Rodney Crowell is the definition of a legendary songwriter - he has multiple Grammys, 15 #1 singles (5 from 1 record), and everyone from Emmylou Harris to Bob Seger, Waylon Jennings, and George Strait have recorded his songs. He is also incredibly wise, and generous with his insights - we talk with him about failures, using vision quests to reset and recenter, defining success, and how Guy Clark taught him when to know a song is done.
Rodney Crowell is the definition of a legendary songwriter - he has multiple Grammys, 15 #1 singles (5 from 1 record), and everyone from Emmylou Harris to Bob Seger, Waylon Jennings, and George Strait have recorded his songs. He is also incredibly wise, and generous with his insights - we talk with him about failures, using vision quests to reset and recenter, defining success, and how Guy Clark taught him when to know a song is done.
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All music written, performed, and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.
[00:00:18] Aaron: Hi, and welcome to this week's episode at The Other 22 Hours Podcast. I'm your host, Aaron Shafer-Haiss.
[00:00:22] Michaela: And I'm your host, Michaela Anne. And since we are still a relatively new podcast, thank you so much for checking us out. And thank you for returning. If you've listened to a previous episode,
[00:00:33] Aaron: So if you are new to this show, we're not your typical music podcast
we wanted to talk about the times that are outside of the public eye and talk to our guests about some of the tools and routines they've developed to stay inspired, stay creative, and stay sane while building a career around their art.
[00:00:47] Michaela: Between the two of us, Erin and I have almost 25 years of experience in the music business. I started out working at labels and teaching and have spent the better part of the last decade putting out records of my own original music and touring the world.
[00:01:00] Aaron: And I started making records and playing with a bunch of bands in high school, and I spent years on the road touring as a sideman with a lot of different bands.
And now I spend most of my time right here in my studio in Nashville, writing songs for TV and producing records for other artists. all of this, Michaela and I learned that there's not one right way to build a career around your passion.
[00:01:20] Michaela: and in an industry where so much can feel out of our control, left up to luck. Being in the right place at the right time and who, you know, we wanted to focus on what is within our control.
[00:01:31] Aaron: And so with that in mind, we decided to invite some of our friends and some of our favorite artists on the show to talk about.
what they do to create sustainability in their lives so that they can sustain their creativity. and today's guest is a special one.
We like to think that all of our guests are legendary, but today's guest is objectively a legend.
[00:01:48] Michaela: probably one of my hands down favorite songwriters ever. I think I've spent the last 10 years discovering so many songs that were my favorites that he actually was the writer of. He's Grammy nominated, Grammy winning.
Everyone has recorded his records from George Strait Emmy, Lou Harris, Tim McGraw, Leanne Womack, Bob Seger. We are talking about Rodney Krell.
[00:02:13] Aaron: on top of all of the accolades and the records that he's released and the amazing artists that have recorded his songs.
Rodney has also put out a few books and he's one of those people that you talk to and you just want to absorb every single word that he says. He has a very grounding, calming presence. I would like to say he's a sage, but that feels cliche and overused, but it just, has that feeling whenever you talk to him.
[00:02:35] Michaela: Otherworldly feels very on the nose for me when I think of Rodney and whenever I've interacted with him, he feels like he's from a really beautiful other world we're lucky. Thought we got to sit down and have a conversation with
[00:02:49] Aaron: him. Yeah. One of the things we talked about was how he does travel to this other world in a way as a way of resetting.
we talk about going on a vision quest and he says, I'm going somewhere when really he just spends a week on his property here in Middle Tennessee.
And that was the theme that kind of ran through a lot of what we talked about was the intentionality of showing up and doing the work, as well as how everything really focuses on the song.
[00:03:14] Michaela: Yeah. His dedication to the song has sustained for 50 years, I think he said 51 years. shared an incredibly crazy story about how he ended up moving to Nashville and he talked about how he learned to tell when a song is done from Guy Clark.
[00:03:32] Aaron: We're not gonna add any value to what this episode is by talking to you right here. So without any further delay, here's our conversation with Rodney Crow.
[00:03:40] Michaela: good morning.
[00:03:41] Rodney: Good morning.
[00:03:42] Michaela: Thank you so much for being willing to talk with us and being here. How are you doing today?
[00:03:47] Rodney: I'm okay. I'm okay. That's Claudia and I had a one day thing that was she went first and just gutted like as if a deflated blow up doll and then a headache. Oh, poor baby. And then yesterday afternoon it hit me.
Oh, no. Ah,
And I was, I mean, it's like, whoa. Just gutted energy wise and had a headache through the night and woke up this morning.
I'm fine. Same thing as
oh. like a 16 hour, whatever. I'm good. I'm good.
[00:04:18] Aaron: I've found that I am the caboose on the sickness train in our house, too. Our daughter gets it first and then he gets to Mikayla in about a week after that. I get it. Kind of full force.
[00:04:27] Rodney: Yeah. Well, Now we get it from grandchildren.
[00:04:29] Michaela: Yes. And you have so many now know.
[00:04:31] Rodney: Yep. They're bringing home a lot of germs and That's okay.
[00:04:35] Michaela: Yeah.
[00:04:35] Rodney: was, at one point I was when I was raising them all, my immune system had, could take anything
[00:04:42] Michaela: Yep. Yeah.
[00:04:44] Rodney: the,
[00:04:45] Michaela: Well, Hopefully your grandkids are gonna get you back there.
[00:04:48] Rodney: Hopefully, well, well they've tried, they're doing their job
[00:04:54] Michaela: Because the premise of this podcast is to talk about how you keep yourself well, and you have an incredibly long career. How many years have you been in the music business?
