- 6 hours ago
Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell has a career that spans more than 50 years, with 15 #1 hits on the country charts and songs written for legends Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and George Strait, as well as stars like Tim McGraw and Keith Urban. Last year, Crowell released Airline Highway , following his Grammy-nominated album The Chicago Sessions --produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy--and contributed to Willie Nelson's acclaimed Oh What a Beautiful World , which features fresh interpretations of 12 classic songs penned by Crowell, including a duet between the two legendary artists. Crowell's influence stretches beyond country music. His songs have been interpreted by R&B icons like Etta James and rock legends including Van Morrison and Bob Seger. Beyond music, he has authored an acclaimed memoir, Chinaberry Sidewalk s, and a lyrical retrospective, Word for Word . Recently, Rodney was inducted into the prestigious Texas Institute of Letters, joining literary giants such as Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, and Sandra Cisneros. The legendary songwriter stopped by the LifeMinute studios to reflect on his remarkable career and perform selections from his latest album.
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00:00Hey, I'm Rodney Crowell, and you're watching Life Minute TV.
00:05Rainy days in California.
00:08Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell has a career that spans more than 50 years,
00:14with 15 number one country hits.
00:16He's written for legends Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson to Tim McGraw and Keith Urban.
00:21He stopped by the Life Minute studios recently to tell us about his latest release,
00:25Airline Highway, and so much more.
00:27This is a Life Minute with Rodney Crowell.
00:30I'm told that Airline Highway is my 20th album.
00:35I lost count a long time ago, so that could be true,
00:38but Emmylou Harris and I made a couple of duet albums,
00:41and I produced quite a few records, so whether it's my 20th, I don't know.
00:47We decided to go to Louisiana to record,
00:51mainly because I just have a kind of a romantic attachment
00:55to the swampy lands down there and to the culture.
00:58And having grown up on the east side of Houston,
01:01I was fascinated by the music that came out of western Louisiana.
01:05I think we wound up in a recording studio on the Vermilion River,
01:09just chasing an old feeling, I suppose.
01:13But as it turned out, it was a superb studio,
01:15and we had a great band, and we recorded an album.
01:18And now I'm sitting here in New York City.
01:20Who knew?
01:23Rainy days in California
01:27I wrote the songs all at home in my home studio.
01:31Tyler Bryant's the producer.
01:33We sort of started to realize that even though I wanted to go to Louisiana,
01:37there wasn't a narrative until we actually realized
01:40that a lot of the songs kind of fit that narrative.
01:43So it was as if the record made us more than we made the record.
01:48And we met up with some musicians, friends that we love from Austin,
01:53Rachel Loya and Conrad Chacroon and David Grissom.
01:56And then Tyler and I and Catherine Marks went down from Nashville,
02:00and we all met in the studio.
02:02And I had the songs, and Tyler and Trina Shoemaker, the engineer,
02:07and we sort of settled on the songs.
02:10And then it just becomes a matter of getting together
02:13and picking out a good key
02:15and figuring out how to want a recording.
02:17I can hit and record on the tape machine and make an album.
02:22The theme, one, it starts out with the narrator wants to get out of California.
02:27Well, I used to live in California, Los Angeles,
02:30and it's like, I want to get out of Los Angeles and go to another L.A., Louisiana.
02:35That was the starting place from it.
02:37And it's a song Lucas Nelson and I wrote, actually in Nashville.
02:41So the topography of the destination from one town to the next
02:45was just a story that we were telling.
02:48But then I had a song called Louisiana Sunshine Feelin' Okay,
02:52and that, oh, well, that fits what we're doing.
02:56Louisiana Sunshine Feelin' Okay
03:01I fell into Larkin' Poe quite by accident.
03:03I don't even know how.
03:04It's just one day I was out for a walk and I,
03:07Larkin' Poe, who is this?
03:08And I listened to it and I went,
03:09oh, this is really fresh.
03:12It's kind of bluesy.
03:13It was like well-educated girls from North Georgia.
03:18I thought, wow, this is a juxtaposition
03:20that they get so down and dirty with it
03:22and they're, you know, they're educated girls.
03:25And then I always say that I'm an overachiever
03:28in the marriage department.
03:29My wife, Claudia, is a crowning achievement in my life
03:33and I've written a lot because of her, a lot to her.
03:38Sometime thing, sometime thing
03:40She don't believe in making love to a sometime thing
03:45Sometime thing is a particular,
03:47it's a funny story going back to when we first got together
03:50and there was an actor who will remain nameless
03:53who was trying to move in on my territory
03:55and I just stood back and watched it happen.
