He’s a native Nashville cat who makes his home in New York City. A lanky, “all angles and elbows” outsider who’s been named to GQ’s list of “Style Stars.” A second-generation iconoclast who backs up that “wicked sense of style” with hard skills, a reverent musical wisdom beyond his years, and a guitar\/vocal technique that’s allowed him to wow audiences variously characterized as “bluegrass,” “Americana,” “blues,” “folk” and “alternative.”<\/p>\n
Being the son of country contrarian Steve Earle – and being named for iconic rebel Townes Van Zandt – might have strait-jacketed another, lesser performer’s ambitions. But with a catalog of critically acclaimed albums to his credit, and a growing fanbase built over the course of countless road miles, Justin Townes Earle<\/strong>\u00a0is very much his own breed of American original – and he’s just getting started.<\/p>\n When JTE crosses the river to New Jersey on the evening of Sunday, November 4, he’ll be making his first major concert appearance in the area – a milestone for the man who’s “played on street corners and in some of the worst, nastiest honky-tonks in America.”<\/p>\n What’s more, he’ll be doing it on the stage of the venue that’s hosted some of the most legendary international folk music artists, as well as the sought-after acts in traditional bluegrass and “newgrass” – the Pollak Theatre<\/strong>\u00a0at Monmouth University.<\/strong><\/p>\n Having marked his 30th birthday in 2012, the Americana Music Award winner will be working his recent Bloodshot Records release Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now<\/em>\u00a0– his fourth full-length project, and the subject of an ongoing tour that’s carried him from the Deep South to midnight-sun Scandinavia.<\/p>\n Singing with a weathered maturity that summons echoes of Tom Waits and The Boss; adding Memphis-soul horn arrangements to an increasingly “citified” signature sound, JTE stakes out a street corner that’s as far from his previous album Harlem River Blues<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0as it is from the cookie-cutter, cowboy-hatted country of Music Row.<\/p>\n Worldly, gritty songs like “Look the Other Way,”\u00a0 “Maria” and the title track deliver the goods with Guthrie-like grace and a rootsy authority that place him as one of the greatest new American songsmiths – a fully evolved performer who draws his bracingly honest songcraft from a well of hard-won life experience.<\/p>\n The Southern man who’s more likely to pen a song about “One More Night in Brooklyn” or “The Lower East Side” than to name-check the usual honkytonk boilerplate has left any theme-park dreams of Opryland far behind. Still, Nashville’s loss is America’s gain – and when JTE comes to Monmouth U, he’ll have the future on his side, his past where it can’t do anything but make him stronger, and a here-and-now that’s all about proving his pedigree every time he stands in front of an audience. It’s a boundary-busting experience that’s pure Justin Townes Earle music.<\/p>\n