For Crowell, music is a commitment that deepened with time
Rodney Crowell’s tender lyrics about a woman with hair two shades of foxtail red in a song that features his exwife Rosanne Cash makes, it an easy leap to assume that he’s singing about her. It’s not like the thought didn’t cross her mind.
“If I’m totally honest,” she said. “Yeah, a little bit.” But Crowell, whose new album Close Ties is sure to be one of the year’s cornerstone, releases in the Americana genre, insists he had others in mind while writing It Ain’t Over Yet. He was thinking about old friends Susanna and Guy Clark, who both died in recent years.
That’s fortunate, since he sings, Takes the right kind of woman to help you put it all in place. It only happened once in my life, but man you should have seen. It might have made for awkward dinner conversation with Crowell’s current wife, Claudia Church. “Rosanne was a wonderful period in my life,” Crowell said, “but the ‘one’ woman is the one I’m with now.”
Susanna Clark was a straight-talking muse for many aspiring Nashville songwriters in the 1970s who figured if she liked one of their songs, they must be on to something, Crowell explained.
Crowell understands why people might think he was talking about Cash, who appears on record with her for only the second time since their 12-year marriage broke up in 1992 (he sang backup on a song on her most recent album).
They were once country music’s First Couple, taking turns at the top of the charts, and for both their artistry has deepened as the spotlight moved on. They’re both also of the school that appreciate listeners who can take their own meanings from songs. Another song on Close Ties, out Friday, was actually written with Cash in mind. More specifically, Forgive Me Annabelle is about Crowell’s own actions during their breakup. After an inevitably bitter period, they’re friends now.
“I passed through a period where I simply did not like myself,” Crowell said. “If you don’t like yourself, you’re not liking anybody else. You’re pretty miserable. And that’s what the narrator is apologising for. It’s saying, ‘Forgive me for who I was then.’ But, of course, I was already forgiven.”
Crowell recalls pawing through some albums at home and coming upon his own Diamonds and Dirt from 1988, which yielded five No. 1 country singles. He and his wife laughed at the mullet-haired guy on the cover. “I wanted to be like Dwight Yoakam,” he said. “He definitely owned ‘cool at that moment.”
He’s fuelled by a “look back with bemusement” attitude now. After taking five years off at the turn of the century, Crowell returned as a focused writer, digging deep into his heart and leaving few wasted words. He learned to take his art more seriously than himself. In I Don’t Care Anymore, he sings, “All those party dolls and favours that I savoured from day one add up to next to nothing after all is said and done.”
The funny Nashville 1972 recalls his first meeting, at age 22, with Willie Nelson, at a party of course.