Why Does Justin Townes Earle Hate Nashville? (Interview)

Justin Townes Earle is a new man…newly sober, newly married and he has a new album, Single Mothers. Justin also has a new tour, one that brings him and his band to New Zealand in October with shows in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda recently spoke to Justin Townes Earle by phone in Nashville where he currently resides…a fact he’s not too happy about. Part of the problem, he reckons, is the popularity of the TV series Nashville…a programme he’s not too fond of.

Click here to listen to the interview with Justin Townes Earle:

Or read a transcription of the interview here:

MD: The impression that people have, especially probably in New Zealand, of Nashville is probably greatly influenced by the TV show because that’s been showing here. How would you compare it to what people see on something like that?

JE: Well, I mean unfortunately it is turning into something like the TV show. I, and a lot of other natives, there are very few others here,  we hate it because it makes us all look like a bunch of douchebags that write terrible songs.

MD: Right.

JE: And I, yeah I can’t stand it actually. It’s created an invasion of the city of, you know, people, like one of the actors from that Goddamned show said that we were all excited here about the new reputation, the new good reputation that Nashville now has.

MD: Right.

JE: And to that I just want to say, ‘what the fuck was wrong with our reputation in the first place?’.

MD: Exactly. It is a pretty backhanded compliment if anything.

JE: Exactly.

MD: So musically is the show having an influence on what’s happening out of the city?

JE: I think that it is actually. It’s a very unfortunate thing but it is, it’s having a major effect cause what’s happening is that people are moving in here because of that show and they, you know, they’re buying themselves a pair of, you know, shitty $100 cowboy boots and an ugly hat, pants with fucking rhinestones, fucking button flaps on the back pockets and think they’re in Nashville and, you know, they, half of them don’t even know who the fuck Webb Pierce is.

MD: Right.

JE: You know, that’s such a, that is just, I think it’s insulting, I mean people are like, ‘oh I love this town but I’m gonna move there and change every fuckin’ thing about it.’

MD: Now, yourself, other than having moved to Nashville recently, the other changes in your life, you’ve gotten married recently, you’ve gotten sober recently. how did those things effect what we’re gonna hear as far as your music now?

JE: Well, you know, I think that with the sobriety thing, before I, you know, I had about a year long, maybe two year long, or is it just under two year long slip up after eight years of sobriety. So coming back, coming back into the sobriety thing was definitely rough. When it happened I was in a very unhappy place in life, I was unhappy with the person I was with and a lot of other things and removing myself from that situation was even hard, even though I hated it.

MD: Right.

JE: But you know I met my wife which…I could stay, I could not use drugs, I mean, I smoke a lot of pot but it’s like, you know, I don’t, I can, not use drugs and not drink, that’s really easy…but doing that and not, you know, indulging other addictions in life but being an asshole was something that I wasn’t, I wasn’t very good at but you know luckily and then marriage comes along and that changes everything, I mean, well hopefully for anybody that gets married, you don’t marry anybody that, I wouldn’t marry anybody that I didn’t just absolutely adore.

MD: Right, right. Although there are some marriages that can end up being rather destructive for some folks, so I guess it’s not always, you know, the best thing for them.

JE: No, I’m glad that, I’m 32 and you know, coming up on a year of marriage and so that’s, you know, I’ll be 33 in January and, you know, that’s a…life is changed, it took me longer to get out of my old thinking that I thought it was and to get out of my, you know, I just had some bad ideas, you know,  I finally listened to the doctor and took the fucking medication and it had no effect on my creativity what so ever.

MD: Yeah. Is a lot of it just kind of chalked up to maturity at this point, I mean, you say you’re 32 and it seems like, you know, there’s a kind of push against people wanting to admit to being mature and this kind of terminal juvenility especially for men, you know, the desire to be eternally, you know, 18 years old. Does that enter into your behaviour at all?

JE: You know, I don’t, there’s something about like, there are guys that are stuck in that kind of, you know, a constant kid and I think I was too, you know, in certain ways I still am, I mean, I watch cartoons all the time, you know, things like that but, you know, there’s a point in life where I think we have these things that we want, we want a wife, we want kids and things like that. If we’re gonna do that, you know, there’s just a point where a man’s just got to be a man.

MD: Right.

