Singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell is coming to the Stiefel Theatre.
Jane Gates, Stiefel executive director, announced Tuesday morning that Crowell, along with world-class Australian virtuoso guitarist Joe Robinson, are scheduled to perform at 8 p.m. May 4 in the Stiefel Theatre, 151 S. Santa Fe.
Tickets start at $32 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday in the Stiefel Theatre box office.
Following is information about the two artists provided by the Stiefel Theatre.
Rodney Crowell
Classics can become cliches.
And cliches, like whiskey, nostalgia, and orthodoxy, will deaden the mind.
We can’t learn from what we know. It doesn’t work that way. But if what we know morphs and changes, and whittles itself down to truthful essence, then we can find delight and inspiration.
That’s what’s going on here, in Rodney Crowell’s most unusual of retrospectives. These are songs he wants to sing and play, performed as he wants to sing and play them.
This is nothing like a summation of an extraordinary life in songwriting, and the very act of releasing an album of “classics” that doesn’t include “’Till I Gain Control Again,” “Voila, An American Dream,” “Song for the Life,” “Stars on the Water,” “Ashes by Now,” “Bluebird Wine,” “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream),” and all the others is either an act of humility or a chest-thump.
Hard to say, and maybe it doesn’t matter. As always, Crowell is running toward his true self, even as he assures us he’s not running fast enough.
“I’ve heard it said a thousand times, to thine own self be true,” he sings. “Well, it’s not for lack of trying, that this is something I can’t do.”
Check this out . . . he sings that on a song called “Shame on the Moon Redux.” It’s a retrospective reinvention of “Shame on the Moon,” a song Crowell wrote and Bob Seger recorded to grand success. The original was a hit. It was a smash. Crowell never liked the last verse, about stepping light on old toes.
“I used to let a lot of stuff go by,” he says. “I didn’t put in the work at the time to make that song be all that it could be.”
And so, by way of an apology to a chart-topping song, Crowell re-wrote it as confession and admission.
“I was late in my twenties, and hungry for praise,” is what he sings. “And waxing like crazy when I wrote down that phrase/ ‘Oh, blame it on midnight . . . ooh, shame on the moon.’”
Crowell is no longer hungry for praise. We’ve been praising him for forty years, since the days when Guy Clark — the emphatic and acerbic father figure to several musical generations — pointed out the ebullient genius in “Bluebird Wine,” a song that would become the first song on Emmylou Harris’s first major label album. We’ve praised Crowell as a hit songwriter, as a chart-topping singer, and as a gruffly grinning member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
We’ve praised him to the point of satiation, and now Crowell’s bouncing poetry is its own reward. Another poet, Donald Hall, identified writing’s most sinful characteristics as being “tired, ordinary, trite, or false.” Rodney Crowell would not be convicted of these crimes by a jury of peers.
This album of classics is not a victory lap. It’s a field sprint, followed by a campfire circle. It’s Rodney Crowell playing guitar and singing with friends, live and in real time. The revelations are in the reveling, and in Crowell’s joyful ownership of songs that have become dear companions. We arrive as honored guests, here to listen to an artist’s true self.
Joe Robinson
Twenty-six-year-old Australian Joe Robinson is a world-class virtuoso guitarist and singer/songwriter with a unique musical sensibility, injecting a unique fusion of rock, blues, R&B and jazz into a fresh sound that is entirely his own. Displaying his virtuosity on electric as well as acoustic guitar, Robinson was voted “Best New Talent” in the Guitar Player Readers’ Poll and landed a coveted spot as one of Australian Guitar Magazine’s Top 50 Best Guitarists!
Robinson’s talents were further recognized by Guitar Player magazine as part of a cover story entitled “Youthquake 2017: Ten Mind-Blowing Young Guitarists.” In the article, Guitar Player observes Robinson is “equally mind-blowing as an acoustic fingerpicker and electric soloist…his YouTube videos display an astounding combination of taste, speed, cagey phrasing, and a clear, articulate, and sparking tone.”
Robinson started playing guitar at age nine and when he quickly outpaced his guitar instructor, began educating himself via the internet. At age 11 he was a touring guitarist and at just 13 years old, he won the Australian National Songwriting Competition. Within a couple of years he was touring regularly and sharing stages with artists such as Tommy and Phil Emmanuel, both of whom served as mentors. When a 16-year-old Robinson burned through a Chet-inflected medley of “Day Tripper” and “Lady Madonna” in 2008 at the opening round of the nationally broadcast Australia’s Got Talent television series competition, the entire house—including the judges—gave him a standing ovation. He went on to win $250k with his take on Tommy Emmanuel’s arrangement of “Classical Gas.”
Robinson has toured North America and abroad (China, Japan, Europe, and Australia) playing numerous festivals, including Bonnaroo, and headlining clubs, which has enabled him to define
himself as a budding world visionary. In his solo show, there are a few moments where he physically has two guitars — one acoustic and one electric — strapped over his shoulder and is playing them expertly at the same time! In addition to extensive touring on his own, Robinson toured with Guitar Army featuring fellow master guitarists/singers/songwriters Robben Ford and Lee Roy Parnell in 2016, and in 2017, Robinson joined guitar greats John Jorgenson and Lee Roy Parnell in Guitar Army on the road and in the studio!
Robinson is currently writing and recording his highly-awaited fourth solo album (a follow-up to his well received Gemini, Vol. 1 and Gemini, Vol. 2 EP’s) expected to be released in 2019. He has also been keeping a busy schedule on the road with solo dates and shows with Tommy Emmanuel, Rodney Crowell (opening shows and as a member of Crowell’s acoustic trio), and Edwin McCain, among others!
“It’s not hard to imagine him rivaling the popularity of, say, John Mayer in coming years,” the Washington Post wrote.