PEOPLE MAGAZINE

August 23, 2005

In every respect, this disc confirms Crowell's high standing in the community of country-pop musicians. For one thing, the roster of guest artists -- including Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Buddy Miller and Beth Nielsen Chapman -- is an all-star lineup. As he has for 30 years, Crowell is still writing intelligent and intensely evocative songs, in the spirit though not necessarily the style of his Texas mentors Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. Crowell, a thoughtful if not mellifluous singer, is joined by Harris in an expressive duet on Bob Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm," but most of the cds 11 tracks are Crowell originals. Even his on-the-make songs are unusually cerebral. In "Say You Love Me," essentially a bar pickup tune, he sings, "poetry is the languarge of choice, when Im in the sound of your voice." It's hard to turn your mind off while listening to Crowell, which may be why he has never really been a pop star. More power to him.
**** 4 stars


WASHINGTON POST

Friday, August 19, 2005

Prolific country writer turns course with political, emotional themes

By Eric Brace

Rodney Crowell is irrelevant.

No, he's not, really. Not by a long, dusty mile.

But that's a sentence that gives Crowell anxiety dreams, some 30 years into his well-regarded career. It's a sentence that fuels his creative fires and pushes him to make the most brutally honest music of his career.

Crowell is sitting outside a bagel shop near his home on the outskirts of Nashville, trying to nail down his place in the modern musical spectrum. "My intention is to find relevancy as an artist in our culture," Crowell says bluntly. He's poking the tabletop with his finger as he talks, emphasizing the seriousness of his quest. It has lead him to his latest recording, "The Outsider," part three of a carefully constructed trilogy about Crowell's rough Houston childhood, our fragmenting society, the past two presidential elections, his beliefs, his fears and his desire to make the world a better place. (The first two CDs in the trilogy are 2001's "The Houston Kid" and 2003's "Fate's Right Hand.")

These concerns of Crowell's -- whose 1988 album "Diamonds and Dirt" had five No. 1 country hits on it -- probably aren't ones that keep Kenny Chesney awake at night. Or Toby Keith. Or Martina McBride.

But that's not a fair comparison, Crowell says. "Modern country music is not a delivery system for what I want to say at this point in my career," he says, as if his songs are warheads in search of a missile. "It's not suitable for the political themes, the emotional themes, the dysfunctional themes that life presents us and that we process. And it's unfair of me and unfair of you to demand of country music that it be the delivery system I'm looking for."

And he's right. Even as his lyrical themes are far beyond what most commercial country music is grappling with these days, Crowell's music is not really country at all. It's soulful rock 'n' roll from a singer-songwriter perspective, flavored by Bob Dylan and Prince and Iggy Pop, among plenty of other influences. Best to file Crowell in the aging-introspective-rockers section, next to Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Steve Earle, Mark Knopfler and such. In retrospect, it's clear that country music is just one of the musical paths Crowell will walk on his search for self-discovery.

And his is an active search. In the past 27 years, Crowell, 55, has released 13 albums (not including hits packages) on five record labels, and when he says he has "bristled, clawed and scraped" in his fight for relevancy, you can see it in his face. Crowell's eyes seem sad and angry at once, even though he's quick with a smile when he's talking about a life filled with amazing musical peaks.

"I'm incredibly blessed," he says, shaking his head. "I'm lucky, and to say anything else would be ..." He scans the sky for the right word. "Uncivilized."

That realization came to him in what he calls "a mild epiphany" a few years ago. "I was standing with a cup of coffee in my hand, staring out the window of the house I used to live in up on Laurel Ridge," he says. "I could see people driving to work and was thinking about how many people were going to work that morning to jobs they hate and how I've been making my living by making stuff up in my head ever since high school. And right about the same time I read something in the Essenes gospels, in language that was really beautiful, that said, 'The man who has found his work needs ask for no other blessing.' I found my work early."

Born in Houston in 1950, Crowell played drums in his father's band at age 11 and founded his first rock band at 15. He headed to Nashville in 1972 and quickly fell in with kindred spirit "misfit songwriters" such as Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Mickey Newbury and Steve Young.

Then came the big break, in 1974, when the young Emmylou Harris recorded the first two of many of Crowell's songs she would eventually cut, " 'Til I Can Gain Control Again" and "Bluebird Wine," and then tapped Crowell to join her Hot Band. "That was the 'Great School of Emmylou,' " he says, smiling. "Working within her band, learning how to arrange songs, learning to collaborate with great musicians. That's something I still do -- surround myself with great musicians. And another thing I learned from Emmylou was that when I'm onstage, I'm not a front man with a band around me. I'm a bandleader, inside a band. And if I'm doing my job, not only do I own center stage, but also I shine the spotlight on others who share the stage with me as equals. That's crucial."