[00:05:07] Rodney: uh, 51 years, arrived in Nashville. I guess if you count the day I arrived in Nashville. It was 50 years ago, last August.
[00:05:16] Michaela: Oh my gosh. And you're still writing new songs, making new records. Still would it be safe to say as inspired as the beginning or has that waxed and waned?
[00:05:27] Rodney: More inspired.
Oh wow.
Yeah, definitely more inspired. The lightning and the bottle thing that happens in, in one's twenties. Cuz a lot of songs came to me in my twenties that were like, za if I got that 20 something inspiration now, man, I would be, I could have written some. Saws, but, but I managed to succeed back there in my twenties, not knowing what I was doing Now the inspiration comes from work as I realize when I was young, well, a young man inspiration went looking for me and found me. I guess the mystical part of creativity was like, oh, there's that guy down there.
He can do this instinctively. Let's send him some inspiration. Now, that same source, finds me because it realizes how dedicated I am to the work.
If I'm not on the road I'm, this is my studio back here. You've been here, Michaela. It's, I'll have a morning meditation and some coffee, and then I'm working
Because that's my blessing.
I read once in the ASCE gospels. It said that the man I always say, and or woman who has found their work needs asked for no other blessing. And that's how I feel about it.
[00:06:39] Aaron: that's beautiful. So when you are back there working, is it, always working on songs or is it working on writing prose as well? Cause I know you, you write prose in addition to all these songs that you write.
[00:06:50] Rodney: Yes, uh, the PS has been on hold for a while. I, intended to get back onto book number two. Actually, a lyric book that came out last fall, took up some prose writing time, but I have another memoir begun.
In order to finish it, I would have to uh, set aside years
I haven't been willing to do that.
[00:07:12] Aaron: Yeah, understandably.
[00:07:13] Michaela: Are there ever days when you show up to your work and feel, challenged by it, or is it something that's been a natural flow for you?
[00:07:22] Rodney: There are days when I'm challenged, for sure. I welcome those days. I'm confident that it'll reveal itself to me what I'm searching for. There are times I'll sit four or five hours and don't get string five words together
that Really work for me. A lot of times I'll string 25 or 30 words together, none of which work for what I'm trying to get at, and that's okay. It's really a matter of back to work every day. When I do that, I am successful at fulfilling my promise to myself, which is to own the blessing that uh, I'm creative enough to make a live writing songs.
[00:08:00] Michaela: That's really comforting to hear because I feel like what can come with time is not getting scared when maybe it's not flowing as easily. And trusting that it does come back and trusting in, the process of when you keep showing up, it will return. we saw you last, oh, a couple weeks ago and you mentioned, you were, gonna do a vision quest and in my experience You seem to have a spiritual component to you and your, your approach to life and your creativity, does that come into play ever of maybe some inner spiritual work that you do to help reconnect?
[00:08:38] Rodney: Yes. Writing for me is spiritual. It's a spiritual, quest, Yes. I actively seek to develop my understanding of my inner spiritual life, none of which I would project on anybody else as the right way to do Mm-hmm. But early on in my early twenties, I was introduced to a few. Things that sent me down the pathway to um, try to seek that source. I guess you'd call me a monotheist. There's a creator of all of this that's in my realm of understanding myself and the world. And I seek to make conscious contact with that source sometimes successfully.
Sometimes, I'm a Luddite I'm completely blocked on how to access my understanding of what that is. So it's an ongoing process the same way as writing songs. They're, tied together. Performing is a different thing. It's, as I say, and as you guys know, is that we don't get paid to play music.
We get paid to travel.
So far I'm okay with that. this physical vessel that I'm doing it in. It, doesn't like that traveling as much as it used to. But I wanna go back to something that we were talking about just a few moments ago about, the days when there's nothing there
And being okay with it.
There's another thing that happened with age for me, that makes the work that I do now more satisfying for me. as a younger man, the things that I created, I wanted to bring me of course money, but I think even more than money. I never thought about money very much.
It just seemed to come. But I wanted recognition. I wanted people to know that I do this stuff, that I make these songs and I wanted people to like the way it sounds, the music I make when I sing. And I eventually outgrew that. it was in my forties before I really outgrew that. and I remember in this, thing that happened, I was writing the memoir Chinaberry Sidewalks.
And when I put the last period, at the end of the last revived manuscript, I closed the computer and I said, okay. If all I ever get from this is the satisfaction of knowing that I completed this work, if nobody reads it knowing that I did it, that I completed it, I completed the journey is all the pay that I need and that beauty of, staying alive and doing it for a long time is I'm happy when I get feedback or when I get recognition, I'm a human being, but anymore it is knowing that I did it, that I completed what I started, and to me that's enough.
Mm-hmm. The rest of it seems to take care of itself. Sometimes money comes, sometimes it doesn't, but for the most part, Nobody in my family has gone hungry and we all, have roofs over our head, and it's been mainly because I've just been writing these songs.
[00:11:37] Aaron: I love that point of view. That's something that I'm slowly starting to learn for myself, is to shift my definition of success for myself from the reception and things that are outside of my control into, measuring, How close I am to my creative vision and how much I'm able to create, how much I'm able to finish and all of that, and keep it within my, circle of control.
And if I feel much more grounded and centered and inspired, when I stay in that realm versus looking exclusively outwardly for the reception and judging my success on that.
[00:12:10] Rodney: Yeah, I understand. time can be a great healer on that front
[00:12:14] Aaron: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:15] Rodney: practice.
practice living is what we do.
