Hi and welcome to the working songwriter. The show where today's best songwriters come to Talk Shop.

I'm your host, Joe Pug.

Each episode here, we host a distinguished guest, and we ask them to go deep on their

inspiration, on their process, on the general ups and downs of making a life in music.

So, whether you're a grizzled veteran,

emailing your nephew a YouTube version of Harlem River Blues,

or else a scrappy upstart,

texting your friend a Spotify link to Mama's Eyes,

this is your show,

because ultimately it is what every writer seeks most an ironclad excuse to put off

actually writing.

Hey everybody, it's the last Friday of August 2020.

I thank you for joining us before we begin our regularly

scheduled program here we have to say goodbye to a dearly departed fixture of American music and a friend of

mine When I first met Justin Towns Earl, it was a safe bet that he was going to take over the world.

Justin was in his late 20s with a pair of critically acclaimed albums to his name.

He was tall and handsome.

He took the stage in a tailor-made Billy Reed suit to adoring fans wherever he went.

And he wasn't doing it with some cynically curated group of songs that he thought could be playlisted.

He was doing it with a style of roots music that was, in some ways, deeply conservative,

unapologetically traditional, and uniquely American.

It borrowed from Manslipscomb, Lightning Hopkins, Guy Clark,

...