A Word on Words; 4030; Rodney Crowell

and now from nashville public television's do a celebrated authors literature and ideas for more than three decades but this is a word on words jobs john c and welcome once again to word on words my guest today is songwriter singer producer offer rodney crowell is produced twenty albums are his four decades and continues it including nineteen eighty ades commons under that generated five consecutive no one hits in two thousand and three year it was inducted into the nashville songwriters all things he's here today with his mum or china very sidewalks we find out that his family has more than its fair share of characters but this book is also a loving tribute to his parents their marriage run it's great to have your own word on words the dog about china or sidewalks and i wondered what was the servers that title come from in you mom planted those three

cherry trees right there well assad will inject city near here will section the issue senate it's a bedroom community and the issues in that but really cheap inexpensive housing for the workforce that worked along the ship channel and new oil industry in houston and because it is a semi tropical climate done as somebody hit on a pretty brilliant idea of making these concave sides waltz that serve both as a water drainage and placed a wall and a china very true for those of the most isn't as inexpensive the shrubbery it really is you know a song is it it's bigger than a shrug you know there's no there's no real shade that to be had from the cherry tree and i always wondered i

remember i guess david kris kristofferson <unk> are truly johnny and joey in the morgue or in baton rouge and i've always wondered you know i know there is her little green berets and they have a milky white liquid and saddam and at which were perfect for you know kids will have our slingshot soon you could pop somebody with one and leave a wide mark clifford would sell it wasn't for all that you'd been hit you know you do you talk about a good way to introduce i'm used to this book you money and you playing lucille troops in a volatile time and i think this is amazing so they took me as if to say that soda soda tells a story of the book remained of their relationship in those trees those they have them

die and then shrug no way but they ever going to grow in the us or other streets that happy about three points we name our father was injured and my mother was cause a row i was an only child and brotherhood who died in him its infancy of a century before yet here but there was a thrill this and this will live in a little house in the service and so we planted this cherry trees line the whole job is because that the i didn't take all but rodney thrived and for years you know that via the funny thing about the little house and in the house really figures into the narrative that gun at it you know their house was probably bill nineteen forty six and by nineteen sixty five it was six thousand dollars in nineteen fifty six when my parents bought it

and they got repossess in nineteen sixty five the very same year just literally fell to the ground game of bulldozer away and that line lay empty for you know from nineteen sixty five until nineteen ninety seven or eight and that the the child very true the tree grew rodney routes running through here as it did then and maybe he predicted it would do thirty year with a predicament and it's sort of a metaphor a way because i went back after my mother's death question the father's death i went back and there in their house had been built and that the senate was that this is now a mexican community the second his citizens a minute bill the house around knocked on the door and at the time i had a record called the houston kid which was basically musical memoir which us by riding around the same time us are tinkering with the notion that i could write prose

so it's a lie cd cover notes both speaking to the house it was now and i'm spoiling the cherry tree us in that cherry tree i planted it was when i was eight years old please take care of it or of airline arizona's this hour and i showed him a picture of a world was supposed to be impressed with this so now the traders to eritrean if you take evidence of all time and he did have a bit of english and he said i shave road jose ok but in their say so in back sometime later in and it was and in it on his car however there was at a stump there will spreads come in and i think that at the time for someone mentioned to me i shopped over there and couples for sure i'll broaden up intensive planted and see if it would grow and i don't know if our

control room could put up the cover of this book again but they couldn't unlike for the orange soda look at her there it is the picture of your parents less cause at the doorway and the student is sitting i think barefoot on the porch and shirtless charities and that's it that's less a picture of a war the air that's a picture of who they were they had terrible fights and terrible frightening tv you saw in the first in the book you see if i come in here is so is he even for couples of the house yellow that i give a little backstory on the mother father of their sons and daughters of sharecrop farmers in western tennessee and western kentucky and their inherit enns was a strong dose of this entitlement and then i say in the book you know as my mother father were far better equipped to manage other

people's belongings you know what my mother probably clean your house and my father to repair it didn't but ownership was something really foreign to them and there's this house that that they finally were able to have a script of an idea to get it they just were unable to maintain ownership and in this that sense of this entitlement that they had and also the same token both were raised in and violent domestically violent environment and it was it was what they learned early lives for their culture it was a culture they came from a very wild culture and so you flash forty years your twenties and early thirties and you're trying to scrape out you know living at menial labor in houston and good bye you know do it how you're raised manifest itself my father my father

