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Fate’s Right Hand

Rodney Crowell

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Jan 01, 2005
Category: Country

Over 50? This is the story — spooky in its accuracy — of your life.

Over 40? Here’s a preview of coming attractions.

Under 40? Well, if you’re an "old soul," some of this will apply — the rest is just great music.

Our sermon today concerns "Fate’s Right Hand," released in the increasingly distant summer of 2003. Since then, Crowell and Vince Gill have formed a country supergroup and have had a novelty hit with a sing called "It’s Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long." It bears nothing in common with the songs on "Fate’s Right Hand."

But then, the songs on "Fate’s Right Hand" aren’t like much in his past either. His increasingly distant past. As Crowell notes, he has "the over-worked distinction of being the only guy to write, sing, and produce five consecutive number-one songs in the country music field." You have heard many of them — "Queen of Hearts," "Ain’t Living Long Like This," "Shame on the Moon," "Ashes by Now," "Till I Gain Control Again" — sung by others. If you’re curious — and you will be after you come to terms with "Fate’s Right Hand" — you might want to hear Rodney do them on The Rodney Crowell Collection. 

The first fact you need to understand Rodney Crowell — this guy most of you have never heard of — is that he was once married to Rosanne Cash. Yes, Johnny’s daughter and a great singer-songwriter and the certain recipient of a future mash note in Butler. And they had four daughters. And then there was trouble — I seem to remember reading somewhere that she picked up a phone and found Rodney talking to a girlfriend; this was, clearly, way before cell phones — and, at some point in the ’90s, Crowell found himself playing Mr. Mom while his ex-wife was touring.

The guy who had filled arenas was reduced to playing the occasional gig at Nashville’s tiny shrine to singer-songwriters, the Bluebird Cafe. When he re-emerged with the songs for a new CD, he had to pay for the recording himself.  But it was worth it. The Houston Kid is a brilliant song cycle that looks hard at his early years — add it to your "to consider" list.

And now we come to "Fate’s Right Hand." Crowell calls it "an attempt to articulate the day by day task of dealing with the uncertainty of a clouded future and the sorrow of a botched past. There is certainly no instruction manual on how to whistle past the graveyard of poor choices. Ditto, no bread crumbs to lead you out of the dark forest of the unforeseen. In the end, adulthood is the complex matter of figuring out who and what to put your faith in."

Complex, indeed. The past is littered with wreckage and diamonds. The future is ours for the making. But how can we move forward with confidence when our history holds so much shame? How can we be sure we’re not going to screw up the next set of people who have the misfortune to be in our path?

Crowell’s decision is to confess all ("I’ve got a past like a broken wing") and then, at the midpoint of life, just….keep going ("The day I rest is the day I die"). Here’s how the CD starts: 

The hour is early
The whole world is quiet
A beautiful morning’s about to ignite
I’m ready for danger
I’m ready for fire
I’m ready for something to lift me up higher

Life’s been good, I guess
My ragged old heart’s been blessed
With so much more than meets the eye
I’ve got a past I won’t soon forget
You ain’t seen nothing yet
I’m still learning how to fly…

Other songs echo this hard-won affirmation. In "Earthbound" he offers a list of heroes — and his response to their inspiration:

Earthbound….Tom Waits, Aretha Franklin, Mary Karr
Earthbound….Walter Cronkite, Seamus Heaney, Ringo Starr
Dalai Lama, Charlie Brown — I  think I might stick around

But this is not the soundtrack to Pollyanna. One song tells of his failed effort to give a homeless man an overcoat in a snowstorm. Another offers realistic solace to friends whose eight-year-old son has died. And, over and over, the doubts reappear, like demons sent from his past to haunt him. In one song:

Time to go inward, would you believe that I’m afraid
To stare down the barrel of the choices I have made
The ghosts of bad decisions make mountains out of everything I fee
l

In another song:

There’s a man in the closet
He wants to come out
He wants to be noticed
But he’s so filled with doubt
He wants to be well known and famous
But he’s so filled with pride
The keys to his fortune stay locked up inside
Can it be the man in me?

And just to show you he knows what a high-wire act this is, he includes "Preaching to the Choir," which begins:

My self importance is a god forsaken bore
I aim for heaven but I wake up on the floor

There are no atheists in foxholes — or in Nashville. In the end, Crowell votes for "the funny feeling [that] comes when you’re in love with everyone, and all your races have been run or laid to rest." He rejects despair: "Get this freakin ‘ anvil off my chest, Come on funny feeling…"

I go on about the words because, at my advanced age, they speak to the state I’m in. But that misrepresents this CD. The Rodney Crowell who wrote hit after hit can still write amazing hooks — again and again, I’m knocked out by the musicianship. This is great country-pop songwriting, cut after cut; "Fate’s Right Hand" is a pleasure that rewards repeated listening. (To buy "Fate’s Right Hand" from Amazon.com, click here.)

We last saw Rodney Crowell at the late, lamented Bottom Line in New York. Pretty early on, tears started streaming from my eyes — tears of delight. "I knew he was good," I whispered. "But who knew he was this good?" He played some country hits. He did the heartbreaking introspective songs. He led us in a Dylan singalong that made "Like A Rolling Stone" new again. And he rocked — that band could go 0-60 in no time flat.

When it was over, Crowell did something I’ve never seen before. He thanked each member of his band, in turn. I’m sure the guy still has edges and more than a few flaws, but this was a triumph of tenderness, a great way to underscore that "the attitude is gratitude."