Justin Townes Earle

If any of his names sound familiar, yes, he is the son of Steve Earle, and yes, his middle name is an homage to Townes Van Zandt. His own sound harkens back to the blowsy honky-tonk of George Jones and Hank Williams, mixed with some tender ballads. He has crammed a lot of music and a lot of life experience into his 25 short years.

"I actually started with blues, like fingerstyle blues, people like Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin' Hopkins and Delta blues stuff," said Earle in a deep Nashville drawl. "It was from that that I started getting into Woody Guthrie. I was pretty much old-timey and blues in my early 20s, and then I started to get way into honky-tonk, and that's my love right now. I love listening to those guys because, like if I'm feeling really bad, I can put on that early 1950s George Jones, and I feel so much better because I know I don't feel as bad as he does. When George Jones does 'Mr. Fool,' it's just so good.

"I think I channel a lot of things," he said, "I get told that I look like Hank onstage because I hunch over. I wear my mike really low and I lean over it." By his own account, he and his band "…turn up the hillbilly knob pretty loud when we get onstage. We grew up watching Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton and people like that, and we try to make our performances in that vein. You either gotta wear a cowboy hat or grease your hair back, and you'd better be a social butterfly. We take it in a more vintage way."