Musical artist Rodney Crowell realized long ago that rather than become a star, he wanted to become exactly what the first two words of the sentence denote: a musical artist. After his 1988 album “Diamonds and Dirt”garnered him 5 consecutive #1 hit songs on the country music charts, an inevitable crash was almost certain to happen. And it sort of did but for Crowell, it was really more of a pivot to becoming the artist he always wanted to be.
If you’re unfamiliar with Crowell, his background and bonafide’s almost seemed charmed. The Houston, TX, native was discovered by the late, great Jerry Reed after he moved to Nashville, TN to try to become a songwriter. From there, the late and great Guy Clark took him under his wing as both a friend and a mentor. In James Szalapski’s fantastic 1976 documentary Heartworn Highways, one can spy a young Crowell at a table filled with empty booze bottles trading songs with Clark and a similarly young Steve Earle.
From there, Crowell joined Emmylou Harris’s band and went on to marry Roseanne Cash, daughter of one Johnny Cash. Throughout all of this time, he was making his own music to some success but really making it as a songwriter’s songwriter selling songs which became hits to people like Bob Seger, The Oak Ridge Boys and Waylin Jennings.
These mentions aren’t meant to be name-dropping from a fan but rather, they should serve as just a few of the ingredients that helped create the still flourishing career Crowell has today. He also wrote a memoir, “Chinaberry Sidewalks” about growing up poor in Houston and is currently in the midst of finishing a second memoir.
Crowell is back on the North Bay this Tuesday, March 3 at the Uptown Theater in Napa and it was an honor to speak with him by phone mere hours before heading to the West Coast from his Tennessee home. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Don R. Lewis: So is this tour a full band or a solo outing?
Rodney Crowell: It’s a full band, a 5-piece. Jerry Pentecost is the drummer, he spent time with Bob Dylan and all kind really good stuff. Viktor Kraus is premier bass player around Nashville for a good long while. Jen Gunderman [keyboard and accordian], she’d been out there with Sheryl Crow for I don’t know how long. And Mark Copley is out of New York City and he’s been a main stay up there and great singer and player. I’ve always really wanted to get a chance to work with him. Now he’s available. It just all worked out.
DRL: It all worked out. I feel like it all worked out as kind of a nice through line through your career
RC: So far (laughs)
DRL: I’ve always been such a fan, as a kid, my dad listened to country music. My mom listened to rock, and your music was always something they could kind of agree on in the car, and it’s just so great to see your career keep going. You had five number one hits and now you’re just making these great, poetic songs that you’ve really grown as an artist and you could have just sat back and done the nostalgia tour. What makes you, or what made you want to keep just improving and I guess for lack of a better term, grinding, just churning out really great songs?
RC: I’ll tell you what, honestly, there was a moment for me and it’s understanding my own sensibilities. You mentioned the five hits, so that was my 15 minutes of stardom. And what I realize about me, if I tried to continue trying to swing for that fence instead of just following my heart and getting up in the morning and working, basically my decision was to be more of a writer than a star. And who knows, I don’t even know if I really had the talent to be a star, but I had the work ethic to be a productive artist. So I think that, and I don’t mean that in that high mounted way, like, oh, I’m an artist. I mean, I’m grateful that I have sustained a pretty good lifestyle and raised a family. And my wife and I live comfortably because I’ve made a live in being honest. And what’s more important to me, what’s most important to me is getting up.
If I’m at home, I’m up in the morning writing and that’s my job, and it’s a blessing that that’s my job. So, it became the focus. So maybe what I’m doing now is not that commercial thing that happens when you’re trying to make a name for yourself. But now here’s the way I equate it, and if this seems too high minded, forgive me but, I read somewhere that Renoir the painter, the day died, the morning of the day he died, he did a little still life of a flower. I think the poet and writer, Jim Harrison keeled over at his desk working on a poem. That’s what I want to do. I want to go out working.
DRL: Well, I think that’s an interesting dichotomy too, because when you’re first starting out, you’re hanging out with Guy Clark. Jerry Reed took you under his wing, and then you end up with Johnny Cash for a father-in-law. I mean, and Johnny Cash, I think kind of speaks to what you’re saying too. People don’t realize how big of a star he was in the seventies and eighties with TV and movies, so you could see that, but then he also was truly an artist and recording until he couldn’t anymore.
RC: Yeah, that’s true. And I also had the learning, I learned something from John. He was my father-in-law, I was married to his oldest daughter during a real low point and drought in his career before he got revitalized by Rick Rubin, but there was a period where we were in Jamaica in the wee hours, just he and I, he’s opening up to me. This is Johnny Cash opening up to me. This the struggle he was having that the record company had dropped him. Columbia Records dropped Johnny Cash.
DRL: Can you imagine? That’s sacrilege.
RC: (Laughs) I mean, he had the blues about it, but he continued to work and continued to believe that he was an artist and vital, and Rick Rubin reinvented it, and man, one of those things that he did was “ Hurt” (the Nine Inch Nails song). I mean, that’s right up there with “He Stopped Loving Her Today” (George Jones’ 1980 song that is widely considered the greatest country song ever written).
So luckily that I that and Emmy Lou Harris has been my lifelong friend since I was 24, and so we’ve always had a conversation about how to remain creative and vital, and so I feel good about what I’m doing. What I say is I have a high opinion of myself as a songwriter. I do. I try to keep it down a perspective, but I see myself as a middle of the pack performer out there, certainly in ticket sales and what have you. It works for me.
DRL: So far…(laughs)
RC: I don’t have a large audience, but the audience that does stick around with me, they don’t hold me to just play in the hits. They’ll go with me. So it can remain interesting to me because I can explore things on a stage that are not the, {hits] “Please Remember Me, or “I Couldn’t Leave You if I Tried” all the time.
DRL: So, how does it work when you get up in the morning? Are you like, today I’m going to work on the memoir, and then do you go music first or does just however, whatever the muse tells you to do?
RC: On the memoir. I’ll go three or four weeks on, that’s what I’m working on, and then a piece of music starts to hold my attention and I switch over to that. And then, for instance, the song that I sort of gloating over after finishing it after three years, it’s like the last month of work on it was, I’m going to bring this baby home, and when I finally did, it was like, I don’t know if this song’s worth the three years I put into it, but I got finished it…
DRL; What’s the song?
RC: Oh, I just spent three years writing this one particular song, and I was kind of patting myself on the back and saying, good for you, man. You stuck with it and you found it. To me, that’s the satisfaction of the work man, and the fact that I’m enough of an extrovert and performer that I can go out and perform for people. I really enjoy it, and I figure I’m a pretty good performer, and there’s that part of it too. So I’m an introvert and an extrovert.
DRL: Well, I’m going to wrap it up here, but I follow you on social media. I wanted to ask you, do you have any gardening secrets? Your garden was popping off last year. That was crazy!
RC: (Laughs) Yeah. It was particularly well. I remodeled the raised beds. I had raised beds that were about a foot and a half, and I doubled the size of ’em so that the roots could, the roots had more. Right now they’re about two and a half to three feet high raised beds. Think that space underneath where the roots could go down and get their nutrients really made it come alive.
DRL: You’re like a green thumb over there! Did you time this tour so you could be home in time for garden season or just happened this way?
RC: I like to plant on the new moon and harvest on the full moon if I can.
More information about Rodney Crowell as well as tickets for his March 3 show at Napa’s Uptown Theater can be found at rodneycrowell.com