“When you get there, there will be an internal audience of curious people to see what Steve Earle’s son looks like or Waylon Jennings’ son,” said Jennings. “So there is a little bit of mistrust with the public from the start. Are they here because they like my music or because they like my dad’s music? “
TO RECORD “JT,” Earle, with the help of his son Ian, 33, separated Justin’s work for a list of 10 songs – two of them, “Turn Out My Lights” and “Far Away in Another Town”, Justin wrote with Scotty Melton – and booked a week at Electric Lady Studios in New York.
He worked fast, sending preparatory notes to his band via text message. When they started recording, Justin had been dead for less than two months. (They started sessions before October 20). Earle, who avoided speaking publicly about Justin’s death, wanted the album to be his statement.
He was also afraid of being tied to someone else’s memorial.
“I didn’t want to be invited to a tribute album with several people that I thought were absolutely facilitators and helped to kill him,” said Earle, his words peppered with profanity. “So I thought the way to cut it off at the root would be to make a record of mine.”
At this point in his career, Earle – wearing glasses, with a long gray beard – is a Renaissance man for whom mortality and addiction have been a perennial theme. In addition to his various albums, Earle wrote a play about a woman on death row and a novel on the spectrum of Hank Williams, and contributed music to a recent play about a mining disaster in West Virginia. Lately, he has been writing a science fiction story for television.
The night before the first “JT” session, Earle gathered the band in his apartment for a sushi meal. Ray Kennedy, Earle’s longtime engineer, remembers the time in Electric Lady as a celebration, but focused. They started each day at 10am and ended at 4pm, so Earle could look after her youngest son, John Henry, 10, who has autism.