Justin Townes Earle, a accomplished alt-country singer and songwriter who was a son of country-rock firebrand Steve Earle, has died at the age of 38.
His death was confirmed last Sunday by his record label, New West, which gave no cause or said where or when he died. The last few years he had lived in Portland, Ore.
“It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of our son, husband, father and friend Justin,” read a post on the younger Mr.’s Facebook page. Earle. “So many of you have relied on his music and lyrics over the years, and we hope his music will continue to guide you on your journeys.”
Mr. Earle had big shoes to fill when he released his debut album, “The Good Life,” in 2008. His father has been an extraterrestrial star of the land world since the 1980s; he named his son in homage to Townes Van Zandt, the country folk songwriter who was a master of the somber, ghostly ballad.
However, Mr. Earle the beginning of the respect of critics and a small but dedicated following, writing songs of heartbeat, loss and family with a dark narrative undertow and a sepia-toned folk-rock style that could return to Mr. Van Zandt as Hank Williams.
On “The Good Life” is the title track of Mr. Debut’s debut album. Earle, a man abandoned by his lover, convincing about his freedom. “All fancy restaurants will not wait for me inside / they serve me out the back door and never ask for a penny,” he sings. “It’s a good life from now on.”
He became a rising star in the overlapping scenes of alt-country and Americana. At the 2009 Americana Music Honors and Awards, he was named Emerging Deed of the Year; two years later, his “Harlem River Blues” – about a man who considers suicide – won song of the year.
Mr. Earle spoke openly about his craving for addiction, which he said began as early as age 12 and included the use of heroin and crack cocaine. He seemed to follow in the footsteps of his father, whose own problems with drugs are well documented.
“I always knew there was something different about the way I used drugs and drank the way my friends did,” the younger Mr. Earle told The Scottish newspaper The Scotsman in 2015. “But it’s a wild thing to wake up when you’re 16 years old and realize you can ‘t stop shooting.”
As news of the death of Mr. Distributed early on Sunday and Monday, fellow musicians and other cultural figures paid homage. On Twitter, the English folk singer Billy Bragg, called him “a brilliant songwriter and generous soul.” The author Stephen King said, “What a loss.”
Justin Townes Earle was born in Nashville on January 4, 1982. His mother, Carol-Ann Hunter, was the third wife of Steve Earle. They divorced when Justin was young, and he grew up in Nashville and listened to Nirvana and hip-hop before finding inspiration from Woody Guthrie and Mr. Van Zandt, who was his father’s mentor and sometimes plagued. (“My mother hated Townes Van Zandt,” Mr. Earle told Rolling Stone in 2019, “because of the problems Dad and he ran into.”)
As a young man he played in a ragtime band called the Swindlers and a country-punk group, the Distributors. For a while he played in the band of his father, the Dukes, before stepping out for his drug use.
He released eight full albums as a solo artist, most notably “The Saint of Lost Causes,” in 2019. Along with heartbreak and betrayal, family was a recurring theme in his songs. In “Mama’s Eyes”, from his 2009 album “Midnight at the Movies”, he sang: “I’m My Dad’s Son / I Never Knew When I Should Close” and “I Have My Mom’s Eyes / her long thin frame and her smile / And I still look wrong from the right. ”
In a creative burst, Mr. Earle the songs for his 2014 album, “Single Mothers,” and his 2015 album, “Absent Fathers” together. Jon Pareles of The New York Times checked the latter, writing: ‘Music is not inflated with arena-rock flourishing like computer tricks, and it does not hide bruises and pain. It draws pride on Southern soul. ”
Mr. Earle rejected the interpretation of such material as directly autobiographical, although he acknowledged that much of it recounted his own experience.
He married Jenn Marie Earle in 2013, and they had a daughter, Etta St. James, in 2017. Full details of his descendants were not immediately available.
Mr. Earle occasionally performed with his father and over the years had to answer questions from interviewers about his being the son of a famous musician known for a rebellious streak.
“I mean, I did not do anything other than what my father did,” said Mr. Earle in an interview on NPR in 2008. “It’s a really tough family to rebel in. I could have become an accountant. Or I could have become a Republican – that would have really ruined him.”