[00:12:18] Aaron: Yeah,
[00:12:19] Michaela: absolutely. I'm curious too, because our generation, we. we were into our music careers a few years when kind of social media, and streaming was a thing before I started recording records. So also the way that reception received, you've seen so many changes of that, of, now you put out music and you can see kind of instantaneously online. People might listen to it right away and comment and you can get that feedback so quickly versus when before when you'd put out a record and people maybe get to hear it on the radio and then wait to get, to go buy the record. And there was so much more time in between. It was so different because there were so many more steps to get to the songs and the records that you wanted.
It was a different relationship to music in general, and I wonder has that changed at all the way that you feel about putting music out because of the different way that it's changed, how it's received?
[00:13:21] Rodney: Yes. Things change obviously, and technology was analog when I came. Tape machines were rolling. People were using razor blades to edit. Recording engineers were brave souls. They would take a razor blade to a 24 track piece of tape and edit it. So it was, was a slower process.
and the satisfaction of whether something would sell or not, or how it was receded was delayed. you had a little time to come to grips in your own way with what you had done. For example, I'd made records in the late seventies generally speaking, by six months after I've made a new album, I pretty much understand what, whether or not I succeeded in doing what I wanted to do. Takes a little time. And then, then basically I won't listen to anything that, again, for a long time. And then something would happen and I'll listen to an album and I go, ah, it's better than I thought. But the fact that back in the day you had a little time to come to grips with what you had done so that if it wasn't very well received, well you already knew that was gonna happen. And if it was well received and you agreed, there was a sense of, success and completion. Now I will say I'm no different than you are when you were a kid, either of you. When we heard that music, we were, I think of those cartoon cats who smell cat nip and they're floating off the ground and they're following this scent of the catnip.
Well, we were following the music in the air. We left, the ground floating.
And it's always been that way, and it continues to be that way. and putting vinyl records on in a room it was an analog ritual and the music sounded different coming from those speakers on the floor in your hippie crash pad back in the seventies.
And, Back when 4K on up in my hearing was a lot more user friendly. I didn't need that top end. Um, It was there, but I think I have a more intimate relationship with music as a listener. Now, the earbuds and listening music on my phone, there's hiking around where I live. I got a, hour hike through the hills and around, and I always listen to music, always sometime podcasts,
But I listen to music and it's a very intimate experience that the catnip that used to be floating across the room is now inside my head.
I still like vinyl music at dinnertime in the room, maybe cooking dinner.
But listening to Kendrick Lamar with my headphones as I'm walking I'm way up inside. How did this man get here
how does he sustain this creativity? He's blessed and that's the intimate connection and going back and listening to the Beach Boys or take your pick. something about it that's more intimate to me now and I think because I just said it really, that. The catnip used to float through the room. Now it floats in my brain with those earbuds,
and I, I like it. So I'm not entirely disappointed that technology and digital technology has brought music that close.
Sometimes I long for the days of when we ran tape and recorded because the process was slower. We had to wait for a rewind. If you were overdoing back in the day, you wait, 47 seconds of rewinding you spent thinking about what you're doing instead of just instantly you're back to the beginning if you're overdubbing,
[00:17:00] Aaron: don't know if I've ever really thought about it. Just the patience it's inevitably having time to sit and think and recenter yourself.
Like, I'm in this place, this is what I'm doing. Where, overdubs can be rapid fire
[00:17:11] Rodney: Yeah. They can. And I guess there's an upside to that too, but I think the extra hour of contemplation you get at, at the end of a day's worth of rewinding is probably a real positive step toward what you're trying to do creatively.
[00:17:26] Michaela: I really do think a lot of it does come down to the milliseconds that add up to an hour of the way we. Can be pulled out of things today. Like If you're in a recording session and people have your phones and you take a break, or if you're not the one recording that moment and you look at your phone versus if you didn't have that option, you were just sitting.
All these kind of and this fast paced life and a lot more distractions. I often find myself wondering, what idea could I have thought of if I hadn't been pulled out and checked my text messages or scrolled Instagram really fast, or I wonder what my performance would've been like if my brain had been more centered in the moment and not looking at what, notification I had on my phone type of thing, which is, the evolution of our, technology and civilization.
But it, a lot to think about in today's time of making the choices to be more conscious with our creativity and therefore conscious with our choices of how we live and operate, which is something I feel like I'm not very good at, which is kind one of my motivators in this podcast is hearing how other people consciously live maybe outside of what would be natural or a habit because of the things they've learned, that lead to a more fruitful, creative content, lifestyle.
[00:18:52] Rodney: Yeah. just a few minutes ago we spoke and I said, I, I told you I'm about to go on seven day vision quest.
I'd gotten to a place where I was kind of jumbled inside I was a little confused about keeping appointments and writing things down and. It was just jumbled. And I, I've missed a few cues, just the things that I agreed to do and showed up someplace a week early. Things like that.
Just out of step with myself and with, time as we don't understand it. So for me to unplug everything, especially the phone, and to spin my days out of doors, walking, looking at the trees, talking to the trees, listening to the birds, breathing deeply, another walk, stand away from the phone. It reset my center to where the, mixing up in my head who's supposed to be where and when, and all of that cleared up And I knew I needed to do it. So a tool for me that actually, it's proven to me now as I get older, I need to do it more often because certain things happen with these, this physical body, the synapses in the brain, and these little things that you realize that, ah, these things aren't working as well as they used to.
Certainly, my experience is carrying me along, but this physical existence, it needs help. And if we don't help it, it'll crap out on you pretty quickly as, as age catches up. So I have to be really conscious if I wanna get on stage and really deliver, I have to be conscious in the other parts of the day to feed myself physically, spiritually, mentally. To make sure that I have energy.
