Rodney felt the time is right for the songs he cut in 2005 with Guy Clark and Emmylou Harris to be released as Then Again.
Here's the scoop on Then Again...
“I guess you could call it a lost album,” says Rodney Crowell. “I stumbled upon it in my vault at home. I’d forgotten about it completely.” He’s referring to Then Again, which he recorded and shelved two decades ago before moving off into new directions. Since then, the album has been biding its time, waiting for the moment when its songs would hit hardest. And they hit incredibly hard now, largely because age and experience have granted Crowell a richer perspective. “I’m glad I put it on the shelf, because now is the time for it. It may not be the time for it for the rest of the world, but it’s time for it for me. That’s why I wanted to call it Then Again. I thought that was a clever way of saying that what was happening then is happening now.
Back in 2006, Crowell was in high cotton. He was coming off a trilogy of albums—The Houston Kid in 2001, Fate’s Right Hand in 2003, The Outsider in 2005—that re-established him as a fearless voice in Americana and attracted new generations of fans drawn to his compassionate storytelling, his detail-laden songwriting, and his eloquent outrage over political injustices. In 2005 he went into Treasure Isle Studios in Nashville to record what would become Then Again. But when he heard the masters, something didn’t feel quite right. The band was smokin’ hot and the songs sounded good, but the album just didn’t move him and he struggled to figure out exactly what was wrong or what was missing. Twenty years later, when he found the album in his vaults, he couldn’t remember exactly what tripped him up. He decided it was finally time, if only because “I heard a record I wasn’t sick of. I was no longer sick of myself. That’s what 20 years will do for you.”
Once lost and now found, Then Again is something the Rodney Crowell of the 2000s could never have predicted but something the Rodney Crowell of the 2020s recognizes instinctively: a work of nuance, insight, and sensitivity that considers death but celebrates life. “I’m trying to understand that this spirit of mine is going to leave this body and go off somewhere else. I’ve got a pretty good idea that it’s going to be someplace good, but I still need to perfect some part of my spiritual journey here before I check out. I can see that in these songs now.”
Rodney Crowell's Then Again is out 6/26 via New West Records. Check the tracklisting followed by "Are You One Of Us" featuring the voice of Guy Clark below. You can pre-order copies on vinyl (or CD) right here.
Rodney Crowell - Then Again
Side A
I Won’t Lie
Are You One of Us? (feat. Guy Clark)
If I Could Speak To Leonard
Bring It on Home To Memphis
The Ballad of Artemis and Orion
Side B
Sing Your Heart Out (feat. Kieran Goss & Annie Kinsella)
Whatcha Gonna Do Now #2 (feat. Lyle Lovett & Chely Wright)
The Has-Been Vents His Spleen
40 Winters
Go Light a Candle (feat. Emmylou Harris & Lera Lynn)
The 15-track Truly Handmade collection of Guy Clark's solo acoustic demos was produced by his pal Rodney Crowell.
Here's the scoop...
The focus of Truly Handmade, Volume 1 is a collection of Guy Clark’s solo acoustic demos, which reveal the early forms of several Clark classics. His fans may have heard “L.A. Freeway” or “Let Him Roll” or “Lone Star Hotel” dozens of times, but hearing them like this affords a precious peek behind the curtain. Even more intriguing are songs that were left on the cutting-room floor. Nearly half the songs on Truly Handmade will be new to even longtime fans. A few stretch back to the early ’70s, before Guy had ever released an album. We also finally get to hear Guy’s early version of “Step Inside My House.” Guy often claimed this was the first song he ever wrote.
First came a biography, Tamara Saviano’s Without Getting Killed or Caught, which shed light on the lives of Guy and his wife Susanna (and their close friend Townes Van Zandt). The book served as a blueprint to Saviano’s 2021 documentary film of the same name. And now there’s more music. Anyone who ever saw Guy’s workshop—or the re-creation of it at the Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit—no doubt noticed all the tapes on the wall. Cassettes were filled with songs-in-progress over the decades. Stashed away were even more recordings on reel-to-reel.
Truly Handmade, Volume 1 is out May 3rd. You can get a copy on vinyl from Guy Clark's site right here.