In 1978, Crowell released his superb Warner Bros. debut, "Ain't Living Long Like This," and although his next few releases didn't sell well, they were mined for his songs, recorded by the likes of Bob Seger, Johnny Cash, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Waylon Jennings. And he's still a go-to guy for a hit country song, as rising star Keith Urban recently spent five weeks at No. 1 with Crowell's "Making Memories of Us." Though Crowell struggled early in the country market as a recording artist, he became a hot commodity as a producer, working with Clark, Cash, Sissy Spacek, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Cash's daughter Rosanne. He produced Rosanne Cash's first five records and married her as well. (Both Crowell and Rosanne Cash are scheduled to perform at the free festival Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park in October. )

When Crowell signed with Columbia Records, he went straight for the commercial jugular, scoring big with such hits as "Crazy for Leaving" and "I Couldn't Leave You If I Tried," off "Diamonds and Dirt." He immediately felt the corporate pressure to follow up with something even bigger. "Bigger than five No. 1 hits?" he asks rhetorically. "That's when I knew I couldn't please 'The Man.' It became about commerce, not art, on any level." His next two releases documented his crumbling relationship with Rosanne Cash, including the aptly titled "Life Is Messy."

In his quest for relevancy, Crowell has found some peace by being committed to his "singular sensibility," a phrase that comes up frequently while he talks. "No one looks at the world like I do," Crowell says. "What I write, only I can write, because of my singular sensibility, so I made a deal with the creative process: I would try to live in a heightened state of awareness, and I would let the songs come, not force them to please someone other than myself."

And after his bitter attacks on corporate greed and the religious right on "The Outsider," what could possibly come next? "I will tell you this," he says, eyes alive. "I'm writing about some interesting stuff that I've never written about. Not many people have. From bulimia to Alzheimer's. Where it's really going remains to be seen, but I won't know until I try. It's the process of discovery -- how to write about these terribly difficult topics - - that's actually my favorite part.




NASHVILLE SCENE

By Chris Neal

Rodney Crowell
The Outsider (Columbia)

Middle age is when mortality, once a fuzzy, far-off blur, comes cruelly into focus, when it begins to dawn on you that there are fewer days ahead of than behind you. It's the moment when you realize, as Bob Dylan, then 56, said, "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."

Rodney Crowell

Middle age is also a time when many performers begin to seem like uninspired versions of their former selves, attempting to construct an image of perpetual youth, Botox-ing up and insisting the years aren't really passing. But it doesn't have to be that way. If you're as canny and talented as Rodney Crowell, 55, and Marty Stuart, 46, the middle years can be the occasion to marshal real-world wisdom and musical experience into stunning artistry.

Blessed with a built-in audience that has followed each from a hit-making youth into alt-country godfather maturity, neither man bothers to court country radio programmers anymore. Each had his last Top 10 hit way back in 1992, each spent a few years correcting course in the late 1990s, and each has refocused with singular resolve in the new millennium. (Each, by the way, also is a former son-in-law of Johnny Cash.) More importantly, each is making music that argues for middle age not as the end of youth but as the beginning of wisdom, a time when smart, realistic people can finally start making sense of themselves and the world.

Not without a few aches and pains, mind you. "I've got 10 good years left in my legs," Crowell observes dryly atop a Chuck Berry groove and chiming guitars in "Say You Love Me," the opening cut on his new album, The Outsider. Luckily, as he points out seconds later, "The first thing to go is not your mind."

Crowell's 2001 album The Houston Kid took stock by casting an eye back to his childhood in Texas, while 2003's Fate's Right Hand was a pragmatic assessment of his present condition. On The Outsider, Crowell turns his attention to the world beyond his skin. Together, the albums form a loose triptych that looks backward, then inward, then outward. If Fate's Right Hand found Crowell spotting the looming shadow of mortality, The Outsider jumps with impatience at the knowledge that the shadow is growing longer every second. Throughout the album, Crowell opts for direct, declamatory communication rather than elaborate metaphor. It's the language of someone who doesn't have time for you to ponder his message. He wants you to get it the first time.

"Don't Get Me Started," for instance, quickly gives you a character—guy in a bar—then runs down a litany of the horrors that Crowell sees everywhere in the age of Bush: "We ran into trouble scamming for oil, the whole Middle East is coming to a boil." In "The Obscenity Prayer (Give It to Me)," Crowell slams right-wing hypocrisy with zero subtlety but perfect clarity. The sentiment of the mostly spoken "Ignorance Is the Enemy" doesn't go much further than its title, but a piece of inspired guest casting—Emmylou Harris on the first verse, John Prine on the second—and some sumptuous harmonies make it moving nonetheless.

In its final stretch, The Outsider scales down its viewpoint from the global and social to the personal and emotional. "Beautiful Despair" takes a cold-eyed look at knowing one's limitations. "Beautiful despair is hearing Dylan when you're drunk at 3 a.m.," Crowell sings, "Knowing that the chances are, no matter what, you'll never write like him." Even for one of America's best songwriters, there's always a faster gun in town.

