Hi Justin. We last spoke to you about a year ago right after The Good Life came out. That must have been one hell of a year?
When I look back at it I’m thinking it went by pretty fast. At other times, it seems as if it went by really slow. But it was a long year with a lot of touring and a lot of shows. I was really surprised how The Good Life was received by the press and the audiences. In the tradition of second generation artists putting out their own records, I was sure people would find some way of destroying me, but we didn’t run in to anything but good press. That surprised me.


Did you reach a point where you just got tired of answering questions about your relationship with your father?
I’ve never really worried about that. I am conscious of the fact that people think like that, but I just don’t see the point of worrying about that. Like my dad, I’ve always been the type of person who does whatever I want to do, and nobody’s ever had much luck in stopping me from doing the things I wanna do.


And besides there’s not really anything you can do about the fact that you’re Steve Earle’s son, is there?
A lot of people get hammered for being somebody’s son, but there’s absolutely nothing in the world you can do about that. But with the history of father-son, mother-daughter relationships in the record industry, there’s kind of a weird history. Kids have this wild need to separate themselves from their own blond and I understand that. I get it. But I think it’s because they think they hate their parents, but they probably don’t. They just think they do for whatever reason.


So why do you think some people tread so careful when it comes to the famous father/famous son thing?
I think the deal is, the reason a lot of people get hammered for being somebody’s son is because they won’t talk about it. I’m proud of my father and I’m proud of my mother and I’m happy to talk about them. I usually get a few questions about my dad and I’ll just give people what they want. There’s no taboo.


Anyway. Your new album, Midnight At The Movies, is real out relatively soon after The Good Life? Are you doing this the “Creedence – three albums in one year” way?
I was just ready to go. I took the time out to write some more songs and it was just time to make another record. You know, I’m 27 years old and I’m very conscious of the fact that I don’t live as fast as I did when I was 18, and even though I don’t worry about that, I still want to get my shit flying. And besides, I get bored out here, playing the same songs night after night. I want new songs to play. So you just gotta keep the ball rolling.


Did you have more confidence going into the studio this time?
I’ll tell you this. About the only consistently smart thing I’ve done throughout my career is to surround myself with the right people. Skylar Wilson, Cory Younts, I’ve worked with those people for a long time. So far we’ve had the ability to get exactly what we’ve set out to get. I don’t know music very well. I’m not trained. But with Skylar and Cory, if I say “I want it big and I want it orange!”, they know what I mean. I don’t have to translate my Chinese directions into English and that’s something that’s really valuable.


How so?
I mean, I think a lot of people end up making records they hate. It’s that deal where you have your whole life to make your first record but a very short time to make your second. It goes like that for the rest of your career. With my first record, I had been writing those songs for years and then finally someone pays attention to them and put you in a studio with a producer and a bunch of musicians, and you end up making a record that you didn’t really want to make. With every record I’ve made, I’ve had the final word. I don’t even play my records to the record company before it’s done. There’s a lot of freedom in that. I’ve just got some really good people to work with, people who let me write the songs and arrange the songs and back me up when I need it.


But where would you be if you weren’t able to work with these people?
There’s no way I could have made these records without the people who worked on them. Yeah, I write the songs and the music, but there’s a whole lot more to it. I had an interviewer the other day who said this really weird thing. He mentioned me and the word genius in the same sentence and I had to ask him to stop. He was basing that on the records I have made, but there’s a lot more to it. I’m very hands-on when I work, but come on, all I do is write lyrics and put the music in order. Without my boys it would be very…I need those boys. They understand the music much better than I do.


Did anyone ever suggest that you try working with your father on a record?
People did suggest that, but nobody who knows me or my father would ever suggest that. They would never suggest me and my father spend any time together in the studio for more than two or three hours. I did do some recordings with him when I was younger, but I never used them because of the fact that my father has sound. There’s a sound that comes along with Steve Earle. It comes with every Steve Earle record. Every record he makes with somebody else sounds like that. That would have been the absolute first nail in my coffin. That was one of my first wakeup calls in the industry. I have to separate myself from my father, but there’s a difference between separating and shunning.


There’s a cover of The Replacement’s ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’ on the album. Why that song? I mean, The ‘Mats rule, but it’s not exactly country material, is it?
My producer R.S Field suggested that I picked a song that would be a no pressure song. You know, the worst thing people can say about that song is that’s it’s a bad version of a Replacements song. When he asked me to put a cover song on the album, he was thinking more along the lines of something rare, but I just didn’t feel like playing that game. You know, the rare cover game. I wanted something that was obvious to me but it obviously wasn’t obvious to everyone else. I was born in 82 and when I first started pointing my ears towards music and once we got through Poison and all that shit, bands like Guns N’Roses, The Replacements and AC/DC came out all at the same time. Well, the came out in my head at the same time.


You give thanks to bands and artists like Old Crow Medicine Show, Lucero and Jason Isbell in the liner notes. Do you see yourself and these artists as a part of a new movement pushing americana and alt.country in new directions?
Man, I really don’t know. I like to keep my feet reeled in traditional hillbilly music, but at the same time there’s all kinds of fun places you can go with that. Lucero, Old Crow and me are just people trying to remind people that once something great happened south of the Mason-Dixon line and east of the Missisippi. It happened nowhere else but it changed the world. Every single bit of music that came from this region – bluegrass, country, mountain music, rock n’roll, blues and jazz –  changed the fuckin world. We all take a lot pride in being from the area we’re from and the musical traditions that came from these places. There’s a lot of kids in New York who go crazy over hillbilly music but they’ll never understand it. They’ll never get it. It’s not in their blood. They don’t talk right to do it and they don’t live right to do it. Not that they live wrong, they just don’t live the right way for this music to work for them. But in the South, we inherent that. 200 miles east of Nashville there’s a place in the mountains where you can still go sit on someone’s porch and listen to true bluegrass music.


But will we still be able to see these people and listen to their music 50 years from now?
I know it’s a myth but if you go to certain places in the Appalachian Mountains, you still get people who do not know what’s going on in the outside world. And that’s the reason this music will survive. You still get people in these places who do not know what goes on outside the Appalachian Mountains. And you’ll still get those 50 years from now. I have actually followed the tradition of many young artists and I now live in New York City. But those years I spent travelling around the South, playing music, meeting songwriters and learning how this music works, is one of the most valuable times of my life. That will always stick with me. Once that music comes natural to you, it will ruin your life.


Justin Townes Earle’s Midnight At The Movies is out now on Bloodshot Records