Justin Townes Earle on firearms, the political left and growing up with a famous dad
He might be a clean, sober dad these days, but there’s still plenty of fire in US country singer Justin Townes Earle.
Confidential
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JUSTIN Townes Earle is riding in the tour van, looking for some lunch and riffing on the differences between the United States and Australia.
The big contrast, he says, is that we managed to shut our Wild West down and America never did.
It’s why he regularly carries a gun on his hip at home and, he says, it’s why you’re far more likely to get punched in the head in Adelaide than Alabama.
“Nobody gets beaten to death in a bar in America,” the alt-country singer-songwriter opines.
“Nobody gets marauded by guys in footy jerseys on the streets – because we might shoot you.
“That’s the difference, and I don’t know which one’s better.”
But if you’re going to carry a gun, the 37-year-old says, you’d better know when to use it.
“You have to know the difference between your life being threatened and your ass getting beaten,” Earle says.
“If somebody’s just gonna break your nose, get your nose broke. Don’t pull a gun out because once you pull that trigger there is literally know way of ever taking it back.”
It’s a line Earle hammers home in robbery gone wrong tale Appalachian Nightmare from his new album The Saint of Lost Causes.
The protagonist, serving time for cooking amphetamine, is released to find that opioids have taken over his rural West Virginia community.
During a drugstore robbery gone bad, the gunman, who Earle says is “a combination of people I know”, opens fire and kills a policeman.
“Now it’s a fact, you can’t get a bullet back, Once you’ve pulled the trigger…” he writes.
It’s a line that echoes sentiments expressed by his father, country legend Steve Earle, on his hit song The Devil’s Right Hand and one that speaks to both singers’ long fascination with guns.
Earle Snr famously changed his mind on firearms after a 14-year-old Justin found a loaded pistol in his house and refused to tell him where he’d hidden it.
Earle Jnr’s fascination however continues, and he knows that puts him off-side with the political left in America that has long aligned himself with.
Or perhaps is was vice versa.
He doesn’t much care though, saying the left is too busy embroiling itself in identity politics and rioting on the streets of Portland instead of focusing on its once core tenant of protecting the rights of the working poor.
“Look, I’m a Che Guevara believer,” Earle says.
“And I believe in revolution – but I don’t believe in smashing storefronts and marauding in the streets. That is absolute ignorance thinking that is going to change anything. It’s not OK.
“I think the left has got way to militant and ineffectual.”
The constant trouble in Portland, where anti-fascist organisation Antifa has been staging running battles with right-wing groups such as the Proud Boys, has convinced Earle to pack up and leave the West Coast city he had until recently called home.
“I just moved out of Portland,” he said.
“I’m on your (left-wing protesters’) side, but I’m walking my daughter down the street and you’re gonna knock my stroller over and smash a storefront in front of my daughter? F..k that.”
But left-wing issues – traditional left-wing issues at least – loom large on The Saint of Lost Causes.
On Don’t Drink the Water, he writes about a town whose water supply has been poisoned by corrupt mining practices, while Flint City Shake It deals with a problem anyone living in Adelaide would be very familiar with – the end of the automobile industry and the dislocation of the working classes that comes with it.
“Now the truth is, we ain’t what we used to be,” he sings.
“Whole lotta trouble come to our streets
The only one to blame is GMC…”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about what happened in Adelaide,” Earle says.
“In America we have a whole region that went through that. Detroit went down, Flint went down, Grand Rapids went down. That whole region has been ripped to pieces, affecting millions of people.”
It makes Earle – who became a father for the first time in 2017 – worry about what kind of world we’re leaving to our kids.
“Being a dad has made me more militant, because I can’t see what we’re leaving for my daughter and kids her age,” he says. “What are we giving to them?”
One thing he doesn’t plan to give little Etta St. James is a life on the road trailing around after her dad while he sings in bars and concert halls and tries to earn a buck.
It’s a choice informed by his own upbringing and relationship with his dad, who was trying to cram fatherhood into a schedule that was dominated by sudden super-stardom off the back of hit record Copperhead Road and a raging addiction to drugs and booze.
There wasn’t a whole lot of room for coaching Little League or going to parent-teacher nights.
Earle Jnr went down the same path for a while, struggled with the same demons, before getting clean.
And while the intoxicants are gone, Earle maintains life on the road is no place for a kid.
“I’ve always known my entire life that this is what it was going to be,” he says.
“I knew exactly what it was I was getting into. I’m not f..king Lady GaGa – I don’t get to do 30 shows a year and make millions of dollars. I work year-round.
“I make a good living, but I’m on the grind to make that living. I knew that I was never gonna be there as often as I should be because I chose this life. My dad warned me about it.”
SEE: Justin Townes Earle, September 6, The Gov, supported by Ricky Albeck and the Belair Line Band
TICKETS: thegov.com.au