Rodney Crowell

Last January Rodney Crowell rented a house in my little town in Montana just to feel the cold. He had been here before, but always in the summertime, when Livingston is a temperate and sociable outpost for writers and actors and artists on the banks of the Yellowstone River. But as soon as the first blizzard rolls in most of the amateurs sensibly depart for Tucson or Key West. By January, the coldest month, the local population is down to seeds and stems. That's when Rodney and his wife, Claudia Church, arrived for a long visit. He wanted to work on his memoirs, now nearly finished, and he wanted to experience a real Montana winter, the kind he'd read about in Ivan Doig's sweeping novels. The boy from the Houston swamps figured he might learn something new in the frozen north. Rodney was disappointed when a chinook kicked up from the west and the weather turned mild. Snowdrifts melted into puddles. "Global warming ruined my vision quest," he said. But he perked up when the winds gusted to 80 mph and started tipping over trucks on the interstate. He took to walking on the levee every morning, leaning into the teeth of that wind, surrendering to its indifferent anger - a happy man. You may sense an analogy coming around about now, and here it is: As an artist, Rodney Crowell is all skin and membrane. He wants to feel everything - sucking the world in and filtering it out again through words and music. It's a precarious way to live, but it works for him. You can feel that edge in his latest album, Sex & Gasoline. The CD was recorded in quick live sessions with the fabled producer, Joe Henry, a brilliant musician and songwriter in his own right. Sex & Gasoline is a collection of songs about women - lovers, daughters, friends, Madonnas and whores - often told from an imagined female point of view.

Rodney Crowell migrated from Texas to Nashville to learn to be a songwriter in the 1970s. The strength of his writing, singing and guitar playing earned him a spot with Emmylou Harris's Hot Band and launched his career. Here are some things you probably already know about Rodney Crowell: In 1977, he formed his own group, The Cherry Bombs, and in 1978 released his first album, Ain't Living Long Like This. In 1988 he released Diamonds And Dirt, which generated an unprecedented five number-one singles, including It's Such A Small World, with Rosanne Cash, his wife and partner at the time. They split up in 1992, but they are still friends. His acclaimed autobiographical album, The Houston Kid, in 2001 marked his break from the constraints of mainstream record labels. There have been some awards along the way: Rodney won a Grammy in 1989 for the Best Country Song: After All This Time. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 2003. After he re-formed The Notorious Cherry Bombs in 2004 with his old pal Vince Gill, the band was nominated for a CMA Top Vocal Group award.
Hundreds of versions of his songs have been recorded over the years.

Here are some things you probably don't know about Rodney: He shares a house in Nashville with Claudia and two canines: a lab mix named Flearoy and an embarrassingly small dog named Mono who, says Rodney, could kick the butt of a 150 pound Great Dane.
Claudia Church, the woman who offers him "unconditional love", is an actor, model and a first-rate singer who is now writing a screenplay about a serial killer.

Fill in the rest of the gaps, at the West Coast Blues 'n' Roots Festival.

Visit Band Website.

<< Go Back.