A bird in flight adorns the back of Justin Townes Earle’s left hand. On the other is a tattoo of two sledgehammers.
Both illustrations remind the Americana singer of lessons he learned.
When he was 16 years old, Earle attended a music festival with a friend who encouraged the young guitarist to step up on stage, an event that inspired the sledgehammers.
“Then when I got done, he got on the mic and told the crowd that I have a thumb like a sledgehammer — the way that I fingerpick,” Earle said. “So many years later, I got the sledgehammer (tattoo).”
It was the breakup of his engagement that inspired the bird.
“I was engaged to this really awful woman, and one day I decided that I could leave any time I wanted to,” Earle said.
That night, he was performing in Philadelphia and decided on the tattoo to “always remind me that if I’m unhappy, I’m always free to go.”
Earle’s tattoos are indicative of important points in his past, but his albums act as signifiers of his personal history.
“I’m very proud of all of my records and I love them,” Earle said. “And I love them because they do show me — they’re just like my tattoos — they show me where I was at that point in my life.”
While he was recording his latest album, Harlem River Blues, Earle was undergoing intense personal turmoil, including alcoholism and cocaine addiction. To the songwriter, however, the record stands as a reminder of what he endured to create it.
“It’s really important for me to remember those dark places so I don’t have to go back,” Earle said. “… I was really running on desperation while I was writing those songs and while I was tracking them, and I think the record shows that but in a very good way.”
Earle, who is 29 years old, has recorded three albums, beginning with 2008’s The Good Life. He said that by starting to write albums when he was 25 years old — an age he says is a turning point in a man’s life — he moved past much of his immaturity.
“I started becoming more comfortable with myself as a man,” Earle said. “The pissed-off boy was gone, finally, and I had finally arrived on the scene as a man with things to look forward to instead of looking back.”
One way that Earle, who is the son of country star Steve Earle, looks forward instead of backward is by not directly discussing his personal problems in his songs. He said while his drug problems are not very relatable, many of the emotions associated with them are. He works those into his music instead.
“I think the emotions that come along with (addiction), the desperate emotions, are relatable,” Earle said. “So I try to relate on an emotional level, instead of a level of action.”
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