03:58She ignored him.
03:59I figured, well, she's the one for me.
04:02And then I followed it up with another song
04:04about my wife, Claudia,
04:06which is She's Some Kind of Woman.
04:09She's some kind of woman
04:12But then there comes a breakup song
04:15that Ashley McBride and I wrote together
04:18that was fiction.
04:20And we write fiction as well.
04:23Take a flight
04:27Forget about tomorrow
04:30Ashley's a piece of work, as they say.
04:33She's got a lot of energy
04:35and she's got a great sense of humor.
04:37She makes me laugh.
04:38She makes me laugh all the way down into my belly.
04:43I like that about her.
04:44She's nobody's fool.
04:45She's a great singer.
04:47She's an artist and smart and funny
04:50and I like her a lot.
04:53Simple
04:53You try to keep it simple
04:59Simple isn't all that simple.
05:01It's a song that I wrote in Dallas
05:03at my mother-in-law and father-in-law's house
05:05just sitting on the floor of the bedroom
05:07where we were staying
05:08and wrote that song.
05:10It's about living long enough
05:12to actually appreciate who you are.
05:15And it winds up with a story of a woman
05:19I knew at one time.
05:20We were almost romantic with each other.
05:22We certainly were attracted to each other
05:24but later on I learned that she'd taken her own life
05:27and it ends the album
05:29and that's the one song that kind of goes
05:31into the darker realms of things.
05:34But everything leading up to it is fairly upbeat.
05:39My father was a singer, an unknown singer.
05:43I mean, he had what now you would call a local band.
05:46Better singer than me.
05:48He didn't write any songs and I do.
05:50So that got me out of Houston.
05:52I left home when I was 15 to join a band,
05:55a rock and roll band.
05:56And we actually worked
05:57and I made what little money that I had at the time
06:00playing in a teenage rock and roll band.
06:04And then one thing led to another.
06:06I wound up in Nashville
06:07at kind of a songwriting salon
06:09where I was surrounded by some really great songwriters
06:12and luckily that was what my destination was.
06:16You know, I'm a songwriter first and foremost.
06:18Just the right place at the right time.
06:20I learned from some really great songwriters
06:23and met up with Emmylou Harris
06:25and moved to Los Angeles to be in a band
06:29with her band, her touring band.
06:30She recorded a bunch of my songs
06:32and because she did,
06:33a lot of other people did as well.
06:36And I've had this really sweet career as a songwriter
06:40and as a recording artist and as a producer.
06:43The truth is I had a knack for being in the right place
06:46at the right time, I suppose.
06:48Who knows?
06:49I might have missed out on a lot of things
06:51by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
06:53But look, I'm happy.
06:54I'm still making records.
06:56And I'm sitting here talking to you.
07:08Did I know I have a knack for songwriting?
07:10Well, I wrote my graduating class song.
07:14I don't know if they still,
07:15I don't know if graduating classes still have songs.
07:18But I wrote one for the senior 68 where I come from.
07:22But it was not a good song at all by any stretch.
07:25It was less than amateurish, childish even.
07:29I would never play it again.
07:30And I'm only telling you this story
07:32because you've got to start somewhere.
07:35Really smart, creative, interesting lyric.
07:38An unforgettable melody.
07:40And a halfway decent voice to deliver it
07:43along with some really creative, talented musicians
07:46who can bring it to life.
07:48That can make for a good song,
07:50but even that doesn't guarantee it's going to be a good one.
07:52I could do 20 minutes on people whose work I admire.
07:56Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Leonard Cohen,
08:00pretty much at the top.
08:02I got to know Willie in my early 20s.
08:05Willie's such a sweet soul.
08:07It was, for all of the influence and power that he had
08:12as a performer and a songwriter
08:14and for, in my admiration, to be around him.
08:17He was a really comfortable guy to be around.
08:19So it kind of melted away the illusion
08:22of this really great artist
08:24as not just another fine human being.
08:27That was a valuable lesson to learn from Willie.
08:30And I think it influenced me that way
08:32because, I mean, I'm a pretty successful songwriter
08:34in this world,
08:35but I think if anybody didn't know me or admired me
08:39and spent some time with me,
08:40I hoped they would come away with the same feeling
08:44that I came away with Willie,
08:45which is, hey, this guy's present,
08:47and he recognizes me.
08:50Willie just recently this year
08:52released an album of 12 of my songs.
