Two famous names, one resolute artist

NASHVILLE -- Justin Townes Earle laughs when you try to label “The Good Life,” his debut album. It’s a vintage-country, almost burlesque kinda folk-blues singer-songwritery cocktail of songs, written with the same thin but deep slices of emotions favored by legendary Texas songwriter Townes Van Zandt -- from whom the 25-year-old gets his middle name.

“I don’t know what ‘Americana’ means,” Earle says, tossing a shock of dark hair off his forehead and leaning closer. “And ‘indie’ used to mean you were on a label that didn’t have any money. . . . So, it’s not that. It’s not your daddy’s country -- it’s your granddaddy’s country.

“Then lyrically, some of those diminished chords, there’s a lot of Chet Baker and Willie [Nelson] in there too.”

With a porkpie hat perched on his head and long legs folded under a patio table of a sports bar in hip East Nashville, Earle is ready to start his tour -- which includes a stop Tuesday at the Echo -- to support the raw collection of songs that make up his first record.

Whether it’s the quiet piano and string-lonesome ballad “Turn Out My Lights” punctuated with hollow Springsteen harmonica, the almost Dixieland swing of “Ain’t Glad I’m Leavin’,” the classic neon-jukebox Hank Williams-esque title track or the stumbling ace of movin’ on “Faraway in Another Town,” this is a drifter’s repertoire.

Clearly they are the songs of one who has seen and done far too much and the appeal of excess is now lost on him. Earle acknowledges that his songs have been road tested. “Look, I was 20 years old, a junkie on the street. . . . If you don’t think that’s a dose of reality. . . “

It’s in his blood. Not just the music, but also the penchant for big appetites. He is, after all, the son of Grammy-winning Texas rock-country iconoclast Steve Earle. “I figured out pretty quick that nothing’s owed me ‘cause of the name I carry.”

Unlike some children of the famous, Earle has an even-keel relationship with the reality.

“Sure, it may get the door open,” he concedes, “but then it’s a pretty heavy door, ‘cause it comes with expectations. I’m not intimidated by [the family name]. . . . And I’ve always been a fighter -- I’ve got the two fake front teeth to prove it -- so I’m not worried about it.”

He consciously made a record that would be his, something one wouldn’t be tempted to compare. It’s a lesson he learned from his father.

“My dad wasn’t around much growing up,” he says. “And when I went to live with him in my early teens, he was on the road. But being in Nashville, where you have blue-collar working class and a middle class steeped in the music business, well, you see what you learn. . . . No kid from here wants to be part of Music Row.”

Referring to his father’s more raucous third album, Earle said, “ ‘Copperhead Road’ was made the way it was because he didn’t wanna write songs about cars and girls the rest of his life. . . . And that’s why I made my record the way I did. You can’t call it a solid anything. . . . but there are bits of N’awlins, Muscle Shoals, Memphis, Texas for sure.”

Rambling and getting lost are things he knows from the inside out. That too defined “The Good Life.”

“Far Away in Another Town,” which closes the album, is about leaving a dissolute life behind. For Earle, that moment came with resounding clarity at 21. “It was after my fifth overdose. I laid unconscious in a hospital room for seven days and then had a dealer deliver drugs to the hospital . . . just unclipped the tubing from the IV bag and shot them straight in.

“Even then, I went to treatment without any intention of staying clean, but I started listening. Now I do what I do to stay clean,” he says, “and it makes it easier to do this. ‘Cause it was either do this or be a criminal, and I’m a lousy criminal. . . . I like the drugs too much.”

He laughs because he’s seen the reality.

“A bunch of these songs were written before I was 18, ‘Turn Out My Lights,’ ‘Hard Livin’,’ ‘Far Away’ and ‘Ain’t Glad’ came from that time. Some were written with Scotty Melton. We were going through the same things at the same time, and this represents the beginning of slipping in our lives.”

For all the broken hearts and misadventures, “The Good Life” also boasts the gentle “Who Am I to Say,” offering compassion for lost souls.

“People should write about what they know,” he says. “These 19-year-old New York kids writing about plowhorses? I was born and raised in south Nashville. I like cows, but I’ve never worked ‘em. Don’t own a ’32 Ford pickup. I’m writing a murder ballad right now . . . and the killer drives a ’93 Taurus.

“Forms are forms, and they should be honored, but anything else? I write about city girls, because that’s what I know.”

Honoring forms is a big deal to Earle, who grew up unstructured. Wearing a brown suit with rhinestones around the pockets, he matches his boots and Stetson to his shirt and does his best to evoke a time when country “was about showmanship. Because we already have Morrissey. We don’t need one more person looking at their shoes through their bangs.”

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Justin Townes Earle with the Felice Brothers

Where: Echo, 1822 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles

When: 8:30 p.m. Tuesday

Price: $10

Contact: (213) 413-8200