On "White Gardenias," Justin Townes Earle's favorite song from his September 2014 album "Single Mothers," the narrator is searching for a woman he last saw the previous week. As a slide guitar moans in the background, the Nashville-based folk singer-songwriter wonders, "Maybe she went back to Baltimore."
She was a real person, Earle explained last week, but the two never met. It was Billie Holiday, a singer he always considered "extremely intriguing."
"Louis Armstrong showed us how to get behind the beat, and she showed us how far we could take it," Earle said on the phone from a tour stop in South Carolina. "She rose from the Baltimore waterfront back in her day, which was a terrible place to grow up, to be one of the greatest singers of all time. Now that's pretty [expletive] good."
For Earle, who headlines a sold-out show Saturday at Rams Head on Stage, personal struggles — like Holiday's with heroin and alcohol, and similar problems from his own past — should not define a life. After years littered with rehabilitation stints — along with a public battle with a former record label — the 33-year-old son of songwriter Steve Earle has marked a new stage in his career with his sixth and seventh albums, the companion pieces "Single Mothers" and January's "Absent Fathers."
Although business logistics kept him from releasing the projects as a double album, Earle said the records work in tandem. While the characters of "Single Mothers" lack hope, he said, the loose theme of "Absent Fathers" is measured growth.
"There's a realization that there is light at the end of the tunnel," Earle said. "You can see it, but it still looks like a match-head off in the distance."
There was a time recently he wanted to scrap the project entirely. After amicably leaving Bloodshot Records in 2012, Earle signed to London's Communion Records. That quickly led to disagreements over his new label's involvement, which Earle broadcast to his Twitter followers in furious spurts. Label purgatory, which lasted 21/2 years, left him uncertain about his career.
"I didn't know if I would be forgot [sic] about," Earle, who released his first five albums in just over five years, said. "I didn't know what could happen because I discovered it matters little how good you are."
The fallout from Communion led Earle to say he would never work with any label again. Further consideration, less motivated by emotions and more so finances, eventually changed his mind and led Earle to Vagrant Records.
"In a fit of anger, I made that decision. I sat back and thought about it a little bit more and realized that I still have some things to learn before I ever even consider striking out on my own," Earle said. "Truly smart people can change their minds."
If Earle sounds more mature and thoughtful than years past, it is because he has others to consider now. He got married in 2013, and recently accomplished the long-term goal of paying the rest of his mother's mortgage in Nashville.
"My life has taken me to a position where I have different priorities in my life," he said. "It's easy to make those decisions because it's not all about me anymore."
With label drama hopefully behind him, Earle said he is already planning his next record. He avoids writer's block, he said, because he refuses to force words on the page.
"I do not sit down every day and write," Earle said. "I don't write unless I have the idea and I'm ready for it."
"Looking For a Place to Land," the final track on "Absent Fathers," is a favorite of Earle's. "You held me up 'til I could stand / Now I never fly alone, I've got a place to land," he sings over a sparse acoustic guitar. It is a song of comfort and relief, and a hopeful representation of where life could bring him next.
"It was the very last song I wrote, and a good place to be able to write from," Earle said. "It felt good to not lose the dark side of life, but be able to remove myself a bit from it."