Check out Peter Blackstock's assessment followed by the track list and a video for "Step Inside My House" along with a Lyle Lovett performance of his version of the song from 2011. In the mid 1960s, Guy Clark wrote "Step Inside My House," his first composition, at 1548 Castle Court in the Montrose neighbourhood in Houston, Texas. Guy did not record the song for release, but his friend Lyle Lovett, who heard Eric Taylor sing the song, recorded Eric's version with slightly different lyrics in 1998. This original demo of Guy singing "Step Inside My House" was found on a cassette tape in Guy's basement workshop after his death. The footage from Guy's house in the video was taken by Paul Whitfield for the documentary Without Getting Killed or Caught, released in 2021.
Truly Handmade
Those closest to Guy have been combing through those tapes carefully, seeking gems worth passing along to the public. They’ve found a lot: Truly Handmade is subtitled “Volume 1,” indicating there’s more to come. If it’s anything like this batch of 15 tracks from the early years of Guy’s career, his fans will want to hear all of it.
The work began with Dylan Clark, Guy’s grandson, transferring hundreds of tracks from tape to digital. (Guy’s only son, Travis, died at 50 a year after his father’s death.) Dylan’s efforts made it easier for producer Rodney Crowell to dig through the treasure chest and select material for posthumous release.
The focus of Truly Handmade is solo acoustic demos, which reveal the early forms of several Clark classics. Crowell, who produced Clark’s 1981 album The South Coast of Texas, chose a few demos from that record, as well as four from Clark’s highly acclaimed 1975 debut Old No. 1. His fans may have heard “L.A. Freeway” or “Let Him Roll” or “Lone Star Hotel” dozens of times, but hearing them like this affords a precious peek behind the curtain.
Even more intriguing are songs that were left on the cutting-room floor. Nearly half the songs on Truly Handmade will be new to even longtime fans. A few stretch back to the early ’70s, before Guy had ever released an album. Crowell says “Miss Alice Pringle” — a co-write with Susanna — dates back to at least 1972. “That's when I first heard it, and I always wanted him to record it,” Crowell says.
We also finally get to hear Guy’s own version of “Step Inside My House,” which gave Lyle Lovett the title of his 1998 album featuring songs by Texans who deeply influenced his own work. Now we get the blueprint of Lovett’s graceful rendition, as well as an important historical artifact: Guy often claimed this was the first song he ever wrote. (Was that actually the case? Sort of. “I think it's the first thing he ever considered a keeper,” Crowell says. “He wrote songs before that, but that's probably the first one he would stand behind.”)
And then there’s “Don’t Let The Sunshine Fool Ya,” which Guy’s fans first heard when his pal Townes included it on The Late Great Townes Van Zandt nearly a half-century ago. A more produced take from Guy turned up on the 1997 RCA set The Essential Guy Clark. But this demo is likely a better representation of what convinced Townes to record it in 1975.
So what comes next in the Truly Handmade series? That’s still in the works – but Crowell got exactly what he wanted for this first volume. “When I started finding these (demos of) just Guy alone, guitar vocal, I said ‘This is what we need to start with.’ And luckily, there was enough material to do that.” — Peter Blackstock
Celebrating the birthday of country great Billy Joe Shaver with the announcement of a new tribute album and some clips.
Live Forever: A Tribute to Billy Joe Shaver
In honor of his birthday today, New West Records & Pedernales Records are proud to announce Live Forever: A Tribute To Billy Joe Shaver to be released November 11th, 2022. The 12-song set was co-produced by Charlie Sexton & Freddy Fletcher and features renditions of Shaver songs lovingly recorded by Willie Nelson and Lucinda Williams, George Strait, Miranda Lambert, Nathaniel Rateliff, Ryan Bingham and Nikki Lane, Rodney Crowell, Margo Price, Allison Russell, and others.