08:54And this is a Rodney Crowell, Chris Stapleton song
08:59that we like on that album.
09:01I love you till the day I die.
09:04I love you till the day I die.
09:11I love you till the day I die.
09:13I had an idea for it,
09:15and Chris came over on the day,
09:17and I said, hey, I've got this thing
09:18that I've never pushed all the way to the finish line,
09:22and he said, well, what is it?
09:24And I showed it to him,
09:25and he immediately added a line that worked right away,
09:29and then we were off and finished it.
09:30I mean, in less than two hours, we had a song.
09:33I wouldn't change anything about that song.
09:36Honestly, I wouldn't.
09:37And I'm never afraid to admit
09:39when one of my songs needs some more work.
09:42That song, I love you till the day I die,
09:45it's like, we got it all right.
09:48Yeah, Chris, we only spent one day together writing.
09:51I admire Chris greatly.
09:54As a matter of fact, he was,
09:55I think it was the Super Bowl or something,
09:58he did the opening Star Spangled Banner on a guitar,
10:01and I sent him a text saying,
10:02okay, man, you have reached the pinnacle.
10:06It's like, I don't know,
10:08it's as good as it gets for anybody
10:11to do the Star Spangled Banner.
10:13So, yeah, that boy's got a lot of talent.
10:16And the truth of the matter is,
10:18I've never written a song for anybody, honestly.
10:21And I don't mean that in any condescending or defensive way.
10:25I learned very early in my career as a songwriter
10:29that it's my job to write the song for it.
10:32And if I'm patient, and if I'm doing my job,
10:36the song will tell me what it wants to be.
10:38And I found out early that if I get a song right,
10:42then somebody like Johnny Cash or Keith Urban
10:46is more likely to record the song
10:48than if I sat down and tried to write a song for them.
10:52The two times that I've done that
10:54in the long time that I've been doing it
10:56failed miserably.
10:57So I learned, I just write the song for it,
11:00and then if it's any good,
11:02it gets out there and does the job it needs to do.
11:05When anybody records one of my songs,
11:08it's like I've got to stop for a moment and say,
11:11they didn't have to do that.
11:13And I'm really grateful that they did.
11:16I was delighted when the Viagra Boys
11:20did a rave-up version of one of my songs.
11:24I live on Blackberry, I can't breathe away.
11:30The Oak Ridge Boys, all the way to Grateful Dead.
11:33All right, Grateful Dead did one of my songs,
11:37and I was like, wow, it's Grateful Dead.
11:40You can't make that stuff up.
11:42Any way a song can get here is,
11:45it could be a particular voicing on a guitar.
11:48It could be something I overheard.
11:50Most times it'll be something that I come up with on the guitar.
11:54I wish I wrote on piano,
11:56and I don't wish enough to stop and take lessons
11:59and learn how to play a piano.
12:00Once upon a time, I own a piano, but I don't play it.
12:04I should.
12:05But generally speaking, it'll just come from a sound
12:08that I strike on the guitar, a feeling or something.
12:11I get a word.
12:12I get two lines.
12:14And then one thing leads to another.
12:15I've just learned to be patient.
12:17Be patient.
12:18The song will tell me what it wants to be,
12:20if it's going to be a song at all.
12:22Each new day inspires me creatively
12:25because it's another day that I get to get up
12:28and go to work as a songwriter.
12:30Anybody in my family would tell you if I'm not out,
12:32I'm a performer as well,
12:33so if I'm not out on the road performing,
12:37if I'm home, I get up and have a cup of coffee
12:39and get to work.
12:40I have a great job.
12:42I get to make stuff up,
12:44and I get to write songs,
12:46so I can't wait to go back to work.
12:48Doing that, and so far, it's still fulfilling.
12:52I'm just lucky that I was blessed
12:54with the ability to write songs
12:57that could cross into other genres.
13:00But probably the more truthful answer,
13:03if I'm willing to stand behind it,
13:05is that, hey, I write really good songs.
13:09The first time I heard Johnny Cash
13:11sing I walked the line.
13:14Johnny Cash was my father-in-law
13:16for a good number of years
13:17and my friend for 21 years.
13:20He had a great influence on me.
13:21I should have mentioned him early
13:23because one of his songs
13:24really knocked me out a long time ago.
13:28I was married to his daughter, Roseanne, of course.
13:30We made a lot of music together.
13:33Being Johnny Cash,
13:34for him being my father-in-law,
13:36it was a gift.
