“Don’t make me bury you,” the elder
spoke to the younger
over the phone,
knowing that his child
had inherited all his demons.
“I will support you
if you want to do rehab,”
he whispered,
that old Harry Chapin Song,
Cat’s in the Cradle,
about fathers and sons
circling in his head;
his son’s new one,
Harlem River Blues,
kicking it off the loop:
Lord, I’m goin’ uptown
to the Harlem River to drown
Dirty water gonna cover me over
And I’m not gonna make a sound …”
“I won’t,” the son
promised his father.
A click and a dial tone
was the final statement.
That night
Justin Townes,
named after
Townes van Zandt,
the folk oracle
that was his dad’s mentor,
died alone
in a Nashville apartment.
A mixture of
cocaine laced with fentanyl
was found in his blood.
He was just 38.
When a child dies
the father no longer a dad,
no longer
the parent of Justin Townes,
or just J.T.,
his first little boy,
adopts his own identity back,
rears it fondly in memory,
burying the child’s legacy
until the erosion of time
files him down
to his birth name,
just plain old Steve-
Stephen Fain Earle
from Fort Monroe, Virginia.
When Townes died
he did a tribute album.
When his old demons returned
he released a tribute album.
When grief surrounded him
and the whiskey bottled beckoned
Steve mined J.T.’s catalog
for a ten song tribute session
that can be done with that rock sneer
they both shared.
The only thing that mattered
was that it be released
on the day of what would
have been J.T.’s 39th birthday.
He would concentrate on
the songs whenever he wondered
why he stayed clean and J.T. couldn’t.
Why did he survive and J. T. succumb?
Steve didn’t hate the fact
that J.T.’s songs
were better than his,
his guitar fingerpicking
was more mind blowing,
that musically J.T. could play
Mance Lipscomb blues
in a way Steve was never
able to figure out,
not even that J.T.
had a way better voice.
He was always reminding J.T.
how proud he was of him,
how much he loved him.
No, Steve hated that it wasn’t
enough to save him,
that he was the stronger man.
that they both shared the same disease.
Steve sang, his craggy voice
the perfect underscore
for the dark themes
in J.T.’s ballads:
a drowning death
(Tell my mama I love her,
Tell my father I tried.
Give my money
to my baby to spend);
the phantom-limb ache
for a former lover
(Even though I know you’re gone
I don’t have to be alone now.
You’re here with me every night
When I turn out the lights.)
It was therapy not catharsis.
Steve always sang
because he needed to.
J.T. was the opposite—
dressing in retro style,
reveling in the notoriety
of his intimidating talent
that was always trying to
eclipse his more famous parent.
Steve wanted this to be a memorial
between father and son.
No guest singers, especially
those fucking enablers
that helped kill him
with their nonintervention.
He never included J.T.’s songs
about absent fathers
and single mothers.
He knew only J.T.
could rightfully sing those.
Steve was expecting it to be
a horror show emotionally.
He felt sad, but not disappointed
when it was just business as usual.
When it came time to perform
John Henry Was a Steel Drivin’ Man
he deliberately emulated
J.T.’s fingerpicking.
He felt jealous that his son
was able to write
the John Henry song
he always failed at.
When it came time to record
the album’s last song,
Last Words,
the only song
written by Steve,
and like the
more sentimental
Harry Chapin one,
a heartbreaking synopsis
of a father’s journey,
from cradling his newborn son
to speaking to him for the last time,
the pain returned and
their shared disease
pulled inside him.
By the time it was on tape
he knew it was the only
song he had written in his life
where every single word
in it was true.
Last thing I said
was ‘I love you.’
Your last words to me
were ‘I love you too.’
Leave a Reply