JUSTIN TIME, ON A WINTER’S NIGHT
From Nashville to the Highlands, by way of Brooklyn: Justin Townes Earle keeps a sharp eye out for the perfect record store. (Photos by Joshua Black Wilkins)
By LAURA SCHNEIDER
As Justin Townes Earle tells it, his last gig at the stageless Claddagh, an admittedly low-profile Bayshore music venue, “had its kinks, but it was all fun.
“I’ve played on street corners and I’ve played in the some of the worst, nastiest honky-tonks in America, so nothin’ intimidates me as far as a place to play,” he says.
Tomorrow night, prior to taking his sublime southern songcraft across the pond for a month-long UK tour, the Nashville-bred, roots-based musician makes another pitstop at the Highlands watering hole. The gig’s part of Michael Patrick’s Suburban Roots Concert Series, founded by Patrick with a goal of bringing to the area musicians in the Americana, Roots, Folk and Country genres who might not normally include New Jersey on their itineraries.
Earle joined Patrick at the Claddagh last August, and had such a good time he agreed to return for an encore tomorrow night, with mandolin and banjo player Cory Younts (who also plays harmonica) in tow. Between photo ops and interviews in advance of his Europe trip, Earle found a few moments this week to chat with oRBit.
In what might seem an odd move for a red-blooded southern boy born and raised in country music’s ground zero of Nashville, Earle recently moved to Brooklyn. His explanation was typically straight-shooting: “Well, generally when a Southern man finds his way to New York City in the middle of winter, it has to do with a woman.”
While he’s enjoying his new urban life, Earle tours constantly, having played more than 260 shows last year around the world, and says audiences in the northeast are more receptive to his sound than those in his southern home. His theory as to why is simple: to non-southern audiences, his music sounds different and refreshing, as it’s not the same old thing they’ve heard a million times over.
“In the northeast, you’re more of an import. You might as well be from fuckin’ Austria, especially when you start talkin’ with the accent from the stage,” he says. “Except for some parts of Pennsylvania and some areas in the far northeast, fiddle and banjo music and bluegrass has been pretty much blacked out. It’s gone.”
“Up here, in a record store, you’re gonna be really hard-pressed to find a Charlie Poole record,” Earle says. “Even here, in Williamsburg, I’ve gone into a million record stores, and there are no Woody Guthrie records. None. And that’s kind of a strange thing to me.”
Earle gets an even warmer welcome in countries like England, Holland, and Australia. For some reason, “they have better access to our music than we do. For example, I went into a record store in Australia, and I found all these really early Stanley Brothers live records that I’d never seen before in my life,” he says. “They had a whole section of Charlie Feathers.”
He is impressed by non-southern artists, like the Old Crow Medicine Show (from Ithaca, NY) and Pokey LaFarge (from the Midwest) who play traditional American roots music. Since they didn’t grow up with it, they have to work harder to “get” it, and to Earle, this type of music requires a study. “Up here, it has to be based off more of an idea of what it is, as opposed to an actual representation of it,” he says. “You have to be more of a seeker.”
You can seek out tickets for tomorrow night’s show here, and info about the Claddagh here.
Tomorrow in oRBit: The King is back in the building, and the building is better than ever, as the Count Basie presents the annual Elvis Birthday Bash.
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January 14, 2009
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[...] the man who brought roots-music geniuses Justin Townes Earle and Pokey LaFarge to the Shore for the first time, and in this benefit for the Cooley’s Anemia [...]
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:55 am