[00:20:38] Aaron: this is something that you've stepped more into as you've gotten older, or is this something that you also did as a, a younger person?
[00:20:45] Rodney: I did it as a younger person. my intention, seven days of fasting,
I used to fast seven days in a breeze, really? And it's really restorative and I got it from the ASCE gospels in which there's one a sentence in the Acce gospels that says, For every day of prayer and fasting, you heal the year of your life. So back in my fifties, I was four or five years ahead in terms of healing years of my life and then, as time it's not as easy. So I had to bail on two and a half days was all I could get into the fast, but I realized that's okay. There was the other five and a half days of sunshine and air, was just as restorative for me. The fasting is really clears out the whole organism and, resets the whole thing. And it times back in my forties and fifties when I was doing that, I was like, I could not contain the amount of energy that I had after I did
[00:21:41] Aaron: Hmm
And this is a total fast, just drinking water or are you drinking
[00:21:45] Rodney: Water, lemon and cayenne pepper.
[00:21:48] Aaron: Oh yeah. Yep,
[00:21:50] Rodney: yep.
[00:21:51] Michaela: we were 20 years old and we were, We were in college in New York City and we met and talked about it.
Yeah,
[00:21:57] Aaron: it's funny. I, I learned about it living in Asheville, North Carolina and had friends were doing it there. So I had done it, and this was the second or third time I was in the middle of doing it.
And I had, noticed Mikayla and, I think she noticed me. And we were both on the uh, on this fast
[00:22:13] Rodney: Yeah.
You became fast friends.
ex
[00:22:16] Aaron: very fast. Yeah.
[00:22:19] Michaela: I wanna also note, the vision quest that you called it. And recentering, when I saw you, you said, I'm going to go somewhere.
And then after a couple weeks later when I talked to you, I asked you where you went and you, physically stayed in your, backyard and you have a lot of nature in your, property. But it was just interesting to note that when you said, I'm gonna go somewhere, you weren't like traveling hours away to some retreat to do this vision quest out in the desert or whatever.
You, you stayed where you were in your home.
[00:22:51] Rodney: But I went somewhere. Yeah.
[00:22:54] Michaela: I love that.
[00:22:56] Rodney: Yes. Yeah, it's, it is true. And traveling. Through stillness, you know, meditation, really getting into a deep meditative state, and then connecting with that higher form of myself that could be called God, or it could be, I don't know what you would call it, but it take me out of all of, the stagnant thought that had built up in my heart and my mind and it was causing me to be grumpy.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. It was like, ah, Claudia's so patient with me and she looks at me and rolls her eyes when I get grumpy. And, I, I think she's learned about me that if she just rolls her eyes and minds her own business, I'll get the message and go straighten myself out.
And to straighten myself out.
Sometimes I have to go somewhere, even if it's in the backyard,
[00:23:47] Michaela: I know you're getting ready to go on tour, do you feel like you get rumbled up frantic energy when you're leading up to, you know, promoting a record and about to go on tour and you're gonna be out in the world a lot, is there a different energy that comes that you have to care for when preparing for that work versus the work of writing and being, in your home studio and creating.
[00:24:10] Rodney: Yes. Uh, we've assembled, a new band for this one. Some of the folks that I've been working with the last few years are still in, but we, we've reorganized The particular musical combination that we're gonna be putting on the stage. So, I don't like to do my songs based on if you just listen to the records
I much prefer to get an understanding of, what we are as a collective musical entity. The drummer, the bass player, the all of us. Who are we now, and how do we, uh, approach these songs of mine as who we are now rather than who, what was happening when it was recorded. So that takes some work in the beginning.
could easily just get some really good musicians say, here, listen to the record, and we'll go play it like this. satisfying thing for me is finding out how we all work together. Whose personality, whose style, whose sensibilities bring certain things to the music to find that combination and to get out, you know, early and, four or five shows in and have it click in and where, ah, now we're doing this unconsciously, we're all who we are doing this.
like that. That's a very satisfying process for me and I always learn something from it. And I get a lot of confidence when everybody has blossomed into who they are in relation to the music, not. Who they are in relation to me that helps me grow and I look forward to that. And then once I once out on the road, I'm pretty healthy and happy out there. I don't go over at Ray the refrigerator at night and eat some kind of sugar that makes me sleep crappy. You generally speaking, I have an orange or an apple or a banana in the hotel room and that's, that's about that. So therefore I kind of get healthier out on the road in a way. it's still hard traveling though, a body around it.
but I do pretty well and I'm looking forward to this tour. It should be fun. We got a really interesting group of musicians and I dare say that we'll get pretty good.
[00:26:16] Aaron: I can imagine that, that, really emphasizing everybody's uniqueness that they bring to their music, makes playing some of your older songs fun seeing, new light brought to them and new energy.
[00:26:29] Rodney: Yeah. Yeah, it does. It's like, oh, I didn't know this song could do that. that's just by new personalities interpreting something that perhaps not how I would interpret it,
Their interpretation can inform my own reinterpretation of something that I've, made, that I've written, or it's a very satisfying thing to have happen, you know, to be honest I tell, Jed Hughes or people I've worked with before, I say, Look, Joe Robinson, I'd say, go out there on the edge of the stage and play that guitar and, if you get all the attention in the house, it doesn't make me look bad.
It makes me look good. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So anytime the musicians I'm working with become focused because of their unique talent and who they are, it's like I feel good about it and it makes me, take confidence from it, from like, yeah, this audience is loving this. It doesn't have to be all about me.
In fact, it's better when it's not all about me.
