Long before he became a journalist and author, Jonathan Bernstein was a fan enthralled with Nashville singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle.
“From the minute I’d heard ‘Mama’s Eyes’ [one of Earle’s most poignant songs about his divorced parents], he seemed to be an artist that I would have a lifelong relationship with,” Bernstein told me during a conversation about his new book, “What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome,” an authorized Earle biography. “To me, he was a career artist. I just assumed that I would see a 65-year-old salty Justin Townes Earle playing a club 35 years from now.”
It wouldn’t happen. On Aug. 20, 2020, Earle, who’d struggled with substance-use disorders since his teens and mental health issues, died from an accidental overdose of fentanyl-laced cocaine. He was 38. As a senior research editor and writer at Rolling Stone, Bernstein said that a musician’s death is “grimly and sadly a big part of our day-to day-work life.” But for him, Earle’s passing had a deeper impact.
“On a personal level, I was so affected because I first saw Justin perform when I was a 19-year-old college student in Minnesota,” Bernstein said. “He was like a lightning bolt — that’s the only way I can think to describe what it was like to see him perform at that time. I had never seen anything like it. That show sort of changed my life as a music fan and listener.”
That was in 2009. More than a decade later, Bernstein’s admiration of Earle compelled him to write his first book, a deeply researched dive into the stunning talent and interrupted life of one of the best singer-songwriters of recent memory.
In 2021, Bernstein wrote a Rolling Stone article about Earle. He interviewed the singer’s widow, Jenn Marie Earle, former bandmates, and former girlfriends. But after his piece was done, Bernstein said he felt like “I’d spent two months interviewing 30 people to study this person’s life, and I was just so thirsty and so curious to keep learning.”
If Earle’s surname rings a distant bell, it’s because he was the son of Steve Earle, the legendary alt-country artist who gained fame with “Guitar Town,” his 1986 debut. (Now sober, the elder Earle also battled heroin addiction.) By the time that album raced to the top of the country charts, Steve’s marriage to Earle’s mother, Carol, was over. Justin was a toddler.
(Justin’s middle name, Townes, was his father’s tribute to his mentor, the influential country-folk troubadour, Townes Van Zandt, who died in 1997 after years of self-destructive behavior.)
Earle’s peripatetic childhood and his father’s long absences from a life on the road left the younger Earle with a hole that never fully healed. That’s why Bernstein chose “What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome,” one of Earle’s early songs, as his book’s title.
“He described his childhood by saying, ‘I was lonely for a very long time.’ And I think there was an alienation and aloneness that set in for him that he spent his life and also his career trying to fight against and overcome,” Bernstein said. “In many ways he did. He connected with hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he had a daughter, and many deep, meaningful relationships. But he struggled with a lot of feelings of unworthiness and a deep existential loneliness, which I think he was constantly trying to work out in his music.”
Through a representative, Steve Earle “respectfully declined” to be interviewed for his book, Bernstein said.
I first heard of Justin Townes Earle in a late-night tweet about his death. A mention of “Harlem River Blues,” the title song of his 2010 album, prompted me to give it a listen. What I found was an upbeat, gospel-tinged romper that was also the last will and testament of a narrator who’s “going uptown to the Harlem River to drown.”
It’s a hymn for the misbegotten and resolute from someone who, as Earle sings, knows “the difference between tempting and choosing my fate.” As an album, “Harlem River Blues” is a gorgeous synthesis of Americana, or roots music, which is steeped in country, blues, gospel, folk, and rhythm and blues — all uniquely American styles birthed mainly in the South, and cured by Black and white musicians in honky tonks, juke joints, and storefront churches.
For Earle, his influences were The Carter Family and The Staple Singers, Hank Williams and Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Billie Holiday, the subject of his song, “White Gardenias.” From one song to the next, you could swing dance, have a good long cry, sneer at the world, or smile in spite of it all. Earle’s music is both grounding and uplifting.
“[‘Harlem River Blues’ is]” arguably both his greatest work artistically and also a moment in which his work is also kind of hitting the cultural zeitgeist in the biggest way,” Bernstein said. “But he’s releasing this record in the midst of a devastating personal relapse that results in the crazy … year that he had.”
That year included a fight with a bar owner and an allegation that Earle hit the club owner’s daughter that would tarnish his reputation for the rest of his life. He was arrested in Indianapolis two days after “Harlem River Blues” was released, scuttling his record label’s big launch plans. While he put out five more albums, his career momentum never recovered.
While Earle denied that he would ever hit a woman, years later Earle had a fight with his wife that left her bloodied and bruised and left him in handcuffs, jail, and eventually in rehab again. That was in 2018, when Earle was deep in what would turn out to be his final, fatal relapse.
Bernstein doesn’t soft-peddle Earle’s worst actions, but he also avoids writing a boilerplate junkie bio. He creates a portrait of a complex man in full, and a musician who deserved a much bigger career, but often couldn’t get out of his own way long enough to achieve it.
I asked Bernstein if Earle’s daughter, Etta, reads his book when she gets older, what he would like her to discover about the father who died when she was only 3.
“I hope she learns about the fullness of his humanity, how deeply human he was, how beautiful a life he lived as well as the heartbreaking life he lived,” Bernstein said. “But I would hope — and not just for Etta — but anyone reading this book, especially those struggling with or who has struggled with their own mental health or substance use issues, [to show] how much Justin was able to overcome, how much he was able to achieve and create, and how many people he formed beautiful connections with on a personal and artistic level, despite all the cards that were stacked against him.”
This is an excerpt from Outtakes, a Globe Opinion newsletter from columnist Renée Graham. Sign up to get Outtakes in your inbox each Thursday.
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