Rodney Crowell Rocks The Boat At Cayamo (Live Review)

Rodney Crowell, the first country artist to land 5 No. 1s from a single album (Diamonds & Dirt), has a career that’s spanned the backend of Outlaw Country, played Pancho Sanza to Emmylou Harris’ post-Gram Parsons’ Don Quixote and later strike out into alt-rock (Street Language), deeply personal songwriter excavations (The Houston Kid, the all-star Mary Karr collaborative Kin), paving Americana (XXX) and now harvesting the off-road Lone Star hybrid of blues/rock/some country (Texas). But on the Pool Deck of Cayamo, Crowell smears the elements into a fluid hybrid that is as natural it is engaging.

While many of the classic songwriters work a more acoustic/song forward tip, there’s a muscularity to how the Houston-bred artist chooses to celebrate life, loss and the inherent euphoria of the human condition. Starting “I’m Still Learning How To Fly” solo and acoustic, the expression of personal truth is evident; add in a creeping electric bass, a crisp snare beat, three part harmony, the grace of self-acceptance in the falter and the desire to grow becomes a communion for the audience on two decks, a hot tub, three lounges and hanging over a couple balconies from the high roller staterooms.

For the man who’s written many of country and pop most enduring hits (“Shame On The Moon,” “Ain’t Living Long Like This,” “Please Remember Me,” “(Viola!) An American Dream,” “Making Memories of Us”), the musicality of his set is easily as compelling the lyrics that’ve carved truths on and of the human heart for over four decades. Whether a sweet shuffle of Roger Miller’s “Invitation To The Blues,” the plucky swinging honky tonk of “Stars on the Water,” or the hushed tenderness of “Til I Can Gain Control Again,” the rhythm section energized without overwhelming  and the electric guitar and fiddle offered shape in ways that heightened melodies.

Stlll Lex Price’s elbows flying, fat-bottomed bass that swept the Guy Clark co-write “Crazy For Leaving” is the real wonder of the Grammy winning Americana Lifetime Achievement Award winner’s magic. There’s a euphoria to door-banging shuffles threaded with fiddle that weave humor, truth and comeuppance into a delicious groove meant for dancing. 

That dance thing gets lost a lot in country and Americana, but for Crowell, growing up playing drums in Texas’ juke joints, honky tonks and icehouses,  it’s the raison d’etre. That same “swung groove” sailed “Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylght” into a tumble of a tale of a young girl, a traveling salesman and carnal escape. Eamon McLaughlin’s fiddle reeled and tilted with Cajun aplomb seasoning the mix with local color.

That chameleonic shift found the fiddle cutting into a slightly darker, closer to a Stones in Memphis take on “Respect Yourself.” Joking about not realizing Mavis Staples was on the boat, he offered the slinky funkiness up as a tribute and gave vocalist Anna Sutherland the room to shine as well as allowing guitarist Joe Robinson, McLaughlin, Price and even drummer Nate Barnes room to shine.

Even the set-closing “Say You Love Me”/”Ain’t Living Long Like This” packed the earliest punk exuberance. Another tale of rock & roll high jinks (“Love”) and hillbilly hormones and insurrection (“Livin’”) tethered to a larger sense of romance and a Ramones/Rockpile kind of amped up simplicity that benefitted from Barnes’ pushing the beat ever so slightly. A masterclass in hybrid vigor and musical convergence, the 69-year-old Crowell’s set showed poetry doesn’t need to lay there.