You're not going to be a 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 just in town 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,

and of course his namesake, Towns Van Zant.

Now I had been reliably informed that you couldn't succeed playing

music that way. Justin was proving the conventional wisdom wrong in real time and it was a beautiful thing.

In 2010, Justin heard my debut album and invited me to open up a full US tour.

He was just falling off the wagon at the start of that tour,

so the whole affair was both messy and triumphant, we played to electric crowds.

We both strained every relationship that we had.

We both smashed guitars in drunken rages at different points in the tour.

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