was a matinee idol look and fell you know i listen to warren beatty and that picture as beautiful man my mother was a she was too suffered polio when she was young an end week we found out that that she actually had a stroke in utero so the ripple effect of birth defects and right side of her body was partially paralyzed you know from polio and from a stroke and up and so she'd shoot served the less everybody very well the rights everybody she was always covered so sold my mother was shame was you know she was burdened with a sham la follette is over in a shame but he was he was a bragger of his overture to his mind and he would overcompensate and my mother would under compensate and they were the perfect balance richer perfect balance for each other they were but it was a violent household very uncertain revenue that he

was saying and you know the opening scene a new year's eve nineteen fifty five you know most of my family comes from a culture warrior he taught me to the farmer 22 rifle when i was five years old so i knew where it was in the closet and i guess i feel the fight coming on because i knew and beer and whiskey started happening at the same time what was going to happen later on sophistry gone out of that closet and with no intent to do that the league is it is going on here and when she said that you know of affordable insulin million for well i broke up the party announce over everybody out everybody follow other and unity in our talk and before we can matter that was their service center president for me where i realize that when things get crazy with him if i could somehow get crazier but they keep things you know safe and in order and

you know not a good haven't taken to a bill i know i mean it's a tough life for a kid a very tough life it seems to me is ari it seems to me as i read it that somehow early on you managed to protect her by creating some changing the subject yes he was perfectly capable and you write that he would measure they want to admit when they say this as we approach that subject in a domestic violence in a manhattan woman i wish i would have never written this book and i would've exposed that aspect of my father's nature and because his character defect had i not known the art before the story was going because both my mother and father later in

life and redeem themselves in i mean they didn't have the levy they were there they didn't have to redeem themselves with me because love is and will always be but they're reading themselves for themselves and it was it was it inspirational to me to watch it as an adult so when i started pondering how to construct a narrative out of these crazy on this crazy on kabul that i happen to be a child in the melee and i knew that it was okay to speak about my father hitting my mother on numerous occasion and then by the same token my mother didn't back with a called bob rose the head actually no sos tit for tat in the long run but i can start with how dark and dangerous and how this fortune it was

because over the course of their lives in their they're fantastical a story in the end they really in themselves is a fantastic love search for those if you're just joining us i'm talking with running crowd about his book coach under sidewalks and i have to say it and i don't say this awful joe alton is on the show i say do you view is rodney crowell has the gift he is an exceptional writer and this is an exceptional book and and i loved it i absolutely was captured by a ten and captured by the way you tell how you saw it kept about once early childhood in one point during a drive in and there's a fight going on about to break out and you bash or so and the stitches on the negev desert just to keep them from

evans did it as well and in some ways it was pre resourceful if one of them that i saw i knew or was going on my father in the front seat of the car and it you know to add to recreate that scene from from the narrative for me being in the backseat and watching the escalation has always out all fueled year end and remembering clearly that you know the whistles like an announcement in my brain i guess that if you want to see that this doesn't happen you've got to do something we're actually a white mass of overhead with a dr pepper borrow and it worked and it worked in salt breeze brought these events and you know what the other side of it was my father gathered me up in his arms and taking the hospital caring about me while i get stitches in my head when you know it's a great love story it's a love

story or if there's a love story between them and and their love for you and my love for this annual of the love in others that the one thing when you say about balance when you as an amorphous when you go back and recreating memories that you take your bill self with a night i can say that when i was nine years old that all balance those that was told him about you know hit yourself on the head with a dr pepper bottling all things are in balance but to go back in and to create a narrative that is that the intent is to revealed a love that's behind all of this and that's why i was able to maintain the balance and also take my adult self back into the re creation of the singing you know i think of the many different situations you're right about many different

scenes and in which this conflict and you know is going to be conflict art you're in the middle of conflict somehow even as a small trial newfound away dominate your relationship with your parents the money it you know it gives him an eye all through the book i'm fascinated by how you're able to separate yourself from the conflict and they were not infrequently in and suddenly is about big trouble and then when the speech sometimes it's just almost as if he was going on here in only nine and that was so unusual for a job really it is the war

room a well i'm a to me i have often said that then for most of my childhood and i'm in the first twelve years for sure that a new whistle and structure that the rhetoric that you know who oppose a referee it in that and you know the thing about being i guess my sensibilities you know as a pill out of six seven eight there was some sense of fairness and fair play the that was innate in suddenly where you know i say in the book that i absolutely idol was my father and it was hard for me to afford full of my father when i would have when i was at the bill's smart pop can get right up in his face in and call it like that like a senior or like a solid enough most times and i think this is some sort of innate sense of survival

