Rodney Crowell

On his vibrant 20th studio album, Airline Highway (2025), Rodney Crowell explores love, memory, and musical kinship with a new generation of roots artists. Produced with Tyler Bryant and recorded live at Dockside Studio in Louisiana, the album captures a spontaneous spirit—blending Crowell’s storytelling prowess with contributions from Lukas Nelson, Ashley McBryde, Charlie Starr, and Larkin Poe. Inspired by the swamp-pop sounds of his youth and recorded in the heart of Cajun country, Airline Highway reflects on the past while celebrating the present. From the rollicking homage “The Twenty-One Song Salute” to the haunting closer “Somewhere Down the Road,” Crowell delivers a wise, joyful meditation on legacy and letting go.

Rodney Crowell is the songwriter’s songwriter and an icon among giants. Native Texan Crowell is a multi-Grammy Award-winning troubadour with fifteen number one hits. Over the course of his career, Crowell has gracefully blended his own mainstream success as an artist with a prolific catalog of songs cut by the likes of Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Keith Urban, and more, making him a master among his peers.

With more than 40 years of American roots music under his belt, Crowell has also been cited as the architect of Americana music, extending his genre reach, but owing to the distinctly universal, literary quality of his writing, he has also penned beloved songs for artists as diverse as Bob Seger, Etta James, the Grateful Dead, John Denver, Jimmy Buffett and countless others.

A member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Crowell is also the author of the acclaimed memoir, Chinaberry Sidewalks, and teamed up with New York Times best-selling author Mary Karr for Kin: Songs by Mary Karr & Rodney Crowell in 2012, with Karr saying of her collaborator, “Like Hank Williams or Townes Van Zandt or Miss Lucinda, he writes and croons with a poet’s economy and a well digger’s deep heart.” Crowell was honored with ASCAP’s prestigious Founder’s Award in 2017, and that same year released the album Close Ties, which spawned another Grammy nomination for “It Ain’t Over Yet” with Rosanne Cash and John Paul White in the category of Best Americana Song. 2019’s Texas was a collection of Lone Star-centric collaborations with Ringo Starr, Willie Nelson, Ronnie Dunn, Steve Earle, and more, and Crowell’s most recent album release is the 2021 set, Triage.

Crowell came up in Nashville’s songwriting heyday alongside Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, and Steve Earle and has continued that legacy of camaraderie and kinship with his peers well into the iconic era of his career. As many say – “your favorite song was probably written by Rodney Crowell.”

Crowell has four daughters and lives with his wife and dog in Tennessee. He writes every day and loves tending to his garden.