‘Family Man’ Justin Townes Earle To Play at Door Community Auditorium

Justin Townes Earle. Submitted photo.

“I just moved, and all I’m telling people is that I have moved to the West Coast, to an undisclosed location,” Justin Townes Earle said. For phone service, Earle commutes an undisclosed distance.

He will be back on the grid on Sunday, Aug. 2 at 8 pm at the Door Community Auditorium.

Earle describes his music as American music, heavily based in 1950’s Memphis ideas.

“It’s not old timey music,” he said, “It’s music that bared a lot of soul, that all came from the south east.”

Earle believes his upbringing in Nashville gave him a “unique position” to learn about rock and roll, the blues, and soul.

In addition to his hometown, Earle credits his friendship with John Prine, and was quick to point out that he met Prine “separately” from his father, the alternative country artist Steve Earle.

Towns Earle did not always aspire to be a musician — as a young child he wanted to be a baseball player, and as an adolescent, he played high level competition soccer.

Ultimately, as a young man Earle hit the road, on tour as a musician.

“I saw it as a constructive way to get out of my parents’ house,” he said. “I believed then, and I think most people believed then that I was going to end up in prison, in my early teens.”

Some of Earle’s music focuses on the challenges of touring, and being a musician with substance abuse problems.

“There’s a lot of traps in the music industry. Its hard not to drink a lot, because you’re there [in a bar] every night,” he said, and added “I didn’t have a career I think I could have been proud of when I was still using drugs and drinking.”

Earle’s most recent album, Absent Fathers, was recorded alongside his previous album, Single Mothers. Earle initially planned on releasing both albums at once, and then considered only releasing Absent Fathers.

“There’s much more hope on the songs in Absent Fathers than there was for Single Mothers,” he said.

Eventually, Earle’s wife convinced him to release Single Mothers.

Family is the central theme of Absent Fathers and Single Mothers.

“There’s nothing that means more to me than family,” Earle said.

For more information on the show at Door Community Auditorium, visit DCAuditorium.org.