Steve Earle & The Dukes – JT
New West – 4 January 2021
A very personal album, JT is Steve Earle’s tribute to his late son, Justin Townes, who died of an accidental overdose last August and would have been 39 at the start of January. On JT, Earle and his band assemble a collection of ten of Justin’s songs, rounding off with a heartfelt new number by his father.
There may be some poignant choices of titles, but this is an album characterised by the celebration of his music and songwriting talent rather than sadness, interpretations rather than direct covers. It kicks off in rousing fiddle-driven bluegrass fashion with I Don’t Care, originally appearing as more of a Gurthie-styled number on JT’s 2007 debut EP, Yuma.
Of the eight albums Earle recorded, six are represented here, the first being a slower, but still old school bluesy hayride take, on the slope-along good-time Ain’t Glad I’m Leaving from 2008’s The Good Life from which come the bulk of the selections. The spare, fingerpicked Civil War ballad Lone Pine Hill gets a more drawled talking approach to the vocals, while, opening with organ drone, Far Away In Another Town, is less heavy on the drums with a soulful Band-like bluesy Americana groove and, minus the harmonica and piano, Turn Out My Lights is a simple fingerpicked acoustic arrangement.
As featured on 2012’s Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now, Maria was a mid-tempo Memphis soul influenced self-blaming break-up number, whereas, here, the guitars get turned up and jangled with Earle giving it more of a swagger and losing the original organ backing.
JT’s second album, 2009’s Midnight At The Movies yields another sprightly bluegrassy number, They Killed John Henry, before fast-forwarding to 2017’s Kids In The Street for Champagne Corolla. The latter was originally an organ and brass coloured mix of R&B and rockabilly but here it’s given more of a shuffling Dylanesque talking-blues feel, Earle’s vocals echoing his son’s.
The JT material ends with, first, the title track from his final album, the lengthy, gravelly, bluesy drawled slow prowl of The Saint of Lost Causes, taking on an even more menacing atmosphere than the original, and, finally, the suicide-themed title track from 2010’s Harlem River Blues, formerly a Cash-chugger but, featuring fiddle and pedal steel, recast with more of a Chuck Berry Promised Land vibe and some Cajun spices.
It ends with Eale’s heartfelt elegy, Last Words, a simple acoustic strum with Earle gruff’s vocals recalling his son’s birth and his frustration and pain at not being able to protect heal him from the demons that would consume him as he grew. Gradually building to its last chorus, it ends on the heartbreaking lines “Last thing I said was I love you / Your last words to me were I love you too.” As his song put it, JT spent his life Looking For A Place To Land, this magnificent album finds him and his legacy safe in his father’s loving arms.
Photo Credit: Jacob Blickenstaff