[00:27:29] Michaela: That's a reoccurring theme that comes up in a lot of these conversations mm-hmm. Of people learning. I'm better, I'm healthier, I'm more centered when it's not all about me and I'm in service of others and honoring others in life and on stage. And I think As an audience member, I remember I played a couple shows with Marty Stewart and I watched his show just transfixed because one, he's incredible, but also every single person in his band is incredible and he showcases each of them and lets each of them shine.
And it never made me think, oh, I'm more into, the drummer now than Marty Stewart. It just made me love Marty Stewart more and want to go see more shows. So that's a really interesting note cuz I think sometimes maybe a more immature mindset can think, oh no, I have to somehow keep the focus to me.
[00:28:27] Rodney: Yeah. Because who will I be if, I lose the focus?
[00:28:30] Michaela: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:28:33] Rodney: to be part of something, and to be in service of that something when everybody is there and doing it, it's, it just makes it better.
[00:28:42] Aaron: You just said who would I be if I lose the focus? Which, brings a question for me. Did when you first came to Nashville, did you move here as an artist or did you move here? Because all the songs that were written here and you wanted to be a writer, we all know that, your career has blossomed into being both.
So just wondering what your initial, intent was in coming here and maybe how, how you navigated what has become your career.
[00:29:08] Rodney: it's a long story, but I will make it as short as I can.
[00:29:13] Aaron: We're here for it.
[00:29:14] Rodney: Donovan Coward and I, who travels with me in mixes sound we were a folk duo in East Texas at college. a guy and took us to Crowley, Louisiana, and we recorded. An album of our woefully inadequate songs at the old JD Miller Studio in Crowley, Louisiana. We went back to Houston and, and working in a steakhouse, playing Simon and Garfunkel songs.
the producer went off to Nashville, unbeknownst to us, and called me a few months later and said, round up Donovan and get up here to Nashville. He said I've, signed you to a tenure recording contract with Columbia Records and you're going on the road for a year Kenny Rogers in the first edition.
Get up here.
What.
Yeah. What? Well, I didn't have the wherewithal to say what at the time I spent my last few dollars, on a new guitar. Because I wasn't gonna need it since I've just been signed to Columbia Records and Kenny Rogers the first edition tour. So off we go. Donovan and I get in the car and drive all night and arrive in Nashville in the wee hours and look around though there, there wasn't a welcoming party at 3:00 AM and so we slept somewhere in the car and showed up at Columbia Records the next day and said well, we're here, Rodney and Donovan we're here.
And they go, who? Who? So the receptionist calls, somebody comes down and they said, yeah, what? Yeah, we're Rodney and Donovan we're here. We, we were here to sign our contract. and we, it hadn't yet occurred to us where is, where's the producer? Well, Then somebody else comes down a little higher up and comes down and says, look.
We never heard of you. We don't know who you are. There's no record deal here for you. Oh, okay. Well There must be some mistake here cuz we got the phone call. Uh, well, I'm sorry. You know, So we walk out on the sidewalk and I say, what? And was a songwriter involved with this producer who, I don't remember how we got in touch, but he got in his car in Houston and drove to Nashville and found us somehow cuz we were sleeping out on the lake on the top of picnic tables.
And, uh, driving in and to out what our career was supposed to be. There was, obviously there wasn't a tour to go out on, but the songwriter came and said, look, hey, you know, the producer sold your tapes and you're publishing to this publishing house over on the corner over there. Sure. Fire music owned by the Wilburn brothers. and he said, and by the way, the tapes and the contracts were on top of a filing cabinet there. I don't know how he knew that. so we went at lunchtime and checked it out and said, huh, okay. The next day we went back, Donovan went in and charmed the uh, receptionist and I found the office in there was our tapes and publishing contracts on top of a filing cabinet, and I just put it under my arm and walked out the door with it.
And they're right in there in my storage, in my home studio right now.
Wow. That's how I got into the music business. You can't make that up.
[00:32:21] Michaela: Oh my God. so you guys then just stayed.
[00:32:24] Rodney: I just stayed. I just said well, Okay, Donovan's. He went to Arizona for a while. We didn't hook back up until I moved to Los Angeles to work with Emmy Lou. But I stayed and I, and pretty soon after that I met Guy Clark and Skinny Dennis and Richard Dobson and that whole crew. And I was surrounded by songwriters and I went, I really want to stay here and figure out how these guys do this stuff.
Yeah. Wow.
There's a lot of nuance to that story. That was the.
[00:32:55] Aaron: yeah, I'm still taking all of that in. So meeting Guy and Skinny Dennis and all of that, they turned you on to the idea of just being songwriter, I guess I'm asking more in the sense of like having other people cut your songs rather
[00:33:11] Rodney: Wasn't about that. Never has been about that for me. And it was a lot of people have recorded my songs and I'm grateful for it, but it was never about that.
through Guy I met Towns Vann and Mickey Newberry. And Mickey Newberry was think about guy in towns that they had more of baritone voices, Billy Joe Shaver, Chris Gustavson.
There, there's those poets with that baritone sounding voice, the gravitas. And I was at a little, at a loss for how to be poetic with a natural Irish sounding tenor until Mickey Newberry came and Guy put me on the. Mickey Newberry and Mickey had a, beautiful tenner voice, but he was writing, San Francisco Mabel Joy.
And she even woke me up to say goodbye. And I, I was like, oh, you can write that poetic style and have a uh, tenor voice. So Newberry was the one that really helped me find my own voice and the language that I would eventually stumble onto. Adopt, or cultivate. and it was never about writing songs for any other purpose other than to write the song the best that you could at, any given moment.
I felt, always felt lucky that that's, What I stumbled onto, and it probably, I wouldn't have come to Nashville if I hadn't been hijacked by a, a lion producer.
