His musician father wanted to name him Townes, but "my mother hated TOWNES VAN ZANDT," which is how JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE got his middle name. Her issue was "the trouble that Dad and him got into," trouble that wasn't unknown to the world at large and that wouldn't be unknown to their son. "I do have memories of the man," he said in 2015, "but none of them are good." He did, however, like the man's music, which everyone, even Mom, who raised him, could agree on. Justin Townes Earle died Sunday at age 38 (as of early this morning, no cause had been made public). In his much too short life, he lived up to both the perils and the promise of his middle and last names, which meant addiction struggles (starting in his early teens), getting into a bit of trouble and filling eight albums with dark, character-driven songs celebrated for their novelistic ambition and cold, straight talk. "Nobody likes a happy song," he once said. "Let’s face it, ‘WALKING ON SUNSHINE’ makes you feel like s***.'" Earle's vision of Americana was rooted in blues, folk and country music of old, but it was decidedly modern, too; his idea of a train song was set in the New York subway system. You can easily hear dad STEVE EARLE's (and Van Zandt's) influence in his music, but Justin was equally interested in the music of generations before them and in the indie/outsider country bands that came later. He worked hard to stay out of his father's shadow: For much of his life, he avoided playing gigs with his dad, but he wasn't averse to going to AA meetings with him. They were one of the great families of American roots music, and a complicated one. A substantial and terrible loss... Turns out it's kind of hard to put on a live awards show when the city hosting it requires anyone flying in from 34 states including California and Florida to quarantine for 14 days. So New York State has tossed aside its quarantine rules for artists flying in for next Sunday's VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS, which will feature live performances at outdoor locations around New York City. Performers are being told to quarantine when not performing, which is not, according to everything we've been told in the past five months, how quarantining works, and also not, according to everything we've learned about celebrities in the past five centuries, what's going to happen. In return, MTV agreed to follow "rigorous safety protocols," which is a weird thing to promise in exchange for relaxed safety protocols, but the show must go on, I guess. It will go on without RODDY RICCH and J BALVIN, who have dropped out. Balvin revealed last week he's recovering from Covid-19... JOJO and KEHLANI have both pulled TROY LANEZ features from upcoming deluxe albums. MEGAN THEE STALLION last week accused Lanez of shooting her after a party in July in the Hollywood Hills... One of England's leading touring support companies, MATT SNOWBALL MUSIC, is closing shop, a victim of the pandemic... RIP also FRANKIE BANALI, JACK SHERMAN, WALTER LURE and D.J. ROGERS.