The Texas singer-songwriter who died on October 28th, 2020 was an integral member of the Outlaw Country movement. A favorite among music legends, Johnny Cash once called Shaver “my favorite songwriter,” while Willie Nelson declared, “Billy Joe is definitely the best writer in Texas.” Upon the announcement of Live Forever: A Tribute To Billy Joe Shaver, Nelson said, “He was just real; there wasn’t one phony drop of blood in him.” AllMusic called Shaver’s songs “among the greatest in the whole history of the (country) genre” while the Washington Post said, “When the country outlaws were collecting their holy writings, Billy Joe Shaver was carving out Exodus.”
Co-producer Freddy Fletcher wrote of Shaver in the liner notes, “His influence on the greatest of artists is what inspired this project. The album is a testament to his words and their deep impact on wonderful songwriters and performers. He’s a hero to so many, and we are honored to pay homage to his legacy.”
On the topic of songwriting, Billy Joe Shaver once said “when you write songs, and you write good songs, people will always remember you. Words will always outlive us. And if your name is attached to those words, you’re gonna live forever.”
Live Forever: A Tribute To Billy Joe Shaver will be available across digital retailers, on compact disc, and standard black vinyl. A limited to 500 “Old Chunk of Coal” colour vinyl edition will be available via Vinyl, Me Please, a limited to 300 Purple, Blue & Green marble vinyl edition will be available via the Magnolia Record Club, and a limited to 300 Gold & Green colour vinyl edition will be available via Heady Wax Fiends. A limited to 500 “Denim” vinyl edition is now available for pre-order via NEW WEST RECORDS right here: http://newwst.com/liveforever.
Watch a couple of Billy Joe Shaver clips following the Live Forever track listing below.
About Billy Joe Shaver...
In 1965, Billy Joe Shaver hitchhiked to Nashville and convinced the country singer Bobby Bare to listen to his songs. Bare quickly signed Shaver to a $50 a week job as a songwriter and recorded his song “Ride Me Down Easy.” Kris Kristofferson’s rendition of “Good Christian Soldier” and Tom T. Hall’s recording of “Willie the Wandering Gypsy and Me” soon followed. Shaver’s breakout moment came in 1973 when Waylon Jennings’ landmark album Honky Tonk Heroes was released. Hailed as the first “Outlaw Country” record, ten of its eleven songs were written or co-written by Shaver. One of which, “You Asked Me To,” was a top 10 hit for Jennings and was later recorded by Elvis Presley. Shaver’s legendary debut album, Old Five and Dimers Like Me, was produced by Kristofferson and issued in 1973 as well. He went on to release more than 20 albums, including the Grammy-nominated Everybody’s Brother in 2007. His final album, 2014’s acclaimed Long in the Tooth was his first to chart in Billboard’s Top Country Albums. Shaver's songs have been recorded and performed by Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, The Allman Brothers, and countless other legendary artists and his signature song, “Live Forever,” was performed by Robert Duvall in the 2009 film Crazy Heart. He was honored with the first ever Americana Music Award for Lifetime Achievement in Songwriting in 2002, was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2004 and the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in 2006. Billy Joe Shaver died on October 28th, 2020.
Live Forever: A Tribute To Billy Joe Shaver
1. Willie Nelson (w/ Lucinda Williams) - Live Forever
2. Ryan Bingham (w/ Nikki Lane) - Ride Me Down Easy
3. Rodney Crowell - Old Five And Dimers Like Me
4. Miranda Lambert - I’m Just An Old Chunk Of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be A Diamond Someday)
5. Edie Brickell - I Couldn’t Be Me Without You
6. Nathaniel Rateliff - You Asked Me To
7. George Strait - Willy The Wandering Gypsy And Me
Shannon McNally's gender-flipped version of "Black Rose" puts a new spin on Billy Joe Shaver's tale of an interracial affair.
Here's the press release...
“This is high art right here —cotton field disco perfection, the first generator in the county. The chorus on this song may be the best chorus of all time,” says Shannon McNally of Waylon Jennings’ “Black Rose”—a Billy Joe Shaver-penned tune she just cut with Buddy Miller for her new album, THE WAYLON SESSIONS.
“‘The devil made me do it the first time, the second time I did it on my own.’ Talk about the fight for good and evil and staring the devil down at the crossroads.” The grooving, lazy two-step feel of the original is magnified in McNally’s new version, accented by blasts of harmonica and Miller’s slinky baritone guitar.
