“This record is a document of me falling in love with these musicians,” says Rodney Crowell, referring to his wise, vibrant 20th studio album, Airline Highway. “That’s one of the great perks of this job—falling in love with the people you’re playing with. And we caught that on tape.” Crackling with live-wire energy, these new songs feature contributions from some of the most exciting young blues and country artists working today, all of whom count Crowell as a foundational influence. Lukas Nelson (whose father Willie just recorded a full album of Crowell compositions) co-wrote and sings on the rambling opener “Rainy Days in California,” while Ashley McBryde co-wrote and sings on “Taking Flight,” a devastating duet about the distance between old lovers. Blackberry Smoke guitarist Charlie Starr sings on “Heaven Can You Help,” while Rebecca Lovell and Megan Lovell from Larkin Poe add harmonies and slide guitar throughout.

Crowell welcomed all the new sounds, new ideas, and new attitudes they brought to his songs. With a career spanning more than fifty years, he’s still questioning how and why he makes music, still setting new rules and quickly breaking them; fittingly, Airline Highway focus on finding new perspectives on your past while living contentedly in the present moment. This is an album about moving on to something new—a different place to call home, a more compassionate understanding of an old love affair, or just the next song on the jukebox. The project began when Crowell met a young guitarist and producer named Tyler Bryant, a native Texan now based in Nashville whose band the Shakedown have toured with the Black Crowes and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. One of his prized possessions, however, is a photograph of himself as a pre-teen meeting his hero, Rodney Crowell. “He’s one of the most impressive young men I’ve met in a long time. He’s full of energy and passionate as all get out. As soon as I met him, I thought, let’s go! We immediately started going back and forth between my home studio and his, making demos and talking about what we wanted to do.”

A few months later, they packed up a truckload of gear to make the two-day journey down to his old friend Trina Shoemaker’s remote Dockside Studio, in Maurice, Louisiana. “It’s right at the place where nowhere becomes now here,” he laughs. “It’s got a great vibe, and the band all lived under the same roof. The beautiful Vermilion River is nearby. We thought with any luck we’d get eaten by alligators.” The gators kept a safe distance from the studio, where the band worked fast and loose, rarely doing more than two or three takes of any particular song. The lively music and the humid surroundings unlocked old memories and complicated feelings for Crowell, and those young players made sure the music reflects all that joy and loss and regret and wonder. “There’s a romance to the swamp, the semi-tropical climate. We put it to good use, even if it was just me romanticizing my connection to Louisiana.”

Crowell drove many of these Louisiana backroads when he was even younger than his collaborators. He grew up on the east side of Houston, just a few hours west of the state line, and made wild forays into Louisiana as a young man to drink or carouse or mostly to catch live music. “You could buy beer in Louisiana without a license, so as soon as we could get away from our parents, my friends and I would drive over the line and go to this club in the sticks called the Big Oaks Club, where this band called the Boogie Kings played blue-eyed soul. Or swamp pop, as it was called later. In fact, the first recording I ever did was when my buddy Donivan Cowart and I went over to Crowley, Louisiana, to record at JD Miller’s studio above a beauty shop. But it never came out because the songs we wrote weren’t any good!”

It was a humble start to a long and celebrated career for the singer, songwriter, and sideman, who brought a little bit of that swamp-pop fervor to Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band in the 1970s. Crowell’s songs have been covered by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, the Oak Ridge Boys, Jerry Jeff Walker, and pretty much every other musician who’s ever set foot in Nashville or Austin. He was recently inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters alongside Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, and Sandra Cisneros. “My ambition isn’t to be a household name anymore. My ambition is to be satisfied with the work that I do. I’m at a place where it really is all about having fun.”

And he’s obviously having fun on “The Twenty-One Song Salute (In Memory of GG Shinn and Cléoma Falcon),” a rambunctious number that lists some of his younger self’s favorite tunes, including Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Mojo Hand,” Gene Vincent’s “Be Bop a Lula,” and Rusty & Doug Kershaw’s “Diggy Liggy Lo.” “In the end I counted up 21 different songs that I’d pinched from, so it became my twenty-one-song salute to GG and Cléoma.” Shinn was a member of the Boogie Kings, a charismatic performer who made a huge impression on the younger Crowell whenever he saw them play the Big Oaks Club. And Falcon—also billed as Cléoma Breaux—was a Crowley native and one of the first women to record on Cajun or Acadian records, often accompanying the great Amédé Ardoin. Or, as he sings over a percolating swamp groove, “Crowley, Louisiana, void of everyday humdrum, I pledge allegiance to the people y’all come from.”

Airline Highway is an album full of old, abiding loves, whether it’s a favorite song or a lover you remember fondly. Songs like “Sometime Thang” and “Rainy Days in California” (the latter featuring Lukas Nelson) raise a glass to old romances and encounters with different women in California or down in Louisiana: falling in love, toughing out hard times, growing apart until they become “that small voice on your phone,” to quote a devastating line on “Taking Flight,” co-written with Ashley McBryde. Some are fictional, Crowell explains, but they all contain some kernel of truth, amounting to a musical roman à clef. “Somewhere Down the Road,” the album’s gentle conclusion, “is a sad story, but a true story. It’s about an almost-romance I had after Rosanne Cash and I split up but before I met my wife Claudia Church. I found out much later that this woman was a suicide casualty, so I wrote that song for her.” It is the kind of song that only someone could write with years, decades even, of perspective. “Did I love her?” he asks himself. “Oh, I don’t know. It was such a long time ago.”

“At a basic level there are a lot more years behind me than there are ahead of me,” he says. “I’m up in my seventieth decade of my life,” he says with a laugh, “and I’m glad that I’m still looking forward to certain things I want to do.” One of the things Crowell looks forward to is making more music with musicians he genuinely loves. “I’m just in love with the experience now. I’ve worked with amazing people in the past, but I was looking too far ahead. I wanted the music we were creating to make a name for me, so I wasn’t completely present with them. My ego was involved. But now my ego seems to have finally evaporated. Now it’s just about the work and what a blessing it is to be able to do it. The work truly feeds me in the moment.”

Rodney Crowell – Airline Highway
On his vibrant 20th studio album, Airline Highway, 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.

Two-Time Grammy Winner – Including Best Country Song for “After All This Time”
Songwriting Legend – Penned hits for Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Rosanne Cash, Keith Urban, and more
Over 40 Years of Acclaimed Releases – From his 1978 debut Ain’t Living Long Like This to his vibrant 2025 release Airline Highway
Chart-Topping Success – 1988’s Diamonds & Dirt produced an unprecedented five consecutive #1 singles on the country charts
Member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (inducted 2003)
Critically Acclaimed Collaborations – Including Old Yellow Moon and The Traveling Kind with Emmylou Harris (Grammy-winning & Grammy-nominated respectively)
Airline Highway features Ashley McBryde, Lukas Nelson, Larkin Poe, and Charlie Starr
Published Author – Chinaberry Sidewalks (memoir, 2011) earned praise from The New York Times
Genre-Spanning Influence – A bridge between classic outlaw country, Americana, and contemporary songwriting craft
Still Breaking Ground – Celebrating his 20th studio album in 2025 with Airline Highway, described as “a document of falling in love with music all over again”