13:37You know, the larger-than-life man in black,
13:40that's a professional persona,
13:42the father, father-in-law,
13:45and, you know, the human being.
13:48Very much the same as Willie,
13:50and very much probably what you find out
13:53about really great artists
13:55is that oftentimes they're really fine human beings.
13:59Warm, humorous, friendly.
14:02Johnny Cash was all of those things,
14:03and he was also larger-than-life.
14:06He could turn that on and off,
14:08and I always admired that,
14:09that he could go from being the man in black
14:12to being this kind of doofus guy
14:15who was making funny jokes.
14:17Professionally, one of the things
14:18that I learned from Johnny Cash,
14:21Roseanne and I went up to
14:23Circle Star Theater in San Francisco,
14:25and it was at Low Ebb in his career,
14:27and he was playing Circle Star Theater there,
14:30and it was very poorly attended.
14:32He went and did a show,
14:33and he gave it the best he could.
14:35I think he was a little embarrassed
14:36that we showed up at such a sparsely attended show of his,
14:41but when it was over,
14:42he got in a limousine and sped out of there
14:46as if there was 40,000 people in the audience.
14:49And I remember thinking,
14:51that's it, man, that's it.
14:53You're who you always were,
14:55and you're who you'll always be.
14:57And then it wasn't four or five years later
14:59until it all came back to him,
15:01and he was right back in the same place.
15:04And I admired that because this one show,
15:07or it was a Low Ebb in his career,
15:09but he was still the same guy
15:11that was at the top of his game.
15:14Career highlight, playing the Albert Hall,
15:17opening for Johnny Cash,
15:19as it turned out to be,
15:20but it was Albert Hall on my own,
15:22and I also played there with Amy Liu,
15:25but that was a career highlight.
15:27A lot of really great things to be grateful.
15:29But the highlight really comes meeting Claudia, my wife,
15:33and my family comes ahead of all of this.
15:36I mean, that's love.
15:38You know, it's careers, ebb and flow.
15:41You know, family is another thing.
15:43They'll be there till the end.
15:45I have four daughters.
15:46They're all musical, but they won't do it.
15:49They sing songs and make up stuff
15:51and tease me about what I'm doing,
15:54but none of them have followed suit.
15:57I like making up silly songs with them,
16:00for them, with them, and for our grandchildren.
16:10I produce an album on my wife, Claudia.
16:13We met on a video shoot.
16:14She was the lead female character in a video.
16:18We actually fell in love on a video
16:20about a song called Lovin' All Night.
16:22Who knew?
16:22It just was the perfect thing,
16:24and we've been together for 33 years since then,
16:27and she's perfect.
16:29But she's far more sensible than me
16:32and decided that she didn't really need
16:36to be traveling around singing all the time like I do.
16:41In my case, I think the key for my longevity,
16:45because I've been doing it 50 years,
16:47is that at one particular point in my career,
16:51I had a real spike in success.
16:54And for me, knowing myself as well as I did,
16:58I found myself thinking,
16:59if I try to chase this and do this every time out,
17:04I'm going to fall short.
17:05But if I just do what I did to get there in the first place,
17:09which is just write songs,
17:12and it just happened to happen that it was my time.
17:15My 15 minutes of fame was there.
17:17I didn't want to try to prop it up
17:19or to get in my head about,
17:22oh, well, I've got to do all this
17:23because I've got to stay on top.
17:26That's not me.
17:27And so I just went contentedly about doing my work.
17:31My work became less commercial.
17:34But thankfully, there was enough of an audience out there
17:37that were interested in what I had to say
17:39and what I was doing that I could continue working.
17:42The shorter answer is just be true to yourself.
17:45I would probably tell my younger self, say, age 24,
17:51it's going to be all right.
17:52Just keep breathing.
17:54Trust yourself.
17:54It's going to be all right.
17:56The best advice I've ever been given,
17:59a long time ago, someone who I really admired said,
18:02shut up, you might learn something.
18:04Still applies.
18:04Really good writing is a lot of times about revision.
18:09Oftentimes it happens on the first draft,
18:11but any more are very rare.
18:13So I have these songwriting camps
18:15where songwriters come supposedly
18:18to get some wisdom from me.
18:19And I just say, no soft rhymes.
18:22You know, make sure things really rhyme
18:24because the language sounds better when it rhymes.
18:26And don't fall in love with what you've written
18:28because you may not be there yet.
18:30I'd say most of the time when I've arrived
18:33at where the song really needs to be,
18:35I recognize it, but not always.
