Earle relished mentoring younger artists, giving advice that often seemed like it was intended for himself as much as anyone else. When teenage singer-songwriter Sammy Brue joined Earle for his first national tour, Earle gave him regular lectures on drugs. Earle was often exceedingly generous. He would give his opening acts and bandmates extra cash while on tour. When Earle heard that Fritz had lost a favorite shirt, originally purchased at a Virginia gas station, Earle tracked down the identical shirt for him.
That sense of loyalty helped place Earle at the center of a quickly growing roots-music revival based in East Nashville. It proved to be his breakthrough, though Earle seemed to sabotage its rollout.
Earle denied the charges, which were eventually dropped. Within 10 days of releasing the album, Earle was back in rehab, postponing the most high-profile tour of his career. Harlem River Blues nonetheless became his biggest-selling record, leading to surging Bonnaroo crowds and Letterman appearances.
Earle appeared outwardly unflappable throughout this turbulent period, with one notable exception. After yet another rehab stint, Earle was prescribed Suboxone, a drug given to patients fending off opioid addictions. Around this time, Earle burned many of his closest personal and professional connections. Longtime bandmates like Younts and Davies had stopped touring with Earle, causing the singer to lash out, as he often did when he felt he was being abandoned.
When Spratlin signed on to tour-manage Jason Isbell after breaking up with Earle in , the singer erupted at both her and Isbell. T hat same year, he began dating Jenn Marie Maynard, a teenage acquaintance he reconnected with at a show in her hometown of Salt Lake City.
Earle was smitten with Jenn Marie, a former athlete who owned a yoga studio and was almost as tall and lanky as him. Both received notably less attention than his previous few albums. In the early years of their marriage, Jenn Marie toured with Justin, and the couple spent free time on the road scouring down antique shops. He spent his time in the green room before shows transfixed by full-game replays of the World Series. Earle still electrified crowds, but offstage, he was struggling with various mental-health problems.
But he had trouble stabilizing his treatment, cycling through doctors on the road who gave differing diagnoses and often prescribed medication over the phone. In California, Earle stopped taking Suboxone. A few years later, Earle would tell Jenn Marie that their seemingly idyllic tenure in California had actually been a particularly isolating period.
He was removed from old friends and struggled to write songs without the din of city life. It was just cracked. On the West Coast, old friends had a hard time reaching Earle. By the time Earle made it to Omaha to record, he knew he was going to become a father. Once Etta was born, Earle was overjoyed. Becoming a dad helped Justin feel closer to his own father.
But even as he grew closer to his father, Justin still battled feelings of inferiority. In the last few years of his life, he confided to his guitarist Paul Niehaus that, because his own songwriting was so personal, he thought his father, who alternated between autobiography and literary character sketches, was the superior songwriter.
In his last few years, Earle reconnected with many of his old friends. When Welch surprised Justin at one of his gigs in , in Austin, Earle sprinted out of the green room and jumped on his old Chicken Shack roommate, wrapping his arms and legs around him. After nearly a decade of not playing together, he invited his old collaborator Cory Younts to play on The Saint of Lost Causes. This past spring, he reconnected with several old Nashville friends, including Skylar Wilson. In Nashville, during his final eight months, Justin spent more time than he had in ages with his mother, Carol Ann, with whom he remained close.
His manner of death was accidental. Earle struggled openly with addiction throughout much of his career. In the social media post, Earle's family addressed drug and alcohol addiction and encouraged anyone struggling with substance abuse to reach out for help. It only takes a few salt sized granules of fentanyl to cause an overdose. And in most cases, happens so fast that intervention likely could not reverse it.
Born Jan. While touring in support of Harlem River Blues , Earle was involved in an altercation with a club owner after a show in Indianapolis, which led to a brief stay in jail and a return to rehab for alcohol issues. From that point onward, he was reportedly clean and sober, and continued to record and tour steadily.
After Earle 's contract with Bloodshot had run its course, he signed a deal with Communion Records, a U. In , Earle finally re-emerged with a new album, Single Mothers , which was released by the American independent label Vagrant Records. Single Mothers was recorded in tandem with a companion album, Absent Fathers , but rather than release them together, Earle decided the two sets of songs would be more powerful as separate works, and Absent Fathers arrived in January Two years later, Earle released the album Kids in the Street , his first for the respected independent label New West Records.
He supported the release with a concert tour in tandem with the celebrated Canadian group the Sadies , who served as his opening act as well as his backing band. On August 23, , his family announced that Justin Townes Earle had died at the age of AllMusic relies heavily on JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to use the site fully. Blues Classical Country. Electronic Folk International.
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