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Rodney Crowell
- Texas A&M University Press
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rodney Crowell Living on the road, my friend, was gonna keep you free and clean Now you wear your skin like iron, and your breath’s as hard as kerosene –TVZ, “Pancho and Lefty,” from The Late, Great Townes Van Zandt r odney Crowell topped mainstream country music charts a quarter century ago, but in many ways he’s always been a workadaysongwriteratheart.Afterall,itwasCrowell’swriting thatelevatedhimtoiconicstature,earnedaGrammyAwardforthesong “After All This Time” (1990), and notched ASCAP and Americana Music Association lifetime achievement awards (2003 and 2006, respectively). Along the way, Crowell managed an unprecedented string of five conRodney Crowell, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Telluride, CO, June 20, 2004 32 I’ll Be Here In THe MornInG secutiveNumberOneBillboardcountrysingles(fromthealbum Diamonds and Dirt, 1988), and earned membership in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (2003).1 Crowell, born August 7, 1950, in Houston, Texas, met Townes Van ZandtasayoungsongwriterenteringintoNashville’screativecommunity in the early 1970s. Crowell took away some sustaining lessons from the experience. “[Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark] instilled me with the right attitude, which is that the craft, the process, and the creativity of songwriting is far more important than the material rewards,” Crowell says. “The late-night song-swapping sessions were always about, What are you working on? Are you getting any better? Can we take the music away and have it stand as poetry?”2 After two years with Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band in the mid-1970s, Crowell formed his own road band, the Cherry Bombs, with a young Vince Gill and future record producers Richard Bennett, Emory Gordy Jr., and Tony Brown. Crowell parlayed wisdom he had gained into his debutalbumIAin’tLivingLongLikeThis(1978).Itproducedtwofrequently interpretedsongs—“LeavingLouisianaintheBroadDaylight”(recorded by the Oak Ridge Boys, Harris, and others) and the title track (Jerry Jeff Walker, Brooks and Dunn, and Harris). Notably, legendary “Outlaw Country” pioneer Waylon Jennings’s unapologetic version of “Ain’t Living Long Like This” on his album What Goes Around Comes Around (1979) becametantamounttoapersonalmissionstatement.In1983,rocksinger Bob Seger found success with Crowell’s “Shame on the Moon,” taking the song to Billboard’s Number Two position. Rodney Crowell peaked as a commercial artist with Diamonds & Dirt and its Number One singles “I Couldn’t Leave You If I Tried,” “After All This Time,” “She’s Crazy For Leaving” (a cowrite with Guy Clark), the Buck Owens cover “Above and Beyond (The Call of Love),” and “It’s Such A Small World,” his duet with then-wife Rosanne Cash.3 Crowell later chronicled his divorce from Cash in the album Life Is Messy (1992), which produced the two Top Ten singles “Lovin’ All Night” and “What Kind of Love.”4 [3.236.57.1] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:39 GMT) roDney Crowell 33 Crowell gravitated toward country music naturally. “I came from a household that was big into Roy Acuff and Appalachian country music,” he says.5 After Jewel of the South (1995), Crowell took a six-year hiatus to help raise his children. At millennium’s turn, he reemerged with priorities arranged accordingly. Crowell led a group of artists, including Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Kelly Willis, and Nanci Griffith , who abandoned increasingly pop-oriented mainstream country music in favor of Americana, a newer genre owing to traditional country and folk influences such as Acuff, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and Hank Williams. Crowell’s following three albums—The Houston Kid (2001), Fate’s Right Hand (2003), and The Outsider (2005)—offer equal measures social and spiritual commentary with an eye on the common man.6 Crowell’s Grammy-nominated album Sex and Gasoline (2008) highlightshisdisdainforsuperficialityandadisenfranchisedviewofpopular culture, particularly through songs such as “The Rise and Fall of Intelligent Design,” “Truth Decay,” and the title track. “There’s a spirituality about Rodney that I haven’t seen in anybody else,” says country star KeithUrban,anoccasional songwriting collaborator. “He’sreally, really calming to be around and effortless to write with. Plus, he’s one of my favorite songwriters for sure. I’m not sure why all the great ones come from Texas, but they do.”7 • • • rodney Crowell Townes was fond of me, but he picked on me, man. He was smarter and faster and quicker than me, and I was always on guard. Townes would have been the fastest gun in the West. We played this game where you put your hands together and hold them in front of you, and the other guy puts his hands on his hip and he tries to slap your hands before you can move...