A few songs later, Crowell tackles Dylan's "Shelter From the Storm," The Outsider's only cover. It's a better song than any of the originals here, not least because it teems with the kind of imagery Crowell eschews these days (on this album, at least; "Making Memories of Us," the Crowell-written valentine that Keith Urban recently placed atop the country chart, drips with poetry). But Crowell's arrangement steals the show—he boldly tweaks his hero's lyrics to turn the song into a duet between the bedraggled protagonist and his female savior, voiced by Harris. Crowell may know his limitations, but he also knows how to get around them; he can't beat Dylan, but he can turn Dylan's song to his own uses.

The Outsider ends with "We Can't Turn Back," which finds Crowell—lacking answers to the worries he enumerates on the album—looking heavenward in resignation. "Pray for peace until you're hoarse, and maybe fear will run its course," he figures. "May God forgive us our insanity, and we'll keep pressing on."

The notion of spirituality as the only true refuge—and deliverance—from an overwhelming world is explored at much greater length on Stuart's first gospel album, Souls' Chapel. Maybe it's an easy answer to midlife crisis—if there's an afterworld, that means the days remaining aren't so few after all—but Stuart makes the particulars of religion seem irrelevant. It's not about the dogma, it's about the love.
Like his previous album, 2003's Country Music (credited, like this one, to Stuart and his ace backing band, the Fabulous Superlatives), it's a seemingly effortless old-school gem. But Souls' Chapel is from a different old school and has a different aim—Country Music took you back home, but Souls' Chapel wants to take you higher.

Stuart has found a singularly seductive way to do that, by basing his version of gospel music in the electrified Mississippi testifying of the Staple Singers. It's one influence Stuart hasn't always worn on his sleeve, but one that he does enough justice here to last a lifetime.

Stuart the producer knows just how little watering these songs need to bloom, setting warm, full-bodied harmonies in a web of spidery electric guitar, nudged along by a spare, restrained rhythm section and a few drops of B-3 organ. Surprisingly, Superlatives drummer Harry Stinson and bass player Brian Glenn give up their rhythm duties (to Chad Cromwell and Glenn Worf, respectively) to concentrate solely on harmonies here. It's a gamble that works, showcasing a natural, easy vocal blend honed at leisure on the bus and backstage.

The album is a blend of Staples numbers, traditional and classic gospel and Stuart originals, and he has chosen (and composed) them with such care that it's often difficult to know which is which. It's easy to imagine Stuart's "It's Time to Go Home" or the tour-de-force "The Gospel Story of Noah's Ark" rocking the pews a century ago. Souls' Chapel winds up with a pair of locomotive Staples songs: Steve Cropper and William Bell's "Slow Train" and Pops Staples' "Move Along Train." By the time Mavis Staples herself comes swooping in on the latter, the devil doesn't stand a chance. You may not be converted, but you'll remember that—even in these days of Christian-right rule that divides to conquer—there still is a welcoming power in the good word.

As a coda, Stuart appends his instrumental title cut. It's a moment of calm reflection that seems to suggest we should savor our time on earth, while making it as heavenly as possible—and that, even if it's getting there, it's not dark yet.




USA TODAY

August 16, 2005

Rodney Crowell, The Outsider (*** 1/2) Crowell would rather engage listeners than confront them. That's why the most political album of his career begins with an Easybeats-style rave-up. It's also why the most pointed song, Don't Get Me Started, includes a couplet — "I was born in America, and I'm proud of that fact/I wish the rest of the world would get off our back" — in an effort to find common ground. Still, an album with titles such as The Obscenity Prayer and Epictetus Speaks is not likely to generate five No. 1 country singles, as Crowell's 1989 Diamonds & Dirt did. But after hearing him sing Bob Dylan's Shelter from the Storm as a duet with Emmylou Harris, you might wish it could nab at least one.

-- Brian Mansfield




ASSOCIATED PRESS

Rodney Crowell, "The Outsider" (Columbia)

With "The Outsider," Rodney Crowell has delivered an album for anyone feeling disaffected with the modern world and its politics.

At times funny, other times thought-provoking, frequently angry and nearly always rocking, Crowell follows in the footsteps of icons like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan who made great music while also commenting on current events.

"Give to me my Aspen winter/Sorry 'bout the World Trade Center," Crowell sings in "The Obscenity Prayer," a song that perfectly embodies the philosophy of many self-centered people who may feel the complexities of the modern world are beyond their reach. "I can't help the ones in need/I've got my own mouth to feed."

On "Don't Get Me Started," perhaps the song most tightly connected with current events, Crowell takes the position of a person looking to unwind at a bar.

"When the coalition army doesn't come to your aid/You might as well face it there's no money to be made," he sings. "I had a dream last night I was the secretary of defense/And I came to the conclusion war doesn't make any sense."

When the cover of Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm" comes at track 10, it plays almost like a prayer. And with Emmylou Harris on backing vocals, the song takes on an even more ethereal quality.

-- Scott Bauer, AP Writer