JE: And I think that, you know, luckily I have a chance at actually being a good man because I’m in a position where I… I’m lucky, I get to do something that I love for a living and luckily I waited long enough to get married, that I met somebody I find that is just absolutely amazing.

MD: Getting back to the album Single Mothers, on my first listen to it, the two things that kinda struck me. One that it seems kind of more straight forward country sounding than some of your previous records and also, it also sounded like, very much like a live performance in the studio rather than kind of a layered recording. Is that an accurate description of kind of how it was put together?

JE: Yeah, I mean, my last two, I mean, Nothing’s Gonna  Change was recorded 100% completely live and this one was too, except for my guitar player who always likes to, you know, fix little things always but all my vocals and all my guitar parts are live because I just think it captures a certain… you just can’t get that feeling in a…you know, they usually call what I keep scratch vocals.

MD: Right.

JE: You know, cause’ you go back in there and you want hit all these spots that they want you to hit. I just don’t believe in that, I mean, it’s like people who like edit out the breaths in between words, that’s a really big part of a singer and things like that. This record is, you know, I think what this record kind of does is it, you know, I’ve had people say, you know, this a country record, I’ve had people say, it’s a blues record, I’ve had people say it’s a soul record at interviews, and I think that that’s the, the idea is proving that you can, you can take all that stuff back, everything we did back to Stax

MD: Yeah.

JE: You can take it back to Hank Williams. So it’s just kind of me doing my best to prove the fact that there’s really, there’s not a division between those two that there is now. Back when the terms hadn’t been broadened to a point where they’re unrecognisable.

MD: Yeah cause’ back in the 60s when Muscle Shoals was happening and Fame Studios and all that, country soul was kind of what it was and there’d be like the soul thing happening in the rhythm section, I guess the bass and the drums and country was coming out of the vocals and it all seemed to make perfect sense back then.

JE: Yeah and Aretha Franklin could go down there and record with them and so could JJ Cale, well I mean that’s the thing, all that music is based on the church.

MD: Yeah.

JE: And unfortunately it was just decided by which of the railroad tracks you came from as to which music you were taught growing up.

MD: Now speaking of church, I noticed one of the songs, My Baby Drives, seems like it could be autobiographical and you kind of handed over some of the responsibilities of life to your partner and you’re going to church and visiting your mother and whatever. I mean, is that what is happening with you or is it…

JE: Absolutely not. None of these, all of these songs were written before I got married.

MD: Right.

JE: Yeah, My Baby Drives Me is more of like a I’ll use an excuse to get the fuck away from her, you know, I’ll have her take me there so she’s convinced, she knows where I am but yeah it was one of those songs that I, you know, I think that I, well that’s a bad example, Billy Joe Shaver does actually go to church, he’s quite religious these days but I think I mention that just like Hank Williams would mention church.

MD: Right.

JE: You know, because, God I can’t remember the last time I went to mass, you know, can’t remember at all.

MD: Right, and from what I understand White Gardenias was somehow inspired by Billie Holiday, maybe you can kind of elaborate on that.

JE: Yeah. There is a quote out there that Billie Holiday made in her later life where she was talking about the 40s in New York when all the Jazz clubs moved to 52^nd street and instead of…that’s where all the popular ones were as opposed to Harlem where they were in the earlier days… and it was just a small strip of clubs where like Birdland was and all that stuff and she said it had a, this quote about it where she said “I have the white dress and the white shoes” which she was very famous for wearing, “and every night they brought me the White Gardenias and the white junk” and I thought that, that was, it was an amazing, just a really, you know, stunning kind of quote that kinda hits you in the face.

MD: Right.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWoJYmDg0WQ]

JE: You, know, and I’m also done, you know, I never really have glorified junk in my songs. I’ve never been big on the, you know, proud to be a junkie in my music.

MD: Right.

JE: But in this tune…it’s like, everybody knows that about Billie, you know, I just cut that little part out, that’s been said a million times. I wanted to write a song about Billie Holiday that didn’t mention drugs.

MD: Fair enough, and speaking of no drugs, you’re gonna be touring, you’re coming to New Zealand. What is touring like now, is it changed much for you with this kind of new found maturity and sobriety and being married and all that?

JE: Well I think that touring is, the whole purpose of what I do for a living is to not, you know, have, it’s, it is to be a kid and kind of, there’s a certain part of your day, you know, just sound checks and shows where, you know, you are a kid again.

MD: Yeah.

