Justin Townes Earle Gets Back On His Feet In Chicago

[Photo Credit: Joshua Black Wilkins]

“I am my father’s son. I’ve never known when to shut up,” sang Justin Townes Earle on Thursday night at Chicago’s historic Metro venue. Earle inauspiciously wrote those lyrics, for a song called “Mama’s Eyes” from his second album, Midnight At The Movies, before his recent troubles in Indianapolis, after which the charming troubadour wound up in jail, then canceled a tour and did a stint in rehab. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

But Earle can still kill an audience when he’s stone cold sober. He’s an entertainer, an old school song and dance man, and that’s one thing he picked up growing up Music City royalty – the folksy showmanship of Nashville’s Lower Broad musicians and the shine of a good barbershop shave. But Earle also never could stay in one place very long, which inevitably led to problems like rehab stints at a young age. “My father was once quoted as saying that I’m a hard dog to keep under the porch,” Earle joked at the show.

Earle actually addressed the Indianapolis incident at the show and played a song that he said will be the first off his next record. It did a better job summing up where Earle stands on the matter than any between-song banter. The song pictures a Sunday morning scene, with Earle sitting on a street corner, wishing he could sleep – his hands in his pockets because he’s “shaking like a leaf.” In the song he admits “maybe I caused a scene,” but the refrain is the real kicker: “it won’t be the last time.” “Here’s to knowing better and just not giving a fuck,” Earle toasted in Chicago.

But to see Earle work a crowd is also a thing of true grace. His abrasive, plucky fingerstyle guitar has become a kind of trademark for his live sound. It’s not as elegant or informed as a true bluesman – or as tempered and thoughtful as Townes Van Zandt, who must have mostly inspired it – but it’s all Earle’s own. He wanders around the stage like a marionette keeping the rhythm for band members Josh Hedley (fiddle) and Bryn Davies (upright bass) to embellish over. And if there’s one thing you can say about Earle, it’s that he knows how to put an ace band together. Hedley’s playing is starting to sound like a cross between the vertical flights of Coleman Hawkins and the sophisticated jazz fiddling of Lonnie Chatmon on songs like “One More Night In Brooklyn” and “South Georgia Sugarbabe,” where Earle lets him cut loose. Then there was the ungodly gorgeous Memphis Horns-mimicking call on “Midnight At The Movies” that Hedley played for Earle’s ode to nodding out at a porno theater.

“Slippin’ And Slidin’,” which Earle performed alone on stage Thursday night, also deals with addiction. “I should never touch the stuff,” Earle sings as the R&B chord progression hits a jazzy diminished chord. The album version of “Slippin’ And Slidin’,” one of the best songs on Earle’s new record, Harlem River Blues, features guitar work by Jason Isbell. On the song, Earle achieves what songs like “Working For The MTA” – a lazy pastiche of a Monroe Brothers tune – never do. It’s when his swaggering vision of America comes fully into focus, incorporating not just the nearly-forgotten idioms of hard luck ’20s hucksters like Charlie Poole but also the verdant, swampy rhythm and blues of the South.