Steve Earle & The Dukes
J.T.

I don't have children. And if this were "Cuore" instead of DeBaser, such an opening would have gone straight into the "Who cares" column.

But sometimes I think about what would have become of me if I had had them. And often I regret it, while other times I breathe a sigh of relief.

Because I am certain that dealing with a child is sometimes a matter that can make your veins and wrists tremble.

I see my son who cannot help but rush into the first abyss that presents itself in front of him, almost like Alex Chilton, the man called destruction: do I make him understand to stop with good manners—we sit around a table, and discuss calmly—or with bad ones, kicking him in the rear? Or do I let him carry on until he understands everything at his own expense?

And if the bad teacher of my child is really me—who, back in the day, called the abyss home—then how do I handle this matter?

So, when a few months ago I bought this Steve Earle record, thinking about his story and that of his son Justin, I felt decidedly relieved that I don't have a child.

The story of the two, in its extreme simplicity, is this.

Steve has an unhealthy passion for rock, like any respectable Texan, to the point of making it a raison d'être; he does rock damn well, but fails in everything else. Everything else can be summarized in seven marriages and just as many divorces, three children rarely seen, an inordinate passion for alcohol, heroin, and cocaine, and for guns. Today, Steve is 66 years old and looks it, although no one would have ever bet he'd crossed the 40 threshold; if he made it, it's just because, on the brink of that threshold, his passions led him straight into a prison from which he exits because he accepts to join a rehab community. Today, Steve would love to quit rock, but he must continue making records to pay alimony to the seven who once said yes to him.

That Justin is Steve's first son and inherits from him artistic talent and deviant passions, good blood doesn't lie, and neither does bad. He's talented, not like dad Steve, but undeniably talented with a guitar in hand and a microphone in front. Only that growing up without a father wasn't smooth, adolescence was unhinged, and perhaps to accept it and find peace, he then tells it in explicative records right from the title, like "Single Mothers," "Absent Fathers," and "Kids in the Street." Justin burns through adolescence quickly with alcohol and heroin, one overdose after another, five according to those who kept count. Yet, he always survives, makes a family, becomes a father. Yet, he doesn’t quit heroin and alcohol; ends up in hospital for inhaling vomit into his lungs, survives somehow, and a doctor clearly tells him that if he doesn't stop, he'll die soon, but he perhaps in a moment of delirium convinces himself he's like Bruce Willis in "Unbreakable," only that's a movie not based on Justin's true story. Who dies of a fatal overdose on August 20th last year.

Steve, who would have already wanted to quit everything, instead finds in a three-year-old girl an eighth reason to continue making records.

"J.T." was born here and those two letters stand for Justin Townes, as Justin’s middle name is Townes. Like Townes Van Zandt, who is one of the two to whom Steve owes everything artistically, the other being Guy Clark; and Steve, to pay alimony, a few years ago invented two beautiful tributes, "Townes" and "Guy."

"J.T." might be a tribute, perhaps an homage to son Justin, more likely it is the only way Steve knows to find money and try to build a decent future for his granddaughter.

Whatever it is, they are 10 Justin songs that Steve sews onto himself, the rock-tinged country in the style of Johnny Cash of "I Don't Care," "Ain't Glad I'm Leaving," and "They Killed Joe Henry," the ballads "Far Away in Another Town" and "Turn Out My Lights," the slow bluesy "The Saint of Lost Causes" and the decidedly faster "Lone Pine Hill" and "Harlem River Blues," down to the (almost) rockabilly "Champagne Corolla."

Then there's the track that closes everything, "Last Words," the only one written by Steve, to remember the last phone call received from Justin, the evening of August 20th.

"Make sure I'm not the one who has to bury you."

"You won't."

They both hang up.

Justin injects the last dose and that’s how it ends.

What's left is "J.T.," which is a great starting point to become acquainted with Justin.

Even better, there are Justin's records: my favorites, going backward, "The Saint of Lost Causes," "Kids in the Street," and "Harlem River Blues."