JE: And I think too when you’re trapped in a, when you’re in a bus with people, stuff after a little while just kinda goes whacky anyway. People start to get weird after about two weeks, you know, and it starts, you know, it starts, I don’t think that the bus and touring will ever change really, you know,  my wife will be travelling with me but that’s a, you know, I can’t imagine anybody I’d rather travel with, you know, the boys, you know, we’re all on one bus but it’s, everybody gets along really well and my wife is turning into a somewhat of a den mother.

MD: Alright and when you come here, you’re coming with the band. Is that right?

JE: Yeah I will be coming with the band. With some really, I’m excited to be able to come, you know, to be able to come to New Zealand and to Australia, Australia’s seen a lot more of me but, you know, I’ve come to New Zealand quite often.

MD: Yeah.

JE: And it’s about time. I’m just glad to finally be able to bring a band down there, I mean that’s also these days can be a source of pride being able to afford to bring these musicians to play down there cause’ its gotten so ridiculously expensive and I am very grateful for the fact that, you know, I have a fan base that, you know, does draw me down there and it makes it possible for me to come down there because I still need to see a lot more of New Zealand cause’ I’ve, you know, I’ve seen basically Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland.

MD: Yeah.

JE: You know, and that, and not all of any of those, I mean I did get to see Christchurch before the earthquake which I’m glad I did and it’s still one of the most heartbreaking things that I can think of, you know, and yeah, it’s just like, I’m actually, I’m looking forward to sharing what I love about these places with my wife and with my band which, if any of them have been there, well a couple of them I know have been there but, you know, they do what most America bands did when they were there. It’s like Sydney, Melbourne, maybe Adelaide, maybe Perth, and then you go home.

MD: Yeah.

JE: And, but I’ve done, all these, you know, big tours that I’m there for 5 weeks and playing, you know, Woolombimbi and places like that, you know, places way the hell out in South Gippsland and stuff like that, you know, and so I have a, you know, BP and I made that deal like do you wanna go to the normal cities or do you just wanna go all over and I was like let’s go all over.

MD: Yeah, cool and one last thing I wanted to kind of touch on. I had a look at your twitter feed, account, your feed and looks like things get fairly feisty on there. You had all sorts of comments about what’s happening in Ferguson and comments on other musicians and whether they should cancel shows or not.

JE: Yeah.

MD: Is that a, a healthy outlet for you, do you think?

JE: Yeah, I mean I think it is because, you know, I get, you know, I’ve always been a very out spoken person, it’s not that I don’t give a fuck what people think, it’s that I don’t give a fuck what certain people think.

MD: I see.

JE: And you know, there’s a lot more to, there’s just certain things I don’t like about certain public figures that just make jackasses out of themselves and routinely fuck people over. It’s just kind of a, that is just one of the things that I disagree with in this business is just having to have anybody hang over your head or do anything like that. But you know, as far as the Ferguson thing is concerned is, I don’t get, I’m not like my father as like you’re not gonna hear political speeches from me ever.

MD: Right.

JE: I actually keep as far away from politics in my performances and records as I can because I don’t think that, that’s what music is about. I think it’s about forgetting about all that bullshit but Ferguson, what happened in Ferguson was not a political issue, it’s a people issue, it’s a human being issue. So, you know, it’s like, they’re always talking about how black people are killing black people, well I mean cops kill black people too and that’s also not just black people. Here is Nashville a real well known song writer named Bud Lee, his son was tasered by the Nashville Metro Police, he was tasered to death in the parking lot of a club and he was a like a skinny like 18 year old kid just, you know,  a little jumped up on ecstasy.

MD: Right.

JE: And he was unarmed. There was no need to taser the shit out of him.

MD: Yeah.

JE: So this is not an issue that just, it unfortunately hits one side of our culture very hard and only touches others but it’s a real serious thing to me. I mean I grew up in a, I grew up with my mom in an area where the, you know, if you were trouble and like the cop, you know, the cops knew your name and you knew theirs and there were good ones and there were bad ones and, you know, the bad ones hurt people and hurt people on a regular basis and I think that there’s something. You know, I support soldiers because they’re soldiers not war.

MD: Right.

JE: But I think that theres something that needs to be looked at about the idea of bringing boys back from war and putting them straight into police uniforms because DTF is a very serious thing.

Click here for more info on Justin Townes Earle’s NZ tour.