Rodney Crowell

Rodney Crowell has always rocked harder than the Nashville norm, and his mentoring of
ex-wife Rosanne Cash is the kind of credit few country pros can claim. But on recent
reissues of 1992's Life Is Messy and 1988's Diamonds and Dirt, the overstatement that has
generally burdened his well-crafted displays of feeling comes through loud and clear. The
Houston Kid, on the same bluegrass label on which Dolly Parton has been reclai... More >

Big deal. The triple-threat guitarist-songwriter-frontman has been hawking four-on-the-floor country-rock since he came up with Emmylou, and as for the two AIDS songs, where's he been? Except the music has a lightness unmatched on the reissued Life Is Messy and Diamonds and Dirt, or the long-gone Ain't Living Long Like This either. And though there've been hundreds of quasi-autobios like "Telephone Road," their wizardry is in the details: "Skiing in a bar ditch behind a moped/Thirteen stitches on the corner of a sardine can." And coming from a place where once he believed "California gay boys deserve just what they get," AIDS is news to him. The one about his hardworking daddy beating on his long-suffering mama, on the other hand, he's been living with for 50 years. (Grade: A-)