Jason Isbell, Justin Townes Earle Fallout Explained in New Book
In January, Rolling Stone music reporter Jonathan Bernstein released a book on the life of second generation singer/songwriter Justin Townes Earle called What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome: The Authorized Biography of Justin Townes Earle.
Beyond anything else, it’s worth praising this book as one of the best-written, best-researched, and best-presented biographies you will ever read on any musical performer. And don’t allow the “authorized” tag make you believe this book isn’t brutally honest and forthright about the life of Justin Townes Earle and those around him. It just happens to come with the stamp of approval from Earle’s immediate family.
A full book report/review for What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome is forthcoming. But it felt important to zoom in on one of the many insightful moments the book includes since it dovetails with an important topic that has stirred some discussion in the past.
When Jason Isbell released the song “When We Were Close” on his 2023 Grammy-winning album Weathervanes, it created some interest, and stirred some controversy since the song is about the friendship of the two singer/songwriters—a friendship that eventually fell apart.
Justin Townes Earle’s widow and mother to his daughter, Jenn Marie Earle, took exception to the song, especially how she hadn’t received prior notice to it, and how unbeknownst to the somewhat graphic nature of it, she played it for her daughter.
But how did the friendship between Justin Townes Earle and Jason Isbell fall apart? Early on, they were “close” as the song says, touring together, and becoming close confidants as they both worked through issues with addiction. When they started out, Justin was opening for Isbell. Then for a spell, Isbell was opening for Justin, and performed on guitar for Justin when he was invited to play The Late Show with David Letterman. Then the chairs switched again after Isbell released his landmark album Southeastern in 2013.
But it wasn’t a professional rivalry that caused friction between the two. Around 2010, a younger woman named Lauren Spratlin was brought on as Justin Townes Earle’s tour manager. She was hired onto Justin’s team by Earle’s then overall manager Traci Thomas, who also happened to be managing Jason Isbell. By 2011, Earle and Lauren Spratlin were in a serious romantic relationship.
By 2012, Amanda Shires had replaced Joshua Hedley as the fiddle player for Justin Townes Earle. Isbell and Shires married in 2013, and Earle purchased a 3-piece Billy Reid suit for Isbell for the occasion. So to say the business and personal affairs of Jason Isbell and Justin Townes Earle were deeply intertwined is an understatement if anything.
In January of 2013—a month before Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires were to be married—Justin Townes Earle proposed to Lauren Spratlin by throwing an engagement ring in her lap as they were driving to the airport. Spratlin was confused at first, and eventually said “no,” having experienced Earle’s uglier side and emotional outbursts. Then they had to go on tour with each other in Australia right after.
Justin Townes Earle and Lauren Spratlin officially broke up in the spring of 2013, and Spratlin obviously stopped being Earle’s tour manager too. Shortly thereafter, Jason Isbell then hired Spratlin to be his tour manager. “You’re not a loyal friend,” was Earle’s assessment of the situation. “He just got really mad about it … He’ll get over it,” was Isbell’s assessment on the Marc Maron podcast at the time. But Justin Townes Earle never did get over it.
“He viewed Isbell’s hiring of Spratlin, and his seeming siding with her after their ugly breakup, as the ultimate betrayal,” says Jonathan Bernstein in the biography. “There were certainly other complicating factors that ultimately impacted their abrupt split; the difficulty of maintaining a relationship between two friends with histories of addiction when one person (Isbell) gets completely sober; the competition between two headstrong entertainers as Isbell, whose breakthrough, ‘Southeastern,’ was released during this exact period, became far more successful than Justin…”
There was an effort at reconciliation. As explained in Chapter 19 of the biography, “In September 2014, they both appeared at a festival in Cincinnati. With their buses parked next to one another, Justin’s bandmates, who were friends with both Justin and Isbell, spent the day going from one bus to the other trying to negotiate a truce, or at least persuade the former friends to talk. Their effort failed.”
When Justin Townes Earle died on August 20th, 2020, he had never made peace with Jason Isbell. Though Isbell’s efforts with his song “When We Were Close” seemed to be in good faith, the ill will that still persisted between the two came back into focus.
There were many tragedies that presented themselves when Justin Townes Earle passed away in 2020 due to accidental fentanyl overdose. The lack of a reconciliation in the friendship between Isbell and Earle is one of them. Both these men helped raise Americana out of the shadows of popular music.
