SUSTO began in 2013, but for Justin Osborne, the story started long before that.

“Susto” is what some call it when the soul gets startled. Knocked off its axis. A condition of your being, sometimes described as a spiritual displacement - the kind of emotional shock that leaves you untied. Imagine the spiritual cousin to PTSD. The word entered Justin’s life during a stretch defined by studying Latin American and Caribbean culture - part anthropology, part wandering.

At the time he chose it as a band name, he was in his twenties, searching. His father would pass away years later, shortly after his own daughter was born. He would move to Havana through a University of Havana program, trying to understand the world and himself… more fully. But even in those earlier days, he felt that soft dislocation. Like he was moving through time without quite being connected to the version of himself that felt rooted.

“Susto,” he says now, was both a weight and a marker of growth.

Justin’s time in Cuba changed the trajectory of his life. What began as curiosity turned into artistic clarity. In Havana, music was sweat on the neck, windows open at midnight, guitars passed around until fingers were sore. There, he met people who loved music the way he did - not as ambition, but as survival. Friends who reminded him, sometimes without even saying it outright, that he was already living the dream just by making songs and showing up.

Before that stretch of time, there were moments he considered stepping away from music altogether. The uncertainty of it. The practical questions. The weight of not knowing if it would ever become sustainable. Being separated from his hometown and old versions of himself gave him space to ask harder questions. Who was he when no one was watching? Who was he on unknown roads?

In that distance, something revealed itself. The untethered feeling that once haunted him began to feel less like loss and more like invitation. When he returned home, he carried that certainty with him. The knuckle tattoos weren’t for show. They were a reminder. A quiet vow. He was all in.

Thirteen years later, SUSTO has grown from a personal outlet into a marked endeavor with a devoted following. What started as confession has become communion. His songwriting, still rooted in honesty, now carries the vulnerability of someone who has lived through the thick of things - birth and death, separation and belonging, doubt and devotion.

“I am interested in who all lived and died so that we could live and die,” he says. “I love being alive. And I love writing songs about it.”

There’s nothing abstract about the way he says it.

Fatherhood shifted the rhythm again. Touring 260 days a year used to be the norm. Now there’s a different kind of rooting happening. Justin has always carried a persona a little outside the frame … wired in his own way. Becoming a parent didn’t erase that - it heightened it. It asked him to stand more fully in who he actually is, not just as an artist, but as a son, a husband, a father.

There’s a particular kind of regeneration that comes when you stop trying to smooth out your edges. When you realize the parts of you that felt different were never liabilities, but compass points. In this season, his songwriting has deepened not because it’s heavier, but because it’s more honest. The responsibilities are real, but so is the freedom that comes from accepting his genuine self within them.

He talks about learning where he fits in the “middle of death and birth.” It’s not a dramatic statement. It’s just true. His music has always made space for people to sit with their emotions, but now there’s a steadiness underneath it. An open-door policy, as he calls it - friends from every chapter of his life coming through, collaboration flowing naturally, the String Band project evolving into Volume Two with ease rather than urgency.

The behind-the-scenes moments - long van rides, songs written on the spot and then played on that same tour remain some of his most treasured memories. The undocumented parts. The human parts.

Right now, Justin feels like he’s in his sweet spot.

Grounded but still searching. Grateful but still questioning. Rolling around in the good stuff, as we put it.

He speaks about Luck Reunion with an esteemed voice. Performing there isn’t just another date on the tour calendar. It feels ceremonial. The LUCK ring rests easy on his hand. It’s a keepsake. A reminder that somewhere out in the Hill Country, there’s a circle of folks who believe in the same kind of magic he does. A place where the mythology of music meets the reality of friendship and shared purpose.

Luck has always been about gathering the real ones. The storytellers. The seekers. The ones unafraid to name the inbetween.

Just human.

And very much alive.

In the Middle of It All: A Conversation with Justin Osborne of SUSTO

Thursday at Luck: Between the Sets