Rodney Crowell: Then Again

Rodney Crowell's creative output in recent years has been the work of a man coming to terms with the circumstances of life in such a way acceptance takes precedence over resignation. 

Thus, it only makes sense that, in the wake of Triage (New West, 2021), The Chicago Sessions (New West, 2023) and Airline Highway (New West, 2025), the former bandleader for Emmylou Harris would deign to exhume a previously-recorded but unreleased album and give it the light of day.

Then Again bespeaks healthy second thoughts in the wake of another ostensible artistic trilogy. After The Houston Kid (Sugar Hill, 2001), Fate's Right Hand (Epic Records, 2003 and The Outsider (Columbia Records, 2005)—Crowell reentered Treasure Isle Studios in Nashville. But the work resulting from sessions with Steuart Smith on guitar and co-production (with Crowell), plus other sympathetic accompanists (including former Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench), did not sound acceptable to his ears.

Hearing songs such as the forthright (to a fault?) "I Won't Lie"—like all the other nine cuts mastered by Richard Dodd to pristine sonic effect—it is difficult to know what fault(s) Rodney Crowell found with such tracks. Then again, the man himself speaks of a nagging dissatisfaction with the total of these efforts of some two decades ago that he addressed through the addition of two two newly-recorded selections.

"If I Could Speak to Leonard" is a self-deprecating paean from one poet to another, written before Canadian Cohen died in 2016. It is, by extension, a somber but self-effacing contemplation on mortality that effectively contrasts "Go Light a Candle." Highlighted by the dulcet tones of the aforementioned Harris and Lera Lynn, this is the guarded but uplifting sentiment of a man whose history is not lost on himself, but rather supplies a source of enlightenment.

The sequencing of tracks for Then Again points up the variations of carefully-crafted arrangements that mirror Crowell's state(s) of mind. "Are You One of Us?" is a crisp, hard-hitting example of the unity of the participating musicians, not the least of whom is Guy Clark. His stentorian vocal tones buttress the confrontational tone of the song's title. 

John Jorgenson's mandolin and Tammy Rogers' fiddle fittingly decorate the colorful narrative of "The Ballad of Artemis and Orion," while spare but evocative cellos by Nat Smith and David Henry on "Sing Your Heart Out" somewhat defuse the sanctimonious air of the song (fleeting instances of which, along with a smattering of forced rhymes, are par for the course on a Rodney Crowell record). Like this record en toto, it is ultimately an elegant piece of contemporary country music

Built upon circular acoustic guitar figures, "40 Winters" is this expert songwriter's rumination on the passage of time. The author is eventually self-deprecating by the close of "The Has-Been Vents His Spleen," but he takes a few sly shots across the bows of younger generations to the cheery accompaniment of tuneful electric fretboards. 

If this Rodney Crowell was ambivalent at the time he originally completed Then Again, in the interim, he has resolved his indecisions with his customary dignity and authority. The album now constitutes something of a microcosm of what came just before it and foreshadows what was to come in the near future. 

The magnificent continuity of Rodney Crowell's oeuvre thus remains intact.