Rodney Crowell Pulled a Lost Album Out of His Vault. Its First Track Is His Final Recording With Guy Clark.

Rodney Crowell forgot he made a record. It sat in his home vault for two decades, a finished album he had filed away and stopped thinking about. He found it again, decided the songs had finally caught up to him, and put it out. "Then Again" arrives today, June 26, on New West Records, ten tracks recorded mostly back in the mid-2000s and left on the shelf until now.

The reason to care is not the vault story by itself. It is track one. "Are You One Of Us?" is a duet with Guy Clark, and it is the last thing the two of them ever recorded together. Clark died in May 2016. Crowell has spent his whole career in that man's orbit, so a final, unheard recording between them is not a bonus cut. It is the headline.

"I guess you could call it a lost album. I stumbled upon it in my vault at home. I'd forgotten about it completely."

Rodney Crowell

What's on it, and who's on it

That guest list is not a marketing flex. It is Crowell's actual address book. Emmylou Harris gave him his first real platform when he played guitar and sang in her Hot Band in the 1970s. Benmont Tench is the Heartbreakers organ player who turns up on half the great records made in Los Angeles. Lyle Lovett and Guy Clark are the Texas songwriter line Crowell belongs to. Harris and Lera Lynn appear on the bonus track, "Go Light a Candle."

The Clark duet

"Are You One Of Us?" is built as a back and forth, less a harmony than an argument set to music. The subject is the way American communities draw their borders, defining who belongs as much by who gets shut out. Crowell and Clark trade lines on it. Knowing Clark's gravel and Crowell's lighter, more conversational delivery, you can hear how the two voices would split that question between them.

It matters who these two were to each other. Clark was the older man, the craftsman the younger Nashville writers studied. Crowell was one of those writers, along with Steve Earle and the rest of the kitchen-table circle that ran through Guy and Susanna Clark's house in the 1970s. Crowell went on to write songs other people turned into hits ("Shame on the Moon" for Bob Seger, "Till I Gain Control Again" for half of Nashville), and in 1988 he ran five straight number one country singles off one album, "Diamonds & Dirt." But the through line back to Guy Clark never broke. So a last verse the two of them sang together, sitting inside a finished song nobody had heard, is the kind of thing that makes a lost-album release worth more than nostalgia.

The newer one

Crowell did add a fresh song to the old batch. "If I Could Speak to Leonard" is a letter to Leonard Cohen, written before Cohen died in 2016, that Crowell never got to play for him. It is the quiet end of the record, slow and grave, more eulogy than tribute. Crowell has been blunt about ranking Cohen at the very top of his songwriting heroes, ahead of Dylan and Tom Waits, which for a Texas country writer is saying a lot.

The honest part

A lost album is a gamble. Records get shelved for reasons, and a twenty-year wait can mean a batch of songs that never quite cohered. Crowell's own pitch leans into the gamble rather than away from it.

"I'm glad I put it on the shelf, because now is the time for it. It may not be the time for it for the rest of the world, but it's time for it for me."

Rodney Crowell

That is a man telling you upfront this one is for him first. Fair enough. The early read from Americana writers covering the previews is that age has only sharpened the material, that the songs land harder now than they would have in 2005. The duet with Clark is reason enough to press play. Whether the other nine hold up across a full sit is the thing to find out for yourself today.