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There's one in every crowd, but Justin Townes Earle has learned to take it all in stride.

Inevitably, an overzealous fan — often inebriated and focused too keenly on Earle's last name and his status as the son of legendary singer-songwriter Steve Earle — approaches him after a show, wanting to talk about his dad.

It comes with the territory, Earle has learned. And while it might once have angered him, he's learned that there are worse things than being shackled with a famous last name.

"There's always one drunk [jerk] who wants to tell me a story about how he got drunk with my dad in 1983, about how he's the greatest guy on earth and blah-blah-blah," Earle told The Daily Times this week. "Most people do show up expecting me to sound like my dad, but most are please with what they hear. I just gotten lucky in that the music I make appeals to a lot of people. There's definitely a shadow there, and it's one of those things where you can never really step out from under a shadow like that.

"I just don't worry about trying to do it. If it happens, it happens; if it doesn't, it doesn't. I used to wrestle with it a lot and take this Jakob Dylan approach where I didn't want anything to do with my dad other than the use of his last name. Now, I don't deal with it at all. It helps me get into doors that others might not get into, and that's great, but it also sends a lot of crap my way that other artists might not get, either.

"I'm just trying to make music and get paid to do it, and if they happen to pay more because my last name is Earle, so be it," he added.

Musically, Earle is his own man. For followers of his father, Justin Townes Earle has grown up on the periphery of his dad's country-rock musical style and outlaw image. (In fact, the last couple of times Steve Earle has performed at downtown Knoxville's Tennessee Theatre, his son was playing keyboards in the backing band.) But along the way, the younger Earle picked up a thing or two on his own and has crafted a heartfelt EP titled "Yuma" that's rooted in traditional country.

"I grew up here in Nashville, and I always hated what I heard in the era I grew up in," Earle said. "In my early teens, I started discovering people like Webb Wilder and Webb Pierce, and it seemed so much more hip than anything that was coming out. Everything else was just so square. So on this record, I do take a very traditional approach, because it's what I've done the longest. I was in a couple of different jug bands for years, but this is the stuff I end up doing the most."

For anyone listening intently to "Yuma" for traces of the old man's talent, it's there to be found. After all, a guy like Justin Townes Earle can't grow up surrounded by music and not inherit some of his father's talent. But like the alternative paper Nashville Scene points out, "'Yuma' also shows he has more than a little in common with the man who gave him his middle name, Townes Van Zandt. Like the late Van Zandt, Earle uses a base of acoustic blues and prewar folk to build his own brand of American roots music. He's also like Van Zandt, as well as the elder Earle, in his choice of a narrative style of songwriting that eschews self-expression in favor of speaking through various characters."

Unlike his father, there's no grit-and-gravel grate to the younger Earle's voice. There's no songs about the death penalty or the government or scouring the streets of South Nashville for heroin. Hopefully, Earle has learned lessons from his father's mistakes and won't write songs about the latter, but he's also independent-minded enough and stubborn enough to make his own choices, even when he and pop don't see eye-to-eye.

"Me and my dad butt heads artistically on a lot of things," Earle said. "He's set in his ways, and for good reason — he's good at what he does, and he's never put out a bad record. My dad's very smart, but I do pick and choose what I take from him, and I think that's what's safeguarded me from becoming a clone of his. I listen to so many different kinds of music, and I don't think you can focus on just one thing. If you pick just one thing and shoot for that, you rarely hit the bullseye.

"I heard it all when I was a kid, but I was a typical kid of my era. I listened to rap when I was young; between 9 and 13, it was really nothing but AC/DC and hip-hop. I mean, I was the typical white-trash kid of this era. When my musical tastes really started broadening is when I started with the Texas acoustic blues stuff. I met a guy named Scotty Melton, from Johnson City, when I was 15, and he was the guy who really showed me the ropes.

"I knew Townes was great and I knew Guy Clark was great, but I never quite got it," Earle added. "He was the guy who really took me in and showed me what this music was all about, and really showed me how to write a song, too. I probably take a lot from my father and others I listen to, but I learned more from Scotty than anybody."

Thursday, Earle will bring his guitar and perform a solo show at The Corner Lounge in Knoxville. It'll showcase the mournful, brooding songs off of "Yuma," and inevitably, some lout will yell for him to play "Copperhead Road." He won't do it, of course, because Justin Townes Earle is his own man.

Which is something else he gets from his dad.

"This won't be what I end up sounding like forever," Earle said of "Yuma." "I've got plans to make another record in the next seven or eight months, and it's going to have a traditional country edge but with a full-band feel — drums and pedal steel, pushing for a Son Volt, Whiskeytown kind of vibe.

"I'm just going to be my own artist. You've just got to do what you want to do, whether people like it or not. Because someone, somewhere, is going to like it."