Vintage Guitar - September 2017 - open - 20

RODNEY
CROWELL

"He's so dynamic, and such a
charismatic player," Crowell said.
Longtime Crowell guitarist Steuart
Smith appears in various places,
while co-producer Jordan Lehning
added guitar on "Life Without
Susanna." Chris Leuzinger and
his resonator appear on "Nashville
1972," with Richard Bennett on
"Forty Miles From Nowhere."
Crowell and Jim Oblon created
the ominous guitar framework for
"Storm Warning," while Lehning,
Oblon, and Smith generate the
full-bodied backing that frames "I
Don't Care Anymore."
Crowell used four guitars, two
being his main acoustics.
"My number one is a '32 12-fret/
white-pickguard Gibson L-00," he
said. "I also have a '37 14-fret L-00
that Vince Gill gave me. I played
that on 'Life Without Susanna'
and 'East Houston Blues.' It has
a pickup, and I also played it on 'I
Don't Care Anymore.' I also have a
wartime banner J-45 - the Sherman
tank of wartime Gibsons - with a
baseball-bat neck. It's a thumper
and has that real midrangey Hank
Williams sound. On 'Storm Warning' I was
playing a '57 Southern Jumbo. Live, I use the
12-fret L-00."
Crowell worked more extensively with vintage
gear while supervising music for the Hank Williams biopic I Saw The Light. He also helped star
Tom Hiddleston find a voice, and supervised
musicians Chris Scruggs, Richard Bennett, fiddler Stuart Duncan, and guitarist Wes Langlois,
who used vintage gear to accurately re-create
Hank's late-'40s/early-'50s sound. Recording
on period equipment at Ray Kennedy's Room
& Board studio further enhanced the retro feel.
Blues, not country, was Crowell's major
inspiration for Close Ties.
"The album was informed by recordings by
Big Joe Williams and Blind Blake," he said. "I
started digging into the blues the way I didn't in
my teens and early 20s; Hank Williams was my
touchstone for blues. The last five years, though,
I've been listening a lot to Delta and country
blues. I've always listened to Lightnin' Hopkins,
but I'm smart enough to know that's not what's
inside me. Still, if you understand it and love
it for its purity, it starts to inform your work."
He views Close Ties as part of a trilogy.
"The tonality is akin to what I did on Houston
Kid and Chinaberry. Those are three of my
better works as a writer, and that may be the
thing that ties them together." - Rich Kienzle

Same Roots, New Branches

odney Crowell arrived in Nashville in 1972,
bent on finding a niche for himself in the
country music he'd loved since his childhood in
Houston. He wrote songs for Jerry Reed's publishing company and, in 1975, Emmylou Harris added
him to her Hot Band as rhythm guitarist. He
wrote hits including "'Til I Gain Control Again"
for Crystal Gayle, and his greatest success came
during country's New Traditionalist movement,
with five #1 singles to his credit in 1988 and '89.
Life is critical to Crowell's music; personal
experiences inspired his 2011 album, The Houston
Kid, and autobiography, Chinaberry Sidewalks. He
views his latest, Close Ties, as a continuation filled
with similar rootsy, hard-edged compositions.
The songs, performances, and production are
simple and hard-hitting; among the powerful are
"Life Without Susanna," an homage to longtime
friend Susanna Clark, who died in 2012. Her
husband - singer/songwriter Guy Clark, who died
in 2016 - was another Crowell friend and mentor.
"'Life Without Susanna,' is a recent
memory," he said. "So is 'It Ain't Over Yet.'
I was writing that while I was close to Guy."
He calls "Nashville 1972" "...a basic memoir,"
adding, "Maybe I've gotten this out of my
system now. Who knows?"
Crowell played on almost all of the songs and
had masterful helpers like Tommy Emmanuel,
whom he invited to join for "East Houston Blues."

VINTAGE GUITAR

September 2017

Ask Zac
WITH ZAC CHILDS

The oiled spot on Paul Gertsen's
Kalamazoo KG-1.

I have a Kalamazoo KG-1 that I
believe is made from mahogany,
not particle board, as so many
sources indicate. I wiped an area in
the rout with solvent, then oiled it,
and it sure looks to be two pieces
of mahogany. - Paul Gertsen
We posed your question to our
friends at Gibson, and they told us,
"We believe the guitar could be
multiple and/or pressed pieces of
mahogany. Throughout the 1960s
Gibson sometimes issued hundreds
of 'Engineering Change' notices in a
given month. So, it would not come
as a surprise to learn a large portion
of KG-1s were made of mahogany."
Without removing more finish, it would be difficult to say
whether yours is solid wood or
numerous pressed pieces.
On a recent awards show, a tribute
to Gregg Allman included Derek
Trucks playing a goldtop Les Paul. I
heard it had belonged to Duane Allman and is now owned by the Allman
Brothers Museum. - Austin Foss
Derek was not only playing Duane's
goldtop, he was using one of Allman's small-box Marshall heads
for that performance of "Midnight
Rider." Trucks owns the amp, and
the Les Paul is in the care of the Big
House, the official Allman Brothers Museum, in Macon, Georgia.
Zac Childs is a guitar tech in Nashville. If you
have a question about guitars, anything from
nuts and bolts to historical or celebrity-related
inquiries, drop a line to him at zac@askzac.
com or visit facebook.com/askzac.

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