Places That Shaped His Music

Justin Townes Earle may have traveled the world as an Americana troubadour, but the story of the singer-songwriter’s life can be told in just a few square miles in his native Nashville. In this special episode of Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now, Jonathan Bernstein, author of the new authorized biography of Earle, What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome, leads fans on an intimate walking tour of Earle’s Nashville, from the park where he found solace to the dive bar where he honed his craft.

The former is Fannie Mae Dees Park, colloquially known as “Dragon Park” because of the dragon sculpture that anchors it to the neighborhood. Earle visited it often throughout his life, playing soccer in the grass and, according to an anecdote in Bernstein’s book, carving his name into a wooden deck overlooking the park. For this episode of Nashville Now, we set out to find Earle’s graffiti and also visited other locations essential to the life of the songwriter.

Earle died in August 2020, during the peak of the pandemic, from an accidental overdose. He was 38.

“Justin spent his last few months doing what we were all kind of doing: trying to figure out how to be alone,” Bernstein says. “But he was really struggling. His substance abuse was in a really bad place. His purpose of getting onstage every night had been ripped away from him, like it had so many musicians.”

While Earle was, “trying to anchor himself in his art and his artistic future,” as Bernstein says, he was physically in shambles and was hospitalized with pneumonia the month before his death. He also was struggling with substance abuse and purchased cocaine shortly before he died.

“Like so many thousands of Americans who had died this way in the last decade, it was laced with fentanyl, which he did not know,” Bernstein says. “He died of an overdose by himself in his apartment.”

Despite Earle’s tragic end, What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome is an inspiring story of a musician who outgrew the shadow of his famous father, Steve Earle, to become one of the most influential figures in American roots music. Read an excerpt from the biography here, and watch the full Nashville Now episode below. (Jonathan Bernstein is senior research editor at Rolling Stone.)

Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by senior music editor Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Lainey Wilson, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Kings of Leon, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Ink, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, Clever, and journalists Marissa R. Moss and Josh Crutchmer.

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