is it a mother's love is not as delicate as a father's love really from from a boy to his father so i was able to be angry at my mother and i wasn't really i couldn't allow myself to be a jury of my father later on an ad in my adult life when i started seeking some ways to sort of you know i'm angry at my mother my father's was a visible bully in the situation and then we'll work with some professional help us started to balance out i you know i i couldn't afford tonight i had to not have my father on the pedestal because every young boy loses father upon characters as hell we model ourselves and he was so he was also on a bandstand quite often as the bone yeah i mean you're young when you at the drums and he brings you into it and it's basically all the punk band for him it's every night

on the state's the opry that's where is it is this was an illinois and all people yes well you know if it was interesting to watch an end and again to or to recollect as an adult thinking about here is a man who have already described as having met an adult who's in a honky tonk what they call ice houses with eight people you know in various stages of a neighboring nation and he's up there conducting himself as if he's on the stage you know i'm hosting a segment on the grand ole opry and ambac they're eleven years of playing drums and play i'm taking a muscle man you know i didn't have the articulation of life for his groin for you are as significant as a people after an end there and all the old classics all your country music songs and you learn from him either they bring those lyrics of those things we do and they're so when you come

when you come to just go on without him much i am a product of my mother and father that my father lose our analysis of art about songs he knew so many songs we hear what they hear a put no shoes away one time and know it for the rest of his life and he knew i don't exaggerate when i say out of thinking a thousand songs he was and my mother was a natural born storytellers and shoes shoes told stories oral you know a lot of my book especially about things that happen in the forties before i was born or just me remembering how my mother told me the story's over and over again so to take my father's sense of remembering songs of my mother's knack for storytelling that i was born to be a songwriter and then later i was writing this book i started tapping into more

the gifts my mother give me which is the gift of gab and after to spin a story and and to know abc deity in the story where were they were belongs is a great scenes in the book his invention and there is a woman building use info that bandstand job ratings of sorts and the mother goes after november but as one hell of a fight the theater i think that you know for life and the drums a new modern and they are well the back story for him for your audience here john is that my mother witnessing the book i spend a lot of time up my mother was devout christian and the a what we call a pentecostal issue spoken tom's shoes' devout so

for her in these honky tonks where it you know the devil himself was loose in this place and that year she was having to take up the money at the door you know as like your survival in as like she was already angry and another thing that my mother was a bit of a you know she was learning more selfish you as the valley righteous christian and she was she drink some beer and so should be bored taken up money for them to come in here monday a place so nellie glick is down front gyrate uncommon honor my father my aunt my mother's about six beers into the evening and she comes and takes you know i left it over the head then you know i'm up there watching this gauntlet mr father of frozen you know is that for the first time we're going to do you know there is so much humor in this book and so much pay those

made it innovated you read it and you laugh and then the others in that touches your heart and then there are scenes in which you just wonder about those poor little onion it ever gonna make it and you know you're writing a book and you know that money is going to make it funny and i'm going to stone again again again i'd find myself reading and and stop and laugh out loud that that an important part of the only you work in it in a way that even an evening moments of great tension even on edge of violence and there's great humor you say you grew up i guess let him as yourself well it is a baby crying inside the same time of year well the that you know it isn't unusual for

you know poor families you know we we don't you don't really have any extra income for entertainment lawyer different you know my cousin charles or my cousin edgar a local porter you know where it is like with a family doesn't have anything there the self appointed storytellers and clowns end and their makers of mirth you know psych ezekiel my favorite drunk off my favorite drunk couple stories are tragic stories but this is for you know they have for example four gets in a car here he takes a car or would you know you basically steals a car and crashes into a telephone pole and gets out walks away and you know it always starts with awe about half drunk and has a couple of your have laws in your life for the rest of the time you're all the lead role in this and that you know i visit that have drawn that's

that's the code for military a funny story i time has flown by and were about to run out of it there is that closing scene with your mama and she says the king of country music alone yes will embolden father that matter roy acuff concert in the canon tennessee opponent tennessee western tennessee kentucky state line in nineteen forty four that's where she met my father so the real idea right cerberus out what happened when after my father passed away my mother up to the grand ole opry when roy acuff have that first dressing room and would receive people every nine it was below is a blessing sort took my mother intimate roy acuff and emotion chip over the situation when i'm arun tom i met my husband at your concerts the can into this is an animal heart you know

mistake of doing the cost of pro he just looked at her as a set i remember that scene like i remember those two those two young lovers out there a attend and for that was he knew this was a controversial issue this loaded others and it was such a beautiful moment and you know she said all right and he was just like always knew they ended an end given his hair that just like here's what i want to restore what a wonderful book of run out of the money you so much gentlemen what a great book what a great story would radiate thank you what was a huge encyclopedia of you and thanks to all of you for watching i'm john sigg and offer a word on words it really is that's

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