The road to literary and musical fame lies littered with the bodies of authors and artists who succumbed to the notion that the path to making great art or music runs through the valleys of suffering, the more torturous the better. On the one hand, the exquisite pain that torments artists alienates them from society, and they turn solipsistic, gazing deeply at their inner anguish and peering into the scenes out of which such anguish emerges. On the other hand, these artists assuage their suffering with drugs or alcohol, discovering that amber drops of liquor or the warm flow of heroin elevates their awareness, enabling them to capture in lyrics and music the contours of their tortured souls.
From birth Justin Townes Earle, who died on August 20, 2020, joined a legacy of artists whose songwriting and behavior illustrated their embrace of the idea of the suffering artist. When Justin was born, his father Steve Earle gave his son the middle name of Townes, a tribute, in some measure, to the elder Earle’s songwriting idol, Townes Van Zandt.
Like a prince in a Shakespearean tragedy, Justin had to wear this heavy crown of Townes’ name, and he “carried the name with pride and resentment,” writes Rolling Stone journalist Jonathan Bernstein in his superb new biography, What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome: The Authorized Biography of Justin Townes Earle (Da Capo, January 13, 2026). “There was something eerie, something cursed with confidence, something almost comically predestined about a southern singer-songwriter embracing a name like that. The name was saturated with a legend making so intertwined with his upbringing that it took years for Justin to label it,” Bernstein continues.
