On J.T., a Grieving Steve Earle Celebrates the Memory of His Son

Steve Earle has a lot of experience making tribute records to musicians he’s known, cared for deeply and learned much from. In 2009, he released Townes, in honor of Townes Van Zandt, and in 2019, there was Guy, for Guy Clark. Monday, Earle released a tribute that’s the most devastating of the three: J.T., in memory of his son Justin Townes Earle, who died in August. 

J.T. consists of 10 covers plus one new original. The covers are songs Steve Earle chose to represent the best of his son’s catalog, which spans eight albums and one EP. The release came on Jan. 4, what would have been the younger Earle’s 39th birthday, and proceeds are to fund a trust for his young daughter Etta. There’s also a GoFundMe to help his family. You can find the record on Bandcamp and streaming services; a vinyl LP is set to ship in March.

Justin Townes Earle was born and raised in Nashville, and put in hundreds of hours playing the blues at venerable dive Springwater and the original incarnation of songwriter hangout The Sutler. He never let his father’s work overshadow his own. From his promising 2007 debut Yuma onward, Justin worked diligently to develop his own voice as a songwriter — straight-talking, empathetic, a little mercurial. His final album, 2019’s The Saint of Lost Causes, is masterful. The album features a dozen razor-sharp musical vignettes set in neglected corners of America from West Virginia to Watts, and it feels like it could’ve been the first of several volumes.

Despite the freshness of the profound pain of Justin’s death, and the pain that runs through many of his songs, Steve Earle and his longtime band The Dukes make J.T. feel more like celebration than mourning — a wake rather than a funeral. The album is top-loaded with tales of incurable restlessness like “I Don't Care” and “Ain't Glad I'm Leaving.” In “Far Away in Another Town,” the writer wrestles with a compulsion to keep moving toward solitude, though he knows it won’t make him feel whole: “The next time you come lookin’ / I won’t be around / ’Cause I think I can be lonesome / Far away in another town.” The driving renditions on J.T. of anti-war protest “Lone Pine Hill” and Woody Guthrie-esque declaration of determination “They Killed John Henry” stick closely to the source material. “Champagne Corolla,” a loose, bluesy number from 2017’s Kids in the Street, is reinterpreted as a rambunctious, swampy rave-up.

The darkness gets closer to the surface as J.T. progresses. The slow, menacing “Saint of Lost Causes” and the gospel-tinged “Harlem River Blues” lead up to “Last Words.” The gut-punch of an album closer is the one Steve Earle original on the record. As Steve recalled in an interview with The New York Times, he talked to Justin not long before he died. That phone call inspired the sparse, plainspoken expression of unimaginable grief, as Earle sings: “The last thing I said was ‘I love you’ / And your last words to me were ‘I love you, too.’ ”

In addition to being a beautiful tribute, J.T. is a solid primer on the depth and quality of Justin’s work. Combining the covers with the original recordings on a playlist lays bare where the two artists’ styles connect and diverge. Steve’s trademark gruff, piss-and-vinegar vocals have about as much in common with Justin's gentle, resonant lilt as Tom Waits’ singing does with Jeff Tweedy’s, but both have a keen feel for what’s compelling in the heart of a story. You get the idea that if they were ballplayers, Steve would be a lumbering home-run hitter and Justin a slick-fielding shortstop. While the Earles might’ve had different approaches, these renditions show they were playing the same game all along.

Thursday night, Steve Earle and the Dukes performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Below, check out their performances of "Far Away in Another Town" and "Harlem River Blues."