“I wanted the video (watch it below) to have some levity and to capture the original intent of the song, which I’ve always interpreted as good-natured but risky,” says McNally, who dreamt up an elaborate backstory for the song’s short film and its characters. “I envisioned my character somewhere between Gina Davis and Woody Harrelson on the set of the Barney Miller show. It was quite liberating really. I like the image of the open cell door and the notion that essentially I’m policing myself, because isn’t that what the dance of acting right is all about?”
With THE WAYLON SESSIONS, McNally set out to revisit the songs and spirit of Waylon Jennings, a legend with whom she’s always had an ongoing fascination. “I have always loved his defiantly existential but immediately accessible common man’s music and how it boogies,” says McNally. But her collection of tunes ended up being not so much a tribute as it is a recontextualization; a nuanced, feminine rendering of a catalog long considered a bastion of hetero-masculinity. That’s not to say McNally has a softer, gentler take on Jennings’ songs—in fact, just the opposite. Over and over again, she manages to locate a smoldering intensity, a searing hurt buried deep within the music’s deceptively simple poetry, and she hones in on it with surgical precision on this new album, which features special guests including Jessi Colter, Buddy Miller, Rodney Crowell, and Lukas Nelson. “The world has changed a lot since these songs were first recorded,” says McNally. “I have never heard a woman sing any of them, but these tunes are poignant and relevant to me and to women in general right now. As a songwriter, bringing a song to its full potential so that a larger or different audience can connect is all I’ve ever cared about.”
McNally knew that assembling the right band would be essential to capturing Jennings’ mix of laid back charm and swaggering bravado, so she called AMA-winning guitarist Kenny Vaughan (Marty Stuart) to help her assemble a team that included drummer Derek Mixon (Chris Stapleton), pedal steel legend and longtime Jennings bandmate Fred Newell, Texas keyboard mainstay Bukka Allen (Robert Earl Keen, Jerry Jeff Walker), and bassist Chris Scruggs (Marty Stuart, Charlie Louvin). Working live and raw, they tracked sixteen songs in just five days, relying on instinct and intuition to guide their decisions at every turn. As brilliant as the band’s performances are, it’s McNally that breathes new life into the music here, tackling the tunes with an honesty and a maturity that transcends genre and gender. She doesn’t swap pronouns or couch her delivery with a wink; she simply plays it straight, singing her truth as a divorced single mother in her 40’s in all its beauty, pain, and power.
“My goal wasn’t to force anything onto the music that wasn’t there already,” explains McNally. “There’s a feminine perspective hidden somewhere inside each of these songs. My job was to find a way to tap into that and draw it out.” The result is that rare covers record that furthers our understanding of the originals; an album of classics that challenges our perceptions and assumptions about just what made them classics in the first place.
Pre-order Shannon McNally's THE WAYLON SESSIONS on Compass Records right here. Watch Shannon's video for "Black Rose" below.
Rodney Crowell remembers his old runaround crew Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt on "Nashville 1972" from Close Ties.
The Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter Rodney Crowell is set to release Close Ties on March 31st via New West Records. The 10-song set is his first album in over three years and follows The Traveling Kind, his acclaimed collection of duets with longtime collaborator Emmylou Harris. Co-produced by Jordan Lehning and Kim Buie, the album features a duet with Sheryl Crow on the haunting “I’m Tied To Ya,” and “It Ain’t Over Yet,” a vocal collaboration with his ex-wife Rosanne Cash and John Paul White.
The album's latest single “Nashville 1972” is accompanied by a video (see below) directed by Reid Long on 16mm black-and-white film and includes archival and modern images depicting the Nashville Crowell arrived in over 40 years ago and the Nashville in which he currently lives. It’s lyrics namecheck Guy & Susanna Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Willie Nelson, Tom T. Hall and others. While speaking about the song, Crowell stated, “You learn that writing is work, and all of us young guys in those formative years figured out that you just slept during the day and stayed up all night, at first in pursuit of girls and then in pursuit of the perfect song.” He continued, “With the poor man’s salons where we hung out, sitting around drinking and sharing songs, when you were working you’d be trying to come up with something that you could be proud of when it was your turn to play one.”
