Guy Clark was the mentor but his wife Susanna was the muse, says Rodney Crowell

YOU can take the man out of Texas – but you can’t take Texas out of the man. Like so many singer-songwriters from the Lone Star State, Rodney Crowell headed to Nashville, Tennessee, to make his way in the country music capital. Houston-born Rodney Crowell headed to Nashville, Tennessee, to make his way in the country music capital Credit: Supplied Singer-songwriter Rodney today Credit: Supplied Among those who took the same Southern trail were Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and Lyle Lovett. As I discover, Houston-born Crowell went on to occupy stages, recording studios, each other’s homes and the odd dive bar with those likeminded souls from the American state second only in size to Alaska. Sign up for the Showbiz newsletter Thank you! So, what is the elusive quality that sets you Texans apart? I ask him. “We Texans are some of the best liars in the world,” replies the singer, 75, his bright blue eyes lighting up. “It’s wink-wink — we’re not trying to put one over on anybody. READ MORE MUSIC INTERVIEWS “But every once in a while, you’ve got to patch over the holes to sustain a narrative. A really good liar can do that.” I’m speaking to Crowell to mark his “lost” album, Then Again, mostly recorded in the mid-2000s but left to gather dust until now. It is filled with the kind of richly atmospheric storytelling that typifies a career stretching back to the early Seventies. Given Crowell’s “liars” admission, I suggest it seems odd that the record begins with the brooding I Won’t Lie, delivered with seemingly deadpan sincerity. Most read in Showbiz “You got the irony there,” he laughs. “I AM a liar! How do you think I got where I am today?” Before we dive deeper into the album, I mention the first time I became aware of him, prompting him to regale me with a “story” from his endless supply. Crowell had been playing guitar and singing harmony vocals as a member of Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band on the Old Grey Whistle Test, the cult late-night BBC Two music programme hosted by Whispering Bob Harris. “It was ’77, remember it well,” he says. “I was the youngest member of the Hot Band and it was my job to go out, find the hippies and see if I could get us some hashish. “I went down into the old part of London and didn’t show up back at the hotel until two in the morning. When I got back, they were all waiting for me, the kid, to come back with the hash. “Kris Kristofferson was there and he just reached over, took the lump, swallowed it whole — and everybody’s eyes just bugged out. That’s my memory of that visit!” Crowell had joined the Hot Band in 1975 after Emmylou’s producer Brian Ahern played her a tape of his songs including Bluebird Wine, Till I Gain Control Again and An American Dream. He says: “Emmy recorded Bluebird Wine for her Pieces Of The Sky album. Then she and Brian went looking for me. Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris performing in the Seventies Credit: Redferns Rodney with Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson in 2016 Credit: Getty “We met after one of her gigs and stayed up all night singing Louvin Brothers duets. She was still recovering from losing her singing partner, Gram Parsons.” Parsons, aged just 26, had overdosed on morphine and alcohol in 1973 at the Joshua Tree Inn, leaving behind such sublime songs as Hickory Wind and In My Hour Of Darkness — and Emmylou looking for new people to work with. Crowell continues: “I just happened to stumble into Emmy’s path. Later, when she passed through Austin, we met up again and she said, ‘Hey, I’m going to LA tomorrow and I got a spare ticket, You want to go?’ I got on the plane.” By the late Seventies, Crowell had begun a solo career which reached its commercial zenith in 1988 with his Diamonds & Dirt album featuring five No1 singles on the Billboard country chart. Among countless artists to cover his songs have been Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Crystal Gayle, Bob Seger, Keith Urban and Lee Ann Womack. But now it’s time to return to his new/old album, Then Again, notable for guest appearances of old friends, ghosts from his past if you will, including Emmylou, Lyle Lovett and, most significantly, the late Guy Clark. One of the most striking efforts is Are You One Of Us?, described as “a musical debate” with Clark about a divided America full of haves and have-nots. When considering the lines, “To the so-called leader of the known free world/Two by four, you’re out the door”, Crowell says: “It’s so applicable to now — and at least the president can only serve four years twice.” The song represents the final recording to feature Crowell and Clark, friends and collaborators since 1972 despite a few bumps in the road. Another master storyteller, Clark, who died in 2016, is remembered for early triumphs LA Freeway, Desperados Waiting For A Train and Texas 1947 and, in his later years, for Dublin Blues, Stuff That Works and My Favourite Picture Of You. “Guy and I had a great relationship — we loved each other,” says Crowell. “But I got sideways with him. I got a little full of myself while I was having a run of success. “My ego got out of hand and I angered Guy. I pissed him off with some stupid s**t. And when Guy got angry, he was really angry.” After writing Are You One Of Us?, Crowell decided to take matters in hand and call Clark. “I said, ‘Guy, I know you’re pissed at me, man. Come over to the studio and put it to good use. I’ve got just the thing’. “He came over, gave it his all and I said, ‘Perfect’. Tonally, it sounds as if we’re in opposition but we were in agreement. “That was the beginning of us letting go. We started to find each other again. “When I rediscovered this record, I realised that the song was the pivotal moment when Guy and I reconnected.” Crowell casts his mind back to late 1972, to when he first met Guy Clark. “I was sharing a flop house with Skinny Dennis Sanchez [the 6ft 11in bass player immortalised in LA Freeway]. I came in one day to find Guy passed