Mm-hmm.
So it worked perfectly. It just, it landed me exactly where I needed to be doing what I'm doing today.
[00:34:48] Aaron: that goal of writing the song the best that it can be, sounds like that's still the goal.
for you. That's still the vision across the board.
[00:34:56] Rodney: To me, there is no other goal. I always say, I have these songwriting camps where people come and, and I say, well, look, I can't teach you to write songs, but I can share my knowledge with you and I can try to encourage you. And I say, what I've learned is that if I'm patient enough, the song will eventually tell me what it wants to be.
If I don't try to force my will on the song make up something, I think it ought to be, It'll happen. And with that mindset, I've spent 30 years writing songs. see, I started Shame on the Moon in 1979, I'm still not finished with it.
So that's 40 some years. I think I may have finished it a couple of years ago, but I'm not sure yet. And this all, and it went out there and lived its own life and was a big hit for Bob Seger. But that last verse was not a good well-written last verse. And I talked to Bob about it. I said, man, I said, I recorded it.
I said, but that last verse is just not right. And he said, oh, I like that last verse.
And someone who will remain nameless, recorded it and, found me one day and he said, well, I recorded your song, man. He said, I wish I could have been there with you to help you on that last verse.
Okay.
I think he meant to dress me down a little bit, but I grabbed him and I hugged him and I said, oh man, thank you.
Finally, somebody agrees with me. He was taken aback.
It was true. That last verse was shy.
[00:36:26] Aaron: So you feel like you're still working on that verse?
[00:36:29] Rodney: think I might have it. I'm not sure.
[00:36:31] Aaron: That's incredible. is this common practice for you to continue, tinkering, I guess, for lack of a better word? Massaging and adjusting
even. Even after songs have been recorded and put out, still aiming to get closer to
the, the
[00:36:45] Rodney: I'm still on some of 'em. I'm still discovering the error of my early way on it, and I'm always happy when that happens. gives me new life. Susanna Clark told me this story that, the Mosa in uh, Spain, where most of those Picassos are, that a lady was there, like from Oklahoma and there's a little guy down there dabbing paints on the Gua Picasso's super magic painting.
And she was running for the watchman, you know, said quick. There's somebody desecrating the gurn and the guy could, oh, madam, that's Picasso. He works here. I don't think that's a true story, but
[00:37:27] Michaela: it's, a
[00:37:28] Rodney: it's, it's, it is, it's pretty much, supports my theory about, these songs will eventually tell me what they want to be.
[00:37:36] Aaron: When you are circling back on songs that are 40 years old, are you able to tap into that initial creative space that you were in while you're writing it? I would imagine that you're inevitably, bringing a new point of view, new life experiences. So, Are you able to stay focused on just that third verse and chase what was still there?
Or is it coming four years later and be like, ah this whole structure here needs to change?
[00:38:00] Rodney: In the case of Shame on the Moon, I worked on that last verse for years and years and years, even after it'd already been out in the world and did its job. And then one day I said, God, I keep trying to write this last verse. And so I just rewrote the, all the verses top to bottom, a whole new version, saving that chorus.
The best thing about it was that chorus. Anyway. And when I did that, and then I recorded that on this, record I made called Acoustic Classics, it was just acoustic versions of some of my more, well-known songs. So I did that version of it. And when I heard that, I went nah, is still the last verse.
I haven't improved anything on the early verses. So I took the best of the three new verses and created a last verse and I didn't sing the song live because Bob Singer sang it so good. I mean, he sang it so well that it didn't matter if the last verse wasn't any good, is all you could hear was that voice and that passion that that man was bringing.
So I didn't perform the song Life for 35 years or so because I said that belongs to Bob Seger.
Interesting.
a couple of years ago I started doing it again with, a, uh, new third verse. And I feel confident when I do it. I'm still in the shadow of Bob Seeger's brilliant performance of it. And sometimes I feel self-conscious that I'm not able to deliver what he did, but I can deliver my own version of what it is.
And I guess that's enough.
[00:39:29] Aaron: How do you know when it's done? Are there songs you have that you know are done or is kind of everything always malleable?
[00:39:37] Rodney: there are, more that are done, that are undone, but basically I, I know guy, Clark was so valuable in my formative years as a songwriter he was so generous I'd go see him with a new song and he'd say, okay, put the guitar down. Tell me the word, look me square right in the eye and tell me the worst of your song. And when I would, when I went and a guy had those eyes, when there was a bad verse or a bad couplet, a bad rhyme, soft rhyme, something wrong, something that didn't belong, I would naturally avert my eyes.
And so that, that instilled something.
I went, oh, and what he was teaching was that, if you can't look me in the eye and tell me the words that you're gonna sing, then they're not what you're looking for. So that sort of became part of my process. I guess. I more or less know when I wanna avert my own eyes from myself I'm whistling past the graveyard here.
This is not right. So that helps. that was a seed planted a long time ago that I still feed off of.
[00:40:42] Michaela: from listening to you talk and I also, follow your Facebook page and you share a lot of little, three paragraph stories of your life on your Facebook page, and you always seem so. Comfortable sharing, not just your accomplishments or things that you, feel good about, but also the things that you very honestly think of as not as good or seemingly of failure.
You're very vulnerable I'm always very drawn to people who show. The hard stuff. read your Wikipedia page and it's like just so many accolades and high points and incredible successes, but I wanna know all the in-betweens, and I feel like you are very, even just publicly very generous with sharing, no, this was hard for me, or, I struggled with this, or That wasn't good enough.
