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Show Wed/Thurs/Fri, August 31-September 2, 2016 C-3 The Park Record Crowell continues to create music Grammy winner will perform at the Egyptian Theatre By SCOTT IWASAKI The Park Record Although he may deny it, Rodney Crowell is part of the Nashville singer and songwriter circle of royalty. Along with his solo writing and performing career and his musical partnership with Emmylou Harris, the multi-Grammy Awardwinner’s songs have been covered and performed by Van Morrison, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Etta James, George Strait, Royksopp, Tim McGraw and Bob Seger. Crowell has also earned a Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting from the Americana Music Association. Park City will get three opportunities to see Crowell in concert when he plays the Egyptian Theatre this weekend from Sept. 2 to Sept. 4, and Crowell promises to play a mix of songs from his early days to his current catalog, which he sees as his best work. “I shy away from anyone who labels me as an oldies act,” Crowell said during a phone call to The Park Record from his home in Franklin, Tennessee, a little town 30 miles south of Nashville. “My credo is if I’m no longer able to hold an audience’s attention with work that I’m creating now, then I need to go back to the drawing board. So, I always try to make the show about things that I’m currently passionate about and songs that I consider good enough to perform throughout these years.” Crowell, who is known for a string of singles including “It’s a Such a Small World” with Rosanne Cash, “Above and Be- 1990 yond,” “Lovin’ All Night” and “Earthbound,” to name a few, said he was born to play music. “Of course I had to discover that for myself,” he said dryly. “I started playing in public when I was at the age of 11 with my father’s country-swing dance band. He roped me into playing drums and taught me how to do that.” In high school, Crowell formed his first band and by the time he was in college, the songwriter was earning a living with his music. His life changed when he arrived in Nashville in the 1970s. “I was broke, but had a new guitar,” he said. “It was my good fortune to stumble into a salon of good songwriters who were really the great ones like Mickey Newbury, Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark. “They were the masters,” Crowell said. “It was myself, Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams and other singers who were eight to 10 years younger than them who were blessed to find them.” Nashville, at that time, was a different community than today. “It was a place where you could actually talk to songwriters about the craft and get people to hear the songs without being evaluated about whether or not the songs would earn money,” Crowell said. “The music was evaluated from one artist to another, and most often, encouragement was involved, but sometimes you would get comments like ‘you need to do better than that,’ which is equally as important as encouragement.” During his time in Nashville, he met Emmylou Harris. “We became close friends in the mid-1970s and I moved to California to travel, perform and write songs with and for her,” Crowell said. “To this day, we still work together, although we waited 40 years to make our first duet record.” That record is 2015’s Gammy winner, “The Traveling Kind,” which landed in the Top 10 on the 26 Purchase two tapas & the third is FREE! • Valid on third tapas of equal or lesser value • Max of three coupons per table please • Not valid with any other offer • Dine-in only please • Please present coupon • Meat & Cheese Plate excluded from offer Valid thru August 31st, 2016 JOSEPH LLANES Grammy- and American Music Association-award winning singer and songwriter Rodney Crowell will perform his songs at the Egyptian Theatre from Sept. 2 to Sept. 4. Crowell, known for songs covered by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Tim McGraw, thrives in the craft of songwritng, which sometimes takes more than two decades at a time. Billboard’s U.S. Country charts. A year prior, Crowell’s latest solo album “Tarpaper Sky” hit the Top 30. The second track on that album, “Fever on the Bayou,” was co-written by Will Jennings, who wrote the Academy Awardwinning song “My Heart Will Go On” from the Leonardo DiCaprio blockbuster “Titanic.” “He and I started that song probably in 1983 and that’s nearly 21 years ago,” Crowell said. It took so long to finish because Crowell wanted to make sure it would be a good song. “The more songwriting I do, the more seasoned I become and the more aware I become of the craft,” he explained. “When I was a young songwriter at 22 years old, I wrote some songs that are still around today, and with some of them, I got the inspiration to write them as close as they should have been. However, there were a lot of songs I let fly because my work ethic wasn’t such that I was willing to spend five years unlocking what the songs really needed to be.” Like “Fever on the Bayou,” Crowell’s recent records feature songs that he has I toyed with for two or more decades. “There are times when I get a burst of inspiration that will give me a verse and a chorus and then the inspiration is gone,” he said. “That’s when the craft comes in. That’s when you craft the next Open Daily at 5pm Closed Mondays bodegaonmainparkcity.com 710 Main Street, Park City 435.649.6979 Please see Songwriter, C-5 2016 Committed To DED I CAT E D T O P A R K CITY FOR 26 YE AR S (435) 649-8322 theteam@parkcitytitle.com END OF SEASON SALE! Sat 8/27 - Sat 9/3 50% OFF OUR ENTIRE INVENTORY! 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