18:38And there are songs that I started writing in the 70s
18:41that I'm still tinkering with.
18:43I mean, songs that have gone out there
18:44and had a run of success out in the world
18:47are still like, oh, that last verse.
18:49There's something in there that I still haven't found.
18:52Just because it's been recorded and out there
18:54doesn't mean it's over.
18:55The song that I'm working on right now that's unfinished
18:58is the most important song I've ever been involved with.
19:03That doesn't mean when I do finish it up
19:05that it's gonna have a place in the world.
19:08It may just fade into oblivion.
19:11But the work is the most important thing.
19:13So the fact that I'm back at work on yet another song
19:17is far more important to me than anything else.
19:21Because I plan to do this until somebody gives me the hook
19:26and yanks me out, and I mean literally yanks me out
19:29into the next dimension.
19:32Oh, I'd like to work with Tom Waits.
19:35In saying that, it's like he writes with his wife
19:38and makes really great records.
19:41He doesn't need me.
19:42I just admire what he does so much.
19:46It's like I could learn something from him I know.
19:49And I can learn something from him
19:51just by listening to his records.
19:54After that, you know, Keith Richard.
19:56Like, yeah, I want to play something with Keith.
19:59I'd like to write a rock and roll song with Keith Richard.
20:02It's interesting to me that gardening
20:04is very much like the music business.
20:08At some point, you're gonna get your humility handed to you.
20:13When I'm not working, oh, I got a vegetable garden.
20:17Beautiful vegetable garden.
20:18And I love that.
20:19I love watching things grow.
20:21Dinner time with my wife at home.
20:23Nine times out of ten, she's the one conjuring it.
20:26But now and again, it's me.
20:27But the conversation about what are we gonna have for dinner?
20:31And then what is the time that we're gonna spend together
20:34around that food is one of the great things in life.
20:38And my friends, my children, getting some exercise.
20:43You know, just getting some exercise, going for a long walk.
20:46I live in an area where it's very hilly,
20:49so I can walk back in the woods and in the hills.
20:53Nice.
20:57Music provides color, and it provides emotion, entertainment,
21:03and it's transcending.
21:06Really good music will transcend the inertia of the day.
21:11The first time I discovered Ravel, I didn't really know much about romantic French composers.
21:21And I fell in love with what I heard.
21:23And when I finally discovered Miles Davis, it was transcending.
21:29It's like, kind of blew the album that Miles Davis, I think in 1956 is when it was.
21:35Beautiful, beautiful work, and it touched my heart.
21:39Leonard Cohen, the last three albums that he made in his life were like,
21:43oh, I just couldn't wait.
21:45I would imagine it's like, for me, it was like when Charles Dickens wrote his novels in installments.
21:52And I could imagine that people would be waiting for the next chapter or next installment
21:58of The Tale of Two Cities or whatever it was.
22:00That's the way it was with Leonard Cohen at the end of his life.
22:03I couldn't wait for the next thing because he was a man at the end of his life
22:08writing beautifully about being a man at the end of his life.
22:12And I certainly want to be, when I'm reaching the end of my life,
22:15I want to be writing beautifully about it.
22:17I don't want to do it the way Leonard Cohen did, but I want to do my version of it.
22:21So, having experienced him doing it, it doesn't instruct me how to do it,
22:26but it gives me the idea that it's possible.
22:31I think I'll play a song called Rainy Days in California
22:35that Lucas Nelson and I wrote One Fine Day.
22:48Dance fly by me like dragons
22:56Oil well fires and car tire smoke
23:04Helicopter searchlights through my window
23:10These midnight main streets ain't no joke
23:18I'm listening to the siren well
23:23Counting sheep to no avail
23:28Traffic jam from here to nowhere
23:35The devil's claw marks pointed the way
23:43There's not much shaking out on the far line
23:50Unless the big one comes today
23:58If I go north straight up to one
24:03Destination or I'm gone
24:05No need to leave the porch light on
24:10I'll be long gone
24:17Rainy days in California
24:24Come too far and few for me
24:32Rainy days in California
24:3920 years of endless drought
24:43Yeah, I can find my own way out
24:47Yeah, I can find my own way out
24:47Yeah, I can find my own way out
24:48Yeah, I can find my own way out
25:05Days fly by me like dragons
25:12Oil well fires and car tires smoke
25:21To hear more of this interview
25:23visit our podcast, Life Minute TV
25:25on iTunes and all streaming podcast platforms
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