When Justin Townes Earle rolled into Portland in 2016, he had already lived a long life for a 34-year-old. Born in Nashville, Earle had been making music since he was a kid and earning plenty of comparisons to his father, country rabble-rouser Steve Earle, along the way. Determined to bust out of his father’s shadow, he saw a musical breakthrough with 2010’s Harlem River Blues, which set dark urban legends full of suicide, subways, and addiction to old-time gospel, folk, and country-blues music. His blend of city life and country music helped define the style of music that would become known as Americana.
While Earle found fame, he also found alcohol and drugs and bar fights and addiction and demons that would plague him for much of his life. Still, he was starting a new chapter with marriage and impending fatherhood and his own version of sobriety, and Portland was the place it was all going to happen.
“He was attempting to move into the next stage of his life and adulthood, and he sort of became a domestic person, in some ways,” explains Jonathan Bernstein, the author of What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome, a new, authorized biography of Earle. “There are some really sweet stories from his first year in Portland—of him driving around with a friend, putting his house together with [wife] Jenn Marie, and picking up equipment or furniture that they found on Craigslist. He was having these conversations with his friend, Andy Moore, about fatherhood and what that could mean for him, and he was actually in a really pretty solid place. I think the city at first was a really kind of calming, positive influence on him.” Sadly, the birth of his daughter and the lure of domesticity weren’t enough to keep the many, many demons at bay.
Lonesome doesn’t shy away from telling the unvarnished truth of Earle’s life and legacy, all with the blessing and help of his wife, Jenn Marie Earle, as well as the family, friends, and colleagues who knew Earle. Bernstein was well prepared for the task, after coming to know Earle first as a fan.
“I stumbled onto him by going to see him at a club in Minnesota, where I was going to college in 2009," Bernstein says. "My friend was working for the college radio station. He got a free ticket to see Earle play and wasn't able to go, so he gave it to me. It was one of those shows that changed my life as a music fan.” Since that fateful show, Bernstein has chronicled the life and music of the singer-songwriter.
When Earle died, it deeply unsettled Bernstein. “I was surprised at how much I was shaken by his death,” he says. “I kind of spent that whole fall speaking to people who knew him. I started talking to his widow for the first time, and started talking to his old bandmates back in Nashville.” That culminated in a 2021 Rolling Stone article, “The Ballad of Justin Townes Earle,” which opened the door to this book.
“I felt like it was just the bare beginnings of trying to understand this person and just how profound and complex and larger than life his life was, and also just barely understanding how complex, multifaceted, multi-layered, and genius his songwriting was,” Bernstein says. “I just couldn't stop thinking about him and his music.” Bernstein kept interviewing people about Earle and soon a book was born.
Lonesome documents the dark and the light of Earle’s life and legacy. He digs into the backstories behind Earle’s most famous songs and chronicles his life, from his early days in Nashville to his time on the road and in the studio, onstage and off. He also, of course, talks about Earle’s time in Portland.
While Earle lived in town, he was sober-ish. He and Jenn Marie had been living in a very small town in Northern California. According to Bernstein, she had originally thought the isolation from bad influences would be good for her husband, but while there, he stopped taking Suboxone, the medication that helped temper his darker cravings. When they found out they were expecting a child, they decided to move to Portland, closer to hospitals and city life. Before they could make the move, Earle drunkenly drove his car into a tree, totaling it.
By the time the family got to Portland, Earle’s substance use was creeping upwards. Even in a 2017 interview with Portland Monthly, he mentioned weed and whiskey. and Bernstein’s book says he was microdosing acid, too. Still, he and Jenn Marie set up their house in Laurelhurst and got ready for the arrival of their baby. Earle was excited to be a father. He spent time writing songs, playing shows in Portland, heading to Omaha to record, and embarking on a European tour. Earle expected to make it home in time for the birth of his daughter, but she came early, and he was still traveling. There's an argument to be made that missing the birth of his daughter was a tipping point for Earle. Instead of returning home to meet his new little girl, he vanished for days. His drug use continued and, with it, his violent moments, too.
It all came to a head in the summer of 2018 when the police were called to the couple’s home in Portland to respond to what Bernstein calls “a domestic violence case.” It was decided that Earle would go back to rehab in Texas. He had one night in Portland and, instead of spending it with his wife and daughter, he went out. “It was one last hurrah before rehab,” Bernstein says. “He spent all night just trying to procure whatever he could procure in bars and got as messed up as he could, and ended up in the middle of Old Town at three or four in the morning, just talking with whoever he met. He just wanted to spend a night of oblivion in Portland, before being placed on a plane to go to rehab in Texas.” Rehab didn’t stick and neither did Portland. Earle went back to Nashville, where he died in 2020 from an accidental overdose due to a combination of alcohol and cocaine that was laced with fentanyl. He was 38, his daughter was three.
Despite the dark chapters in his life, Bernstein wants people to recognize the power and persistence of Earle’s art, the love he had for his family, and that, despite it all, he has remained a musical hero and, ironically, a model of sobriety for many people. “Even though Justin's life ended tragically, he made so many amazing and beautiful connections in his life,” says Bernstein. “He left behind such a profound body of work that I think people are going to be discovering for decades.”
What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome was published on January 13 and is available in stores now.