out drunk on my bed, his boots hanging off the end. “So his wife Susanna and I had a long conversation. And that was the beginning of it. “Though Guy became the quintessential mentor, Susanna was the muse for me. “She was also the muse for Guy, Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle, Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt. I know for a fact that Willie was enthralled by her. “As much as I wanted Guy’s approval when I got a song together, it was Susanna I wanted to play it for.” Rodney with Susanna and Guy Clark in the Seventies Credit: supplied Crowell likens the Clarks’ situation to Gertrude Stein’s Paris salon in the early 20th Century where she hosted leading figures in art and literature such as Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald. He remembers hanging out with the Clarks and Townes Van Zandt, who was armed with stellar songs like Pancho And Lefty and If I Needed You, and Mickey Newbury, a fellow Houston-born singer who wrote An American Trilogy, famously recorded by Elvis Presley. Crowell recalls: “To begin with, Guy would say, ‘Your songs aren’t ready. Play one you learned from your dad and then you can hang’. “So until I came up with Song For The Life or Till I Gain Control Again, the only card I had in the game was Appalachian folk songs like May I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight, Mister? or Footprints In The Snow.” Crowell says that Van Zandt, who died in tragic circumstances aged 52 as a result of alcoholism, was “highly competitive”. “Townes picked on me,” he says. “I was seven or eight years younger and he even stole one of my girlfriends. “But I learned the ropes from him. One time at 3am, I’d been drinking and finally got the nerve to throw out a new little imbecile of a song. “Townes looks at me and says, ‘I got a new song’. He played Pancho And Lefty and completely annihilated me. “I was smart enough to realise I was being slayed by the very thing I needed to aim for. “I don’t think I’ve accomplished Pancho And Lefty yet. That song will always remain the true North Star for me.” In the mid-Eighties, it was Clark and Crowell who gave another Texan singer, Lyle Lovett, a break. “We decided to put Lyle on during our set,” says Crowell. “He was very humble at that time. He had his big hat in hand and he comes in and sings, ‘Me upon my pony on my boat’. “We were happy to shine a light on him — and, within a year, he was outshining us completely!” Now that connection is rekindled by the Then Again track Whatcha Gonna Do Now No.2 featuring Lovett and Chely Wright. So let’s go forward to 2005 when Crowell was coming off a trilogy of fine albums, The Houston Kid (the title a nod to his hometown), Fate’s Right Hand and The Outsider. They exhibited a winning combination of roots music and contemporary themes and even included a duet with his former father-in-law, Johnny Cash, on I Walk The Line Revisited. Crowell was married to Rosanne Cash from 1979 until their divorce in 1992. He says: “Truth is this [Then Again] would have been the fourth album I’d made with my pals in the first five years of the 21st Century. “I listened to it. I thought it was OK but my perspective had gone. All my production tricks were glaring at me. “I felt like I’d lost my way when indeed I really hadn’t.” Instead of releasing this next album in quick succession, Crowell jumped at “an opportunity to drop it all” and go to Los Angeles to work with Joe Henry, the singer and producer also known for being Madonna’s brother-in-law. “My time spent with Joe was perfect, just what I needed,” says Crowell of the sessions that led to his 2008 album, Sex & Gasoline. “I just sang my songs live with the band, then said, ‘See you later, Joe’. “A month or so later, Joe mailed me the final mixes. I went, ‘Wow, that’s the way I should always work’.” Crowell says he repeated the formula for his 2023 album The Chicago Sessions, which found him heading to the Windy City to record with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy. So what prompted him to revisit the songs seeing the light of day on Then Again? “I needed help,” he replies. “The notion of an assistant had always been something I hadn’t opened myself up to. “I don’t know why. Maybe it’s to do with my upbringing in Southeast Texas.” But, having acknowledged he couldn’t cope with sorting out his archives alone, Crowell hired a part-time helper. He says: “She found a hard drive and said, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, let’s have a listen’. I plugged it up and went, ‘Wow, this is a record I made. It’s actually good’.” Having made the easy decision to release it, he added two newer tracks Go Light A Candle, blessed with vocals from Emmylou Harris and Lera Lynn, and If I Could Speak To Leonard. The latter serves as a love letter to the late, great Leonard Cohen from a long-standing admirer. Crowell says: “I had an appreciation for him — for Bird On The Wire, for Chelsea Hotel No2. But what really broke it wide open for me was when I went to see him perform live after he came down from the mountain.” He’s referring to Cohen’s return to the stage after five years in seclusion at a mountainous Zen Buddhist retreat. Crowell continues: “He was the most generous performer I’d ever seen, bar none. I was completely taken by his spiritual humanity.” He remembers being particularly overwhelmed by Come Healing from the 2012 album Old Ideas, released when Cohen was 77. “Here was a man pointing the way to remain highly creative and realising your potential right up until the day you die — and I want to find my own version of that.” “If I could speak to Leonard, I wouldn’t talk about writing songs. I would say, ‘How did you get to that place?’” In 2026, I can report that Crowell is “working on an album right now”. “As a matter of fact, I stopped what I was doing to come and talk to you,” he says. “I have no expectations other than the opportunity to work. “Whatever the end result, the work I do is the gravy.” RODNEY CROWELL Then Again Album cover for Rodney Crowell’s Then Again Credit: supplied Comment now