And I read a post that you wrote. I was looking through your stuff last, this last week, and you shared how you were in a low, you called it a low ebb of your creative life. And you made some records that you, called pretty forgettable. there's a story of, you recorded a record and you took it to a friend of yours who, I'm forgetting his name, who's a sound engineer, and you.
[00:41:54] Rodney: dod.
[00:41:55] Michaela: Okay. you played him the record and he said That was a really nice record, Rodney, but go home and put that on a shelf and go make a real record.
[00:42:02] Rodney: That's, those were his words. Yeah.
[00:42:04] Michaela: And that could be crushing for a lot of people. But you went home and did that, and then, am I correct that the record that you made was Diamonds and Dirt?
[00:42:13] Rodney: No, the record I made was the Houston Kid,
[00:42:15] Michaela: Oh,
[00:42:16] Rodney: Okay.
which is, I think a superior record to Diamonds And Dirt was a big hit, but Houston Kid was an artistic, step forward for me. first of all, when Richard told me that, you know, and he's been apologetic for all these years for that, but he was right and on the drive home, I mean, I left mad, But on the way home I realized he's right. I was trying to make a record for. What I thought people wanted Diamonds and dirt. It's like a big hit record. Try to make that again, Diamonds Dirt was, I wasn't trying to make a hit record when I made that record. I was just recording songs and trying to sing in tune. Not much more to it than that. I'm, I realized he's right. So I did, I put it on the shelf and uh, it dissolved,
Mm-hmm. but I, But I went and I made the Houston Kid, which started a really creative run for me that I think I've mostly maintained since then of 20 years or so. It was a turning point because Richard was honest Mm-hmm. he was right. And I tell him, I said, it was a blessing, man. Let it go. And he said, oh, no. I was really sorry, man. And I, I spent a lot of my own money on that record. Later on I made another one that I put on the shelf, didn't necessarily need to be put on the shelf. It's like I rediscovered it during Covid, found it on the shelf and listened to it.
And I went, wow, this is good.
So I was going to put it out until I got an opportunity to go record with Jeff Tweedy up in Chicago. And that's a record that's coming out for obvious reasons, but you know, I'm not always right.
[00:43:50] Michaela: Do you feel like, the moments in your career where you've had really high reception awards, accolades, success has that ever affected your relationship to your creativity? Like that expectation of trying to write, do it again, or make something that will be received in the same way?
[00:44:10] Rodney: Yeah I'd especially the records that I thought were forgettable were post diamonds and dirt when record company gave me a lot of money. the exchange was, here's a lot of money. Now go make like you did on diamonds and Dirt, which I was unable to do. Wasn't anybody's fault.
I had a great producer to work with. but, I was put in the cart before the horse, which is trying to create. Something that's already happened again, rather than what's happening now. So I learned a lot from that. And I also, you know, I had my 15 minutes of fame and I didn't handle it well, it felt to me like my sensibilities my personality of all, I would not be able to work in a formulaic way, which is, I'm gonna do this because I'm really successful at it.
I'm gonna keep doing that. I think maybe part of the reason that I'm so, as you say, generous about my failures is because, uh, I fail probably more than I succeed. In day-to-day work. I think you know, it's probably 65, 35 and I'm quite comfortable with my failures. As long as I don't put 'em out there, sometimes they're out there, you know, I was like, okay, I didn't like my voice until I was 50 years old.
I just simply did not like it. I've certain friends and people have, why aren't you like your voice? I like your voice. Emmy Lou, she always says, I love your voice. I love your voice when you were 25. And I said, yeah, okay. But I'd heard Aretha Franklin, I'd heard Ray Charles Mm-hmm.
well, Come on. You know, it's like the bar is up. I was like, I got to shoot for it you know, even if I just have this, hillbilly tenor voice, it's like I gotta shoot for Ray Charles cuz it's there. It's like Mount Everest and why do you climb it? Because it's there.
And it's like, well, you know, I'm just satisfied with the sound of my voice because I like how Ray Charles sounds. Damn, can't I do that?
[00:46:11] Michaela: Yeah.
How did you come to terms with that?
[00:46:14] Rodney: Pete Coleman, I call him the, lab coat limey. He is a British engineer that did faith's right hand and, the Houston kid and the outsider with me got me in the studio and he, turned off the reverb. I said, Hey man, you just turn the reverb off. And he said, yeah. once you learn to sing without reverb, you're gonna love it.
Hmm. And he was right. It's, like I discovered the sound of my voice Pete removed a reverb from it, and I would sing to a dry, if I had headphones on, it was dry in a can, and that's when I discovered my voice.
Very simple thing like that because with a reverb in there, putting that, expansion in the sound, I would listen more to the sound of all of that rather than just communicating with the use of my voice.
And there, I, I stumbled on to, ah, I'd like the sound of this voice. It's okay. It ain't Rachel, but it's mine and it's pretty good.
[00:47:07] Aaron: Yep. Yeah, that's when you mentioned people like Ray Charles and Aretha, That's what strikes me about all those, legendary voices is how unique they are and how much is just fully them in that voice, Frank Sinatra or anything like that.
[00:47:23] Rodney: Don. Don Everly.
[00:47:25] Aaron: Yeah. Don Everly, Chet Baker, all of that.
they're fully there as a person behind
their voice and they fully own it, and you can feel that.
[00:47:32] Rodney: Mick Jagger.
[00:47:33] Aaron: Yeah.
[00:47:34] Michaela: But I,
I think the challenge then is knowing that you're capable of that too. It's not gonna sound like Aretha Franklin, but the journey of, once you fully embrace your voice, because it's yours and your way to communicate.
