Here Comes the Son: Justin Townes Earle Makes a Name for Himself

Hometown: Nashville
Album: Midnight at the Movies
For Fans of: Steve Earle, Buck Owens, Ryan Adams

"There’s a whole class of kids that have grown up in Nashville that didn’t want anything to do with the music business, because we all grew up with single mothers, with fathers who fucked off all across the U.S. and the world while Mama stayed at home and worked her ass off,” explains 27-year-old Justin Townes Earle. “The last thing we wanted to do was be musicians.”

But when Earle was 15, fate overpowered resentment: The son of one country legend (Steve Earle) and named after another (Townes Van Zandt), suddenly all Earle wanted to do was make music. Getting noticed was tough, though—not despite his name, but because of it. “We had the Julian Lennon syndrome,” he laughs. “The mid-to-late ’90s was a really hard time for ‘sons and daughters of.’” Then—like his father before him—Earle fell into drugs, and even got fired from his dad’s touring band when his habit got bad.
   
But after the prodigal son sobered up in 2004, music poured forth. Bloodshot Records signed him in 2007 on the strength of a self-released EP, and in March 2008 released his full-length, 10-years-in-the-making debut, The Good Life, a rousing, ramshackle country gem that he now follows with sophomore album Midnight at the Movies. And though Earle spent most of last year on the road, he’s already finished writing a third LP. “I just wanna make records,” he says, his drawl tinged with relief. “I’m just happy to be here at this point.”