Close Ties is a loose concept record that ranges from songs about Crowell’s childhood in Texas (“East Houston Blues”) to songs about arriving in Nashville as a young songwriter (“Nashville 1972”) to songs about friends (the anguished “Life Without Susanna”) and lovers lost (“Forgive Me, Annabelle”). It is a roots record, in the sense that Crowell himself has deep roots that stretch back into Music City's outsider country scene of the early seventies that included Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Young, Larry Jon Wilson, Mickey Newbury and more.
But Close Ties defies easy classification. Is it country? Is it a singer-songwriter record? “I have declared my loyalty to Americana. It’s a hard category for people to get their heads around, or at least the terminology is. But all the people who represent it - Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams and more recent stars like John Paul White and Jason Isbell - share a common thread, and that thread is poet. Whether they are actual poets or their music exemplifies a poetic sensibility, generally speaking, the Americana artist shuns commercial compromise in favor of a singular vision. Which resonates with me.” One trait of a poet and the concept behind Close Ties involved the careful handling of memory. “A few years ago I made a record called The Houston Kid that triggered Chinaberry Sidewalks (his 2011 memoir), ” he says. “Those memory muscles are pretty strong in me. They have a natural pull. And so many of these songs use those memories as raw material.”
Fifty years after Crowell first started playing as a teen in Houston garage bands, he has moved into elder-statesman territory, and continues to extend the path carved out by the top-tier songwriters who preceded him. His songs have been recorded by country legends (Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, George Strait), to current country chart toppers (Tim McGraw, Keith Urban) to blues icons (Etta James) to rock and roll legends (Van Morrison, Bob Seger). He is a Grammy award winner, a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and recipient of the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting from the Americana Music Association.
Close Ties track listing:
1. East Houston Blues
2. Reckless
3. Life Without Susanna
4. It Ain’t Over Yet (featuring Rosanne Cash & John Paul White)
5. I Don’t Care Anymore
6. I’m Tied To Ya (featuring Sheryl Crow)
7. Forgive Me Annabelle
8. Forty Miles From Nowhere
9. Storm Warning
10. Nashville 1972
Rodney Crowell On Tour
March 14 – Aspen, CO @ Wheeler Opera House
March 15 – Fort Collins, CO @ Bohemian Nights
March 16 – Boulder, CO @ eTown
March 18 – Nashville, TN @ TPAC at Andrew Jackson Hall
March 23 – Kansas City, MO @ Knuckleheads
March 24 – St. Louis, MO @ Off Broadway Nightclub
March 25 – Chicago, IL @ City Winery Chicago
March 30 – New York, NY @ City Winery New York
March 31 – Sellersville, PA @ Sellersville Theater
April 1 – Washington, DC @ The Hamilton
April 7 – Austin, TX @ Darrel K. Royal Homecoming Show Honoring Guy Clark & Tamara Saviano
April 14 – Virginia City, NV @ Piper's Opera House
April 16 – Nashville, TN @ 3rd & Lindsley
April 22 – Fort Worth, TX @ Ft. Worth Main Street Arts Festival
May 6 – Madisonville, TX @ MSCA Pavilion
May 7 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Lobero Theatre
May 9 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Troubadour
May 10 – Berkeley, CA @ Freight & Salvage
May 12 – Portland, OR @ Alberta Rose Theatre
May 13 – Olympia, WA @ Capitol Theater
July 22 – Telluride, CO @ Americana Festival - Sheridan Opera House
August 27 – Fayetteville, AR @ Main Stage at Fayetteville Roots Festival
September 16 – Bristol, VA @ Bristol Rhythm & Roots
September 22 – Amesbury, MA @ Amesbury Harvest Fair & Country Music Festival
September 23 – Boothbay Harbor, ME @ The Opera House at Boothbay Harbor
On October 4, The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams will premiere 12 unheard Hank Williams compositions drawn from handwritten lyrics found after his tragic passing and brought to life by a cast of contemporary artists inspired by his work including Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan, Levon Helm, Rodney Crowell, Jack White, Alan Jackson, Patty Loveless and others. Here's a preview...