That's the intangible why a listener connects. To someone's voice, not because it's technically a better singing voice, but because of that kind of intangible undefinable essence, that it's a person sharing their voice. There's so many voices that I love are technically not great singers, but you can feel that it's, them.
[00:48:13] Rodney: Yeah. I think that in my case, I discovered my voice was starting to sound lived in and that had some gravitas that I had been missing until I was like, oh yeah, that sounds starting to sound lived in. That's good.
[00:48:28] Michaela: Yeah. I've wanted to ask you cuz I, I notice kind of a trend of talking to people in creatives, who have children who raise families. A lot of times we have talked to a lot of men about it, but it kind of trends that women get asked about it, but not a lot of men get asked about what it's like to raise a family and also have a very consuming creative Career. You have four children. are all adults now? Can you speak to that a little bit about what that's like to have other being who you are responsible for, while also living this life that. Takes you away a lot is very consuming of your energy to create.
[00:49:10] Rodney: Yeah, my oldest daughter, Hannah, her mother and I split when Hannah, I think was 16 months old, and I got custody of Hannah, so I was making my first record on Warner Brothers back in 1978. and I were living in Wooden Hills, the two of us you know, we were night owls. I hadn't switched over to being a sane human being just because I had a new baby. But I would load up her little portable. Crib and take it to the studio. And we just lived together and we lived on raisin brands and, you know, she makes a joke that I would wash the dishes with the same sponge that I wiped her butt with when I took, changed her diaper. That's her joke. I, it's probably true. But, the thing about it is every mistake that you could make from driving down on the Hollywood freeway with my two year old child standing up beside me with no seatbelt on and having to slam on the brakes and throwing her into the floorboard and, her not miraculously getting hurt, everything that you could do wrong as a parent, I did it. that little girl has grown up to be a spectacular woman.
Smart, creative, funny, successful. I didn't mess it up. And all of my other three daughters who, you know, raised together with her mother, I didn't mess them up either, and I was selfish and, self-absorbed and, uh, stoned a lot of time and, late getting them to school.
When I was driving 'em, I was constantly five minutes late getting 'em to school.
And um, I didn't mess 'em up. I think if you talk to them, they'd say, you know, dad tried, but he didn't mess me up really. And they, they would be doing that sarcastically and making a joke. But, there's something about it.
And this, is The most true thing I can say, which is my crowning achievement in the world, is being the father of those four women and the grandfather of their children. It's my greatest accomplishment. I am a patriarch and all, all, four of my daughters went out into the world, England and San Francisco, and they all went away New York, and they all came back and they live close by and that's the blessing that continues on.
I call 'em, she wolfs because they're smart and they're tenacious, and they'll call me on my, crap in a minute and it's, right there with Claudia. My wife, Claudia, is like these five women in my life are the ones that bring out the best in me, and they're the ones that inspire me to try to be the best man I can be and to fail sometimes, and to succeed sometimes.
But at the end of the day, the fact that they're in my life is my single most crowning achievement.
[00:51:58] Michaela: Well, I think that's such a testament, the fact that you have such close relationships with all of your daughters still and in each other's lives. And the way that you spoke about your journey as a father is again, very generous with your failures and you're owning who you are as a person, which I think is wonderful. Mm-hmm.
[00:52:22] Rodney: Well, I've got a lot of practice being me. It's like,
[00:52:27] Michaela: yeah, maybe that's something that comes with age. And again, like the, a lot of the motivation we're in our mid thirties and we have a almost two year old daughter and. a lot of our friends are in the same similar age bracket and we've come to a place of like, okay, we know we're not gonna change course.
This is the career path that we're in. And we've lived it long enough to see that the way that we approached it in our twenties can't sustain it if we continue to approach it in that way. Which was sacrifice everything, do everything you can just to have a music career. And so I think we're constantly talking and curious about, how do we sustain a creative career?
does that look like? What is our idea of success? How it's changed from what our kind of narrow view when we first started out? And also how do we be whole continually evolving humans, I don't really like the word of saying a good person, cuz I think we're all good and bad. But being a whole human and really owning that with confidence, and I think creative work feeds that and vice versa.
So it's interesting to talk to someone like you is so open and honest about how it all has interwoven throughout your long career in life.
[00:53:42] Rodney: Yeah, well I was thinking while I was listening to you, I was. Paying attention to what you were saying, but also my own thoughts were bubbling up. It's like, I can't wait till she gets through so I can say what I to say. It wasn't that, I mean, I, I was listening to you, but it was, it occurred to me that in answer to what you're talking about, I think what I could share is that despite my flaws, my selfishness and my outright failures, I think that if you ask my daughters, I think that they would say the one thing that I did succeed consistently is they know how much I love them,
I think if your child knows how much you love them, truly how much you love them, they'll forgive how stupid you are.
From time to time I found that to be the case cuz God knows I've been a blockhead so many times. But, love conquers all.
[00:54:37] Aaron: It does. I think that's a beautiful note to end on there. We really appreciate you taking time this morning to, to chat with us and share your experience and your insights.
[00:54:48] Rodney: Thank you. And isn't it interesting how technology can create the opportunity to just have a conversation? We, We could have been sitting outside and having this conversation.
[00:54:57] Michaela: yeah, I know. But then, then we would've had a 30, 40 minutes. Right now we get to just be in our homes.
[00:55:04] Rodney: Yeah. Yeah. Good luck with this and it My pleasure. Thanks for reaching out to me and
[00:55:10] Michaela: thank you.
Thank you so much, Rodney, and I hope your tour is great and I hope you stay healthy and feel good.
[00:55:17] Rodney: Yeah. Thank you. Same to you.