Rodney Crowell

I've always said that Guy Clark is a regional songwriter without being regional. He's global. His craft is like, well, Larry McMurtry would be an example. I kind of see Guy Clark and Larry McMurtry in the same wave.

Collaboration is a vital part of my creative life. I've had success with Guy Clark and Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash.

I have declared my loyalty to Americana.

Memory is revisionist, you know. 'The Houston Kid' was based on true things that happened. But I know - from writing a memoir that I've been working on for awhile - that reconstructing memory is revisionism.

My family was very poor. Strangely, though, my father was an enigma in that he was always working. He was not a ne'er-do-well. He wasn't lazy. He just couldn't hold on to money. It just, it was an enigma for him. He just, his pockets were always empty.

As a young man, I craved fame. I was trying to fix holes in my soul that were there from childhood.

I wrote a song a good long while ago, 'I Ain't Livin' Long Like This,' that has been around and been recorded by a lot of people, but it was basically childhood memory.

I was an only child.

My mother's a very spiritual woman, and I think Pentecostal religion, Bible religion, was very important to her because it gave her a context for a very spiritual approach to life.

As a poet, Will Rogers just had this natural conversational style.

I don't think that 'The Weight of the World' is all about politics. It's like, how the environment and how the natural topography of this planet would ever fall into a political division, debate, just leaves me confused.

There are certain choices you make as a songwriter, based on vowel sounds and melody and chord changes.