My name is Earle
- Font Size:
- Default font size
- Larger font size
Justin Townes Earle (Contributed photo)
Most second-generation performers face the challenge of living up to a family name.
Justin Townes Earle has double that.
Not only is the 26-year-old singer-songwriter the son of blues-rock stalwart Steve Earle, but he also was christened with a middle name in honor of legendary Texas songwriter Townes Van Zandt.
Earle is not ignoring his lineage, but he doesn’t feel the need to live up to it, either.
“I’ve never really felt any pressure,” he said from a tour bus somewhere between Memphis and Birmingham, Ala., last week. “In order to feel pressure, I think you have to be something. I just don’t think I need or have to be something other than what I am.
“I never bought into the fact that my last name’s Earle. Everybody else does, so there’s enough people cashing in on that. I just let them do it and I go about my merry way and do what I do.”
As for the Townes middle name, Earle said there’s no comparing him with the late Texas troubadour.
“Anybody who tries to live up to the Townes Van Zandt legacy is a fool. Good luck and have fun with your miserable career if you’re trying to do that,” Earle said. “Townes is untouchable. Nobody has ever come close to Townes as far as a songwriter goes.”
Earle leads a three-piece band, which includes his fiancee on bass, in a Daytrotter.com-sponsored show Monday at Huckleberry’s Pizza Parlor in downtown Rock Island.
In press materials and on his MySpace page, Earle talks about being a part of — and being fired from — his father’s band.
“I had my struggles with drugs and alcohol, and I just got to a point where I was extremely hard to handle,” he said. “It took more work to keep me going than the actual star of the show. There was time for a change to be made.”
When it came time to recruit band members for his father’s next tour, the phone never rang.
“I just didn’t get the call to go out,” he said. “I knew where I stood. I understood what was going on, so it didn’t really bother me all that much. I got it. I would have done the same thing.”
Earle’s sound is much more rustic — “vintage” is the word he uses — than his father’s.
It all came naturally, he said.
“I’m very different, and that’s something I never tried to do. It just happened to be that way. Everything I’ve written has more of a vintage feel than anything my dad does, other than when he specifically tries to write a bluegrass record,” he said.
Earle said he tried a rock band for a time and quickly found it wasn’t for him.
“I didn’t have a good time writing the songs and I wasn’t completely pleased with them when I got done with them,” he said. “I don’t have fun playing electric guitar.”
His second album, “The Good Life,” was released in February. Earle said the album did better than he expected it to, but quickly added that he “didn’t have any expectations” for the release.
“In this business, if you have expectations of what you’re going to do, you might as well get yourself a mirror and stand in front of it full-body so you can see it and laugh at yourself,” he said. “It’s an extremely fickle business. You have a better chance of predicting the weather in the Bermuda Triangle.”
IF YOU GO
Who: Justin Townes Earle
When: 7 p.m. Monday, June 30
Where: Huckleberry’s Pizza Parlor, 223 18th St., Rock Island
How much: $8 in advance (by e-mailing daytrotter@gmail.com), $10 at the door
Information: (309) 786-1122 or Daytrotter.com/promotion on the Web
Also on the Web: MySpace.com/ justintownesearle
David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
del.icio.us
Digg
NewsVine
Fark
reddit() comments
» More Music Stories
Highest Rated Articles from the last 7 Days
