Customer Reviews
As hits dry up the bar gets higher - By: M. R. Dangerfield, 20 Oct 2008 
When is the world going to wake up to the genius of Rodney Crowell. The title alludes to his former life as a main stream country artist who began to look inwards, a track on The Outsider may be the key, & produced The Houston Kid. He laments on The Outsider that he will never write like Dylan, but his last four albums are,in my view, & I am a big Dylan fan, far superior to the last three lauded Dylan albumsin every respect. This is an artist at the peak of his powers, using well honed techniques to produce works of emotional maturity backed by a group of wonderful musicians. I have played this album constantly & it just gets better & better, but if you listen to Wandering Boy from The Houston Kid, you will buy the last four albums without a second thought.
Old Codger Strikes Gold ? - By: William Stephen Dalrymple, 14 Sep 2008 First of all i'd like to state that i'm not really a Crowell fan , or at least i wasn't. As a fan of all things Country/Americana i'd obviously heard the name Rodney Crowell a lot but i hadn't really checked him out until now. I think i bought a compilation of his 80's stuff a while back but it couldn't have done much for me .
Swayed by 4 star reviwsin Uncut & Mojo magazines i decided to give this effort a try & , jeez , am i glad .It really is a brilliant album , full of mellow , mature songs , superb lyrics & fantastic music.
Top production too by Joe Henry who duets with Rodney on the masterful track about (i think) his daughter , track 6 on the CD . I shall certainly be tracking back & buying some of his earlier albums now & i'm sure looking forward to it .Indeed i'll be checking out Joe Henry's last effort also . I'll be (pleasently) surprised if any are as good as this though . If you like later period Dylan , Neil Young or Springsteen then you'll love this ......