Jason Isbell has received plenty of credit for this accomplishment, and rightfully so. Justin Townes Earle rarely does, even though he was very much the one who seeded the appeal, and opened the doors for artists like Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton, and others. The biography What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome underscores this, and hopefully, helps establish this truth in the greater musical consciousness.
Purchase: What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome
March 2, 2026 @ 11:36 am
Man, I’m sorry. I don’t want to pick on a widow of all freaking things, but I have the world’s tiniest violin for folks who provide media/entertainment to their child and then get all huffy about it’s “content” when they haven’t even screened it themselves prior.
Be. A. Parent.
This is why we are having these stupid age-verification laws passed around the country, because parents are too damn lazy to monitor the content their child(ren) are consuming.
Anyway, to the crux of this article – I for one am shocked (shocked I say!) that people with substance abuse issues are messy in their relationships. Hell, plenty of sober people are messy in their relationships – now add substances into it and yikes.
March 2, 2026 @ 11:45 am
I remember Trigger had a several part series on this at the time when “When we were close came out.” I ultimately came to kind of the same conclusion that it while I understand JTEs wife’s frustration, ultimately Jason is allowed to remember JTE or even envision his death how he sees it as the musician, and that accusing Isbell of doing nothing for JTEs family when Isbell headlined a benefit concern with Steve for JTE was disingenuous. But alas it sounds like that episode isnt covered in the book.
March 2, 2026 @ 1:13 pm
For the record, I didn’t run a “series” of articles about it. I ran an article when Justin’s widow addressed the issue publicly. Then she reached out to me and I did a follow up interview about it. Also, it was about 10 months after the song was released, not immediately after. What stimulated the discussion was an interview with Isbell where he said the song would have “victims.”
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1121895382477217
I don’t think anyone is claiming Jason Isbell can’t synthesize his thoughts in song about Justin Townes Earle. All Jenn Marie said is it might have been nice to be given some warning, or perhaps, and apology after it blindsided her and her daughter. That seems reasonable to me.
March 2, 2026 @ 1:20 pm
How is a post and a follow up not a series? Also isnt there the caveat that Isbell did run the song by Steve and was taken aback when he was accused of not sharing it because of that?
March 2, 2026 @ 1:24 pm
To me, a “series” is two or more of something. I’m not jumping your butt, I just don’t think that’s a fair way to characterize it. Yes, Isbell had checked with Steve Earle previously, and maybe Earle should have reached out to Jenn. Honestly, I don’t really care to go back and re-litigate that matter. This is more about what happened leading up to the situation, not after. I linked to both of the articles I published on it in the article, so people can go back and read all of that information as opposed to going back and forth about the details here.
Also, I don’t know that Isbell’s appearance at the tribute is covered in the book. I still have to read the final few chapters.
March 2, 2026 @ 2:31 pm
Fair enough. Also worth noting ive seen Jason Isbell w and w/o the 400 5 times since Weathervanes came out, and never once has Jason played “when we were close” when I went, despite it having some decent satellite radio play when it first came out.
March 2, 2026 @ 3:35 pm
I have no idea how much Isbell has played it recently. He didn’t play it when I saw him last year. But it was actually released as a featured single around the release of “Weathervanes,” so it’s not like it was hidden.
March 2, 2026 @ 12:25 pm
It was more complex than its made out.
If I recall correctly, the mother knew of the song’s content and had a deep discussion with her daughter before letting her hear it.
And face the ugly truth: the daughter already knew the story. Reality is crueler than any graphic song or movie.
And no, age verification laws are because massive companies are spending billions oj working out the most devious, sneaky and evil ways to keep people on their sites.
My generation’s parents let us drive the farm truck with no seatbelts and let us go off on weekend camping trips with people we only kind of knew.
And now you expect every parent to monitor everything a kid does even in their own room. Especially when billions are spent on making the addition as hard as possible to see.
The big tech companies could fix the issues easily, but they have no incentives.
March 2, 2026 @ 1:16 pm
“If I recall correctly, the mother knew of the song’s content and had a deep discussion with her daughter before letting her hear it.”
This is incorrect.
