{"id":6618,"date":"2012-06-13T01:01:45","date_gmt":"2012-06-13T08:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=6618"},"modified":"2012-06-13T01:06:13","modified_gmt":"2012-06-13T08:06:13","slug":"rodney-crowell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/06\/rodney-crowell\/","title":{"rendered":"RODNEY CROWELL"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

RODNEY CROWELL\u00a0<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A unique teaming with poet Mary Karr brings it all back home \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

After more than three decades, 13 solo albums and collaborations with some of music\u2019s greatest names, Rodney Crowell knows a born songwriter when he sees one\u2014even if that particular songwriter has never written a song. When he read poet and memoirist Mary Karr\u2019s 1995 book\u00a0The Liars\u2019 Club<\/em>, he couldn\u2019t help but see the parallels between himself and the author\u2014they grew up within 60 miles of each other in East Texas homes heavy\u00a0with alcohol and violence. He also detected a writerly voice that would lend itself to musical accompaniment. \u201cI thought, \u2018This girl could write songs,\u2019\u201d recalls\u00a0Crowell, 61, who released his own memoir, Chinaberry Sidewalks<\/em>, last year.<\/p>\n

Crowell signaled his fandom by name-checking Karr in his 2003 song \u201cEarthbound.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m actually kind of a hermit,\u201d admits Karr, 57, \u201cbut I said to him, \u2018Why don\u2019t we meet for a drink or something?\u2019\u201d After several years spent building a solid friendship, the two finally began writing songs together. The result is Kin<\/em>, a Joe Henry-produced album of Crowell\/Karr originals sung by an all-star cast including Norah Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Lucinda Williams, Vince Gill, Lee Ann Womack, Emmylou Harris and Crowell\u2019s ex-wife, Rosanne Cash. Up next for Crowell, whose most recent solo album is 2008\u2019s Sex & Gasoline<\/em>, is another team-up: his first-ever full album of duets with Harris, with whom he has worked on and off since the mid-1970s. \u201cWe\u2019re close to having it done,\u201d he reports. \u201cSome of the songs I wrote when we were kids, songs we always said we should do. Thirty-five years later, we\u2019re doing it.\u201d For now, we spoke with Crowell and Karr about their groundbreaking blending of poetry and music.<\/p>\n

How did you start writing together?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CROWELL: We talked on the phone and Mary said, \u201cIf the law don\u2019t want you, neither do I.\u201d I\u2019d say \u201cThat\u2019s a song,\u201d and she\u2019d say \u201cWell, then, write it.\u201d I wrote a verse, got a melody going and sent it to her. Up on my email screen a second verse appeared. I wrote a little more, and that verse came back altered and revised. Then she sent the last verse. I said, \u201cWe need a bridge,\u201d and next thing you know we\u2019ve got a song\u2014and in a very short time. I said, \u201cThis works so well, I\u2019m coming to New York and we\u2019ll do this face to face.\u201d In the first day we wrote two songs. It was that easy. Before long we had 15 songs. We\u2019d laugh and talk, and out of that would come songs.<\/p>\n

Did she require encouragement?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CROWELL: She\u2019d say, \u201cOh, I don\u2019t know how to do that.\u201d But she\u2019s a language scholar. She can cuss like a sailor and destroy the English language with Southeast\u00a0Texas-speak, and at the same time converse with the editor of The Paris Review<\/em>. She has language. Language belongs to her.<\/p>\n

KARR: I\u2019d say, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you write a song with Guy Clark, Emmylou or Vince Gill?\u201d I\u2019m a big music fan, but didn\u2019t see myself as having much to contribute. I fell in love with the songwriting process. Rodney\u2019s a great coach. He\u2019s so loving and patient that he draws out the best in people. It\u2019s why people like Vince Gill say, \u201cWhatever Rodney wants me to do, I\u2019ll do it.\u201d He has a way of encouraging you, like getting a kid to \u00a0go off the high dive.<\/p>\n

Did Mary contribute music?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CROWELL: In the beginning I was providing the melody. As time went on, Mary\u2019s confidence as a songwriter started to emerge. She started singing melodies to me that I would interpret. Her confidence started to soar with these songs\u2014it was cool to watch her articulate a melody.<\/p>\n

KARR: I\u2019d occasionally offer input. I know what I don\u2019t know, but I\u2019m also opinionated. I can\u2019t help it.<\/p>\n

How did you pick the singers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CROWELL: It started with Norah Jones. She had recorded one of my songs [\u201cBull Rider\u201d] and I was so smitten with it that I wanted her to sing one of our songs. I sent her a few and she picked \u201cIf the Law Don\u2019t Want You, Neither Do I.\u201d At the same time I was talking to Emmy, and she said she wanted to do \u201cLong Time Girl Gone By.\u201d That naturally sorted itself out. Knowing Rosanne as well as I do, and knowing that she has sisters, I thought she would be perfect for \u201cSister Oh Sister.\u201d Because Mary doesn\u2019t sing, we had female singers, and then I said, \u201cWell, this\u2019ll be imbalanced if I do all the male narratives.\u201d So I went to see my friend Vince, and then the idea to have Kris sing the father\u2019s part in \u201cMy Father\u2019s Advice\u201d seemed like\u00a0natural casting to me.<\/p>\n

What was recording like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CROWELL: Joe Henry called when he heard that I was thinking about making this record. He had produced Sex & Gasoline<\/em>, and I knew he was the man for this. Joe\u2019s very articulate, a poet and a reader like myself. We set up in a circle and for the most part didn\u2019t use headphones, just sang and played live. What you hear on that record is what was sung and played. We added a few things later\u2014a fiddle, maybe a harmony here and there. But for the most part,\u00a090 percent of the record is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

How important is East Texas as the setting for the album?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

CROWELL: That\u2019s one of the things that captured me about Mary. She had so beautifully written about that place, and I understood every nuance. It was like my childhood was being handed to me. There\u2019s a unique sense of humor, and there\u2019s a rhythm to the colloquial and vernacular that informs the humor.<\/p>\n

KARR: We both grew up in that same little stretch. We both were dying to get out of there, and yet in some ways neither\u00a0of us ever left.<\/p>\n

Are songwriting and prose similar?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CROWELL: Only in the work ethic. You\u2019ve got to have an imagination, and maybe the genetic predisposition to want to tell\u00a0stories. Part of my education as a songwriter was to read constantly. But I learned the hard way over a long period of time that in song you can act words out, imply sarcasm, have a big ol\u2019 metaphor and make it work by the way you sing it. But on the page, with the intimacy of the writer and the reader, songwriting tricks don\u2019t work. Also with writing songs, you need to speed up the storytelling because you\u2019ve got three minutes. With writing prose, you\u2019ve got to slow the storytelling down.<\/p>\n

Will you do this again?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CROWELL: I think Mary\u2019s got the bug. We\u2019re going to tour together, which will be fun. We\u2019ll start getting ideas about some other songs that we want to make. Whether it will be Kin II<\/em>, I don\u2019t know. I imagine we\u2019ll chase something in another direction.<\/p>\n

\u2013Juli Thanki<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RODNEY CROWELL\u00a0 A unique teaming with poet Mary Karr brings it all back home \u00a0 After more than three decades, 13 solo albums and collaborations with some of music\u2019s greatest names, Rodney Crowell knows a born songwriter when he sees one\u2014even if that particular songwriter has never written a song. When he read poet and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[3865,3873,3872,3870,3867,2737,3866,2816,3871,3869,1194,2413,3754,1178,3862,675,3863,3864,3874,3868,2822],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6618"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6618"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6625,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6618\/revisions\/6625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}