Multi-Grammy award winning singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell will release his first album in over three years on April 7th via New West Records. The set includes contributions from Sheryl Crow, John Paul White and ex-wife Rosanne Cash. Crowell's thoughts on the new album and the first video from the new record 'It Ain't Over Yet' follows:

Multi-Grammy award winning troubadour Rodney Crowell will release his new album ‘Close Ties’ on 7th April through New West Records. The 10-song set is his first album in over three years and follows ‘The Traveling Kind’, his acclaimed collection of duets with long-time collaborator Emmylou Harris. Co-produced by Jordan Lehning and Kim Buie, the album features a duet with Sheryl Crow on the haunting ‘I’m Tied To Ya,’ and ‘It Ain’t Over Yet,’ a vocal collaboration with his ex-wife Rosanne Cash and John Paul White. It is the first time Crowell and Cash have appeared on record together since Cash’s ‘Interiors’ album in 1990. Rolling Stone premiered the video for ‘It Ain’t Over Yet,’ which also features legendary harmonica player Mickey Raphael.

Rolling Stone reflected, “the evocative lyrics call to mind the two-tone, punked-out cover image from Cash’s 1985 LP ‘Rhythm and Romance’, which preceded Crowell’s mainstream country breakthrough of five consecutive Number One hits from 1988’s ‘Diamonds & Dirt’ and the subsequent collapse of the couple’s marriage.”

‘Close Ties’ both demonstrates Crowell’s strengths as a songwriter and illustrates how he has learned to balance personal recollection, literary sophistication and his profound musical reach. It’s at once his most intimate record and his most accessible, the product of years of understanding the ways songs can enter - and be entered by - life. ‘Close Ties’ is a loose concept record that ranges from songs about Crowell’s childhood in Texas (‘East Houston Blues’) to songs about arriving in Nashville as a young songwriter (‘Nashville 1972’) to songs about friends (the anguished ‘Life Without Susanna’) and lovers lost (‘Forgive Me, Annabelle’). It is a roots record, in the sense that Crowell himself has deep roots that stretch back into the alternative country scene of the early seventies that included Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle and more. But it defies easy classification. Is it country? Is it a singer songwriter record? “I have declared my loyalty to Americana. It’s a hard category for people to get their heads around, or at least the terminology is. But all the people who represent it - Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle and more recent stars like John Paul White and Jason Isbell - share a common thread, and that thread is poet. Whether they are actual poets or their music exemplifies a poetic sensibility, generally speaking, the Americana artist shuns commercial compromise in favour of a singular vision. Which resonates with me.” One trait of a poet and the concept behind ‘Close Ties’ involves the careful handling of memory. “A few years ago I made a record called ‘The Houston Kid’ that triggered ‘Chinaberry Sidewalks’ (Crowell’s 2011 memoir),” he says. “Those memory muscles are pretty strong in me. They have a natural pull. And so many of these songs use those memories as raw material.”

Fifty years after Crowell first started playing as a teen in Houston garage bands, he has moved into elder-statesman territory, and continues to extend the path carved out by the top-tier songwriters who preceded him. His songs have been recorded by country legends (Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, George Strait), to current country chart toppers (Tim McGraw, Keith Urban) to blues icons (Etta James) to rock and roll legends (Van Morrison, Bob Seger). He is a Grammy award winner, a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, recipient of the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting from the Americana Music Association, and the author of his autobiography, ‘Chinaberry Sidewalks’.

Rodney Crowell ‘Close Ties’ Track Listing:

1. East Houston Blues

2. Reckless

3. Life Without Susanna

4. It Ain’t Over Yet (featuring Rosanne Cash & John Paul White)

5. I Don’t Care Anymore

6. I’m Tied To Ya (featuring Sheryl Crow)

7. Forgive Me Annabelle

8. Forty Miles From Nowhere

9. Storm Warning

10. Nashville 1972