As Jenn Marie Earle said on Justin Townes Earle’s Facebook page,
“I did not receive a compassionate warning ahead of the song’s release (we found out about the song, when this page was tagged in posts about it the day it came out). While it’s not mandatory that he give me a heads up, considering it’s about my husband and mentions myself, and especially my daughter, it would have been a respectful thing to do, so that we weren’t completely blown apart when we heard it as it was celebrated as a new release.”
March 2, 2026 @ 1:21 pm
And how – exactly – does age verification laws change what you describe?
Cause they don’t. If you want to combat “doom scrolling” and blackbox algorithms addicting people to the platforms, age verification does nothing about that.
All it is going to do is lead people to either upload their information to a database that will inevitably be hacked OR seek out websites/platforms that skirt the age verification laws that end up somehow being even worse than the platforms owned by Meta, TikTok, etc.
And blocking websites is really not that hard. I have a network-wide DNS service that – should I choose to do so – blocks all access to Facebook, TikTok, Snap, Adult content, etc.
Harsh truth is a lot of parents are lazy and just want the Government to solve their issues. When in reality, age verification will not fix ANY cyber bullying or online sexual exploitation – all it will do is lead to even more data breaches than we already have and/or the government being able to create even more databases on citizens than they already have.
March 2, 2026 @ 2:07 pm
You’re evidently something of a computer “geek”–which is fine.
Lots of parents are not. In fact, many of them have to go to their kids to set up anything on their computer–to stream video or log into virtual meetings, etc.
March 2, 2026 @ 2:25 pm
Setting up a system-wide blocker is as simple as watching a YouTube video. It does not require any sort of coding, going into the command line of your computer, etc.
Watch a YouTube video and boom – no more little Timmy sneaking onto TikTok for 8 hours after school.
I’m sorry, but I’m tired of parents laziness to reign in their kids social media consumption combined with politicians who can barely power on their computer due to serving in government into their 80’s and 90’s trying to make tech policy.
The Federal government responding to “moral panic” rarely results in anything good spinning out of it. If you want kids to be less depressed, do something about income inequality so more kids can participate (financially) in activities that involve literally touching grass and hold Meta and Twitter/X and other social media platforms responsible for devising algorithms that are actively harmful to society.
Age-verification is the laziest way to try and address this problem and won’t be effective anyway. Which I guess, sums up our entire system of governance these days, but that is neither here nor there.
March 2, 2026 @ 12:53 pm
I can’t imagine the pain JTE’s wife was/is going through, but I agree the whole stink she made about her daughter hearing that song was pretty ridiculous. Like, even if we fully accept her version of events, I can’t understand how we’re supposed to view Jason Isbell as the bad guy for her deciding to play the song, written by a notoriously honest and brutal songwriter with whom her late husband had a complicated and ultimately broken relationship, for her daughter without first giving it a listen. Sucks for everyone involved, but come on.
March 2, 2026 @ 11:39 am
Isbell violated bro code.
March 2, 2026 @ 11:40 am
I love both JTE and Jason Isbell’s music, and listen to them both probably daily. But in truth you have two brilliant artists that can (or could) never seem to get out of their own way. Im sorry this happened between them, but it alas is not surprising, as it seems both of them seemed like people who struggle with maintaining long term friendships
March 2, 2026 @ 12:12 pm
RA Birmingham is a killer song.
March 2, 2026 @ 12:43 pm
I’m most excited about trigger suggesting this is a truly exceptional book. I’m excited. Justin Townes Earle will always be one of my favorites. There was a time I would have said he was my all time favorite. Even if that’s no longer true his music will always be special to me
March 2, 2026 @ 1:20 pm
The book is incredible, and I’ll have more on it soon. I just wanted to get this information out into the public as opposed to have it bog down my review for the book, just because this issue had been addressed here before.
March 2, 2026 @ 12:45 pm
I still cannot listen to When We Were Close and not chuckle about the absurdity of the whole “controversy.” Much ado about nothing.
March 2, 2026 @ 2:28 pm
Basically the upset was caused by bad parenting youd listen to the song before you played it to your daughter and if it was too upseting for you then it might not be for your daughter. But Justin and his wife were separated when he died, so its probably more about the pain of Justin throwing his life away then any anguish caused by a song. I miss Justin’s presence more than anyone and not even becoming a parent could save him.