tyranny.
When JTE played a show at Atlantic Station in ATL right after the Bulldogs lost to Alabama in the 2012 SEC Championship, there were plenty of folks with aching hearts. He warmed them.
And now we’re bereft. I’ll cling to his mournful lyrics from his 2009 song “Mama’s Eyes”:
Sure it hurts but it should hurt sometimes
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Photo credit: Jim Beckmann/KEXP