Liberal Country Artist of the Week: Rodney Crowell

Rodney Crowell is one of the most successful songwriters in the history of country music, with his most recent credits including the Keith Urban smash "Making Memories of Us" , Lee Ann Womack's "Ashes By Now" and Tim McGraw's "Please Remember Me." He's written hit singles for everyone from Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Rosanne Cash and Crystal Gayle to Alan Jackson, The Oak Ridge Boys and Highway 101. But he's also been an accomplished artist as well, his most recent album scoring Grammy and Americana nominations. That acknowledgement was gratifying, as Crowell had ventured fully into the realm of politics for the first time with his most recent release.

When Crowell started writing The Outsider, he saw it as the completion of a trilogy that he had begun with his previous two records, 2001's autobiographical The Houston Kid and 2003's soul-searching Fate's Right Hand. He told Country Standard Time in October 2005:

The last album was looking back, this one is looking in, and on the next one, I think I need to look around.

Looking around, he saw a world embedded in war, the growing power of global corporations, and a media-fueled polarization of American politics:

I didn't want to contribute to the so-called polarization of American culture than the news media was already doing...With the soapboxes I get up on, my rule of thumb is 'show, don't tell.' I realized that in some cases I was up on a soapbox, but I was making really sure that it was show and not tell.

A centerpiece of the album is "Don't Get Me Started", which recently received an Americana Award nomination for Song of the Year. It was inspired by a barroom conversation while Crowell was traveling abroad, and it deals with the conflicts of being a patriotic American that also is a strong critic of the actions the country has taken in recent years:

I was born in America and I'm proud of that fact
I wish the rest of the world would just get off our back
But these slick politicians, man you've got to admit
They seem crazy as bedbugs and they don't give one whit
About the man on the street with his back to the wall
Who can't find a quarter to make a phone call
Meanwhile back in Washington the Champagne will flow
Tell that to the homeless man with nowhere to go

The song also takes issue with corporate greed and the fiscal irresponsibility of a government that has destroyed its own taxpayer-funded budget by giveaways to big business:

The rich corporations have turned a deaf ear
They don't care who goes hungry they've made that much clear
You see the trouble with people is we want to believe
But they can't turn a profit without tricks up their sleeve

It's the roofers and truckers, the working class suckers
The firemen and teachers, the soldiers and preachers
Who shoulder the blows, it comes and it goes
A six trillion dollar debt you pay through the nose

Don't get me started
I'm a drag when I've had a few drinks

Crowell realized the intensity of the message might be overwhelming:

Those are actually my gripes against corporatization, where politics and corporations run roughshod over everyone. In order to deliver that message with that kind of didactic spew, I gave that guy some self-awareness and made him aware that he's a drag when he's been drinking. I tried to create a humanness and a self-awareness in the narrator that makes him human and not some guy that spits from the soapbox, 'The rest of you guys are f***ed up and crazy.'

When he debuted the song live in Houston, he also found that he hadn't been quite successful in his goal of avoiding further polarization. As he told author Chris Willman in Rednecks & Bluenecks:

I played the song, and I felt like Moses parting the Red Sea, because it was palpable that I'd just polarized the whole audience. Half of 'em went to this side of the room, half of 'em went to that side. One half was yelling, and the other half was scowling. It was so well-defined. I really didn't want to contribute to the polarization, but I suppose I have. Or I am.

The album itself is tempered by deeply philosophical tracks, tinged with optimism, that weave his spiritual beliefs into the issues he's struggling with. One of the most powerful is "Ignorance Is The Enemy", which features recitations in the verses by Emmylou Harris, John Prine and Crowell himself:

Ignorance is the enemy and it wields a mighty sword
It can cut you down in a blaze of glory, it can nail you to a board
If mercy and compassion only had a chance
It could fill these holes we've dug
But ignorance is the enemy and it's working like a drug

He continues this theme on the album's uplifting closer, "We Can't Turn Back Now":

Democracy won't work if we're asleep
That kind of freedom is a vigil you must keep
You've gotta dig deep

It's a wicked world and were all in it
But that could change in a New York minute
Holy terror and toxic gas ain't got nothing on the leaves of grass
So pray for peace until you're hoarse
And maybe fear will run its course
May God forgive us all our greediness
And we'll keep pressing on

It may be surprising to some that someone who can write something as pointedly angry and cynical as "The Obscenity Prayer" could also produce something as hopeful as "We Can't Turn Back Now", but despite Crowell's frustration with the present, he believes in the possibility of a brighter, more enlightened future:

I'm just romantic enough to think that if we get this all screwed up and we're on the brink, then God will send the delivery boy. It's gonna take a visionary. It's gonna take Gandhi or Martin Luther King, with that kind of dedication to changing things by uplifting spirits...I still hold out for that kind of thing. For me, that's far more poetic and powerful than manufacturing some CEO to run all of this. Probably somebody really sarcastically intelligent of a conservative mindset would look at me and say I'm as bull*** as you could possibly be, that I'm indulging in some kind of stupid, liberal dreaming. But it's happened, historically, that kind of visual breakthrough.

While we wait for that visionary, Crowell's music can entertain and challenge us. Here's a rundown of his work that is currently available:

• Ain't Livin' Long Like This (1978)
• But What Will The Neighbors Think/Rodney Crowell (1980/1981)
• Diamonds & Dirt (1987)
• The Rodney Crowell Collection (1989)
• Life Is Messy (1992)
• The Houston Kid (2001)
• Fate's Right Hand (2003)
• The Essential Rodney Crowell (2004)
• The Outsider (2005)

Previous Artists of the Week:

Kathy Mattea
Todd Snider
Emmylou Harris
Pam Tillis

Links:

Liberal Country Fan
Country Universe
Music Row Democrats
Rodney Crowell