In the competitive world of Nashville song-writing there are certain people who immediately stand out from the bunch. One such figure is Rodney Crowell of Houston, Texas - one-time member of both The Hot Band and the Cash clan, having been married for 12 years to Johnny's daughter Rosanne. He was in Ireland last weekend for the Kilkenny Roots Festival and brought with him a vast store of songs and more proof, if it were needed, that there is definitely something special about the Lone Star State.
Despite his standing, however, Crowell's music has often left him idling just outside those spangly gates of solo country stardom. As much a child of the Beatles as anything else, his is the broad canvas that Nashville doesn't always appreciate - the music and subject matter perhaps just a little too smart for those who prefer song-writing by numbers. And yet, Beatles influences apart, Crowell's country credentials are impeccable and his roots are permanently showing - all quite inevitable perhaps, given that Mr and Mrs Crowell actually met at a Roy Acuff show.
"When I was a child the old 78s lay around on the floor. My father was a guitar player and although he didn't write songs, he knew every song that was ever written - Appalachian songs and railroad songs and Jimmie Rodgers songs. And the radio was around, so I heard Merle Haggard and Buck Owens and Elvis and Chuck Berry. Also my grandmother shared a bedroom with me and she listened to Radio Station XET that broadcast The Carter Family. So there was that real tradition of American music - or basically what became of Irish music over here. Then when The Beatles and the Rolling Stones and The Dave Clark Five happened here I was 12 years old and that really changed our culture over here. But besides the fashion and the long hair, it was the music that really moved me."
In 1988 Crowell wrote five consecutive number one hits. In song-writing terms, this was an extraordinary strike rate, and his standing as a Nashville writer was assured. And while that particular success had come slowly, the patient wait had been well worth it. For Crowell, the act of waiting is very much part of the song-writing process.
"I figure the days that I'm not writing, I'm just waiting. I always say that talking about song-writing is like doing card tricks on the radio, but I've thought about this and with my father singing those songs for hours and hours when I was growing up, I figure that I had a body loaded with song and at some point I would just have to start writing to recycle all of it. "It's very mysterious stuff. It's a gift but you've got to keep your skills and technique really sharp just in case you get some real inspiration. If you get that inspiration and you don't have your skills together, you're going to miss it. I'm sticking with the word "gratitude" when I talk about it. Whenever the inspiration comes to me it's almost as if it comes and taps me on the shoulder and tells me to go somewhere and shut everything else out - you're only going to get one shot at this. And my family and everybody around me has really learned what to do when I get that look. I kind of go blank and they are very respectful and leave me alone."
Long before that late 1980s breakthrough, however, Crowell was already an established figure in Nashville. He had first moved there a decade earlier and was hired to play alongside James Burton in the legendary Hot Band of Emmylou Harris. His two-year stint saw him working both as a musician and as an arranger - something which amounted to something of an untouchable credit on his CV. Harris herself also recorded several Rodney Crowell songs and helped confirm further his reputation as a writer. Other artists began to cover his songs, and when Bob Seger had a hit with Shame on the Moon, Crowell got a recording contract of his own.
Two years later he married the singer Rosanne Cash, who he also began to produce. Between 1981 and 1989 she scored 11 number one country hits - 10 of them produced by her husband and the other co-written with him. The marriage, however, lasted only a dozen years and, in the manner of all Nashville love affairs, their relationship and ultimate parting became the apparent source of many great songs.
"The songs that have remained the most poignant for me are songs that are based on some real experience that I'm able to bring back alive. And it doesn't make me feel vulnerable to do that - it makes me feel grateful. I feel vulnerable when I've written something that is frozen in time and I know full well that I could have done a better job on it. It is important to me that a song I write can mean something to somebody else. And I'm talking about the songs I like! "There are other songs I've written and I don't care if nobody ever hears those ones! But again my feelings about that are of gratitude. I love my job and I love what I do and when it means as much to someone else as it does to me, then that's when it's really worthwhile. I really don't mind being an open book if I do a good job at writing."
Crowell's gratitude extends to the many extraordinary musicians he has performed with over the years. Those musicians closest to him have also been his greatest influences - Guy Clark, in particular, with whom he has written over a dozen songs. It was inevitable that they would gravitate towards each other at a time when the Nashville suits were actively encouraging blandness in their writers. It was Clark who then directed Crowell towards the late Townes Van Zandt and helped focus that left-of-centre Texan element they shared in their song-writing. As Crowell describes it, he learned from Bob Dylan how to put music and thought together, he learned from Guy Clark how to "reach for poetry" and he learned all about harmony and professionalism from Emmylou. He has been a lucky man in many ways, and he knows it.
`I remember standing on the stage of the Grand 'Ol Opry and having that great feeling of gratitude and really being humbled by so many people already at work in jobs that they don't like. Sometimes I'm really overcome with this great feeling of gratitude that I get to do what I love to do."
And what is it about the Lone Star State itself and the water of those rios that has produced so many of America's finest songwriters. Everyone has a theory about it, and Rodney Crowell's is a simple one. "It's just big 'ol blue sky man! And a wealth of characters who inspire and influence. I've talked to Guy Clark about this. We often sit around and wonder about what makes Texan songwriters and we talk about these old characters and the sense of humour that there is down there in Texas. And there's a real sense of humour in Texas. You gotta have a sense of humour and I'll leave it at that."