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KIN – Songs by Mary Karr and Rodney Crowell

“This is a blessed event for me,” says Rodney Crowell. “The songs just fell out of
us—it was never work.”

A remarkable collaboration between two extraordinary writers, and featuring
performances by some of the finest vocalists of our time, Kin: Songs by
Mary Karr & Rodney Crowell really began with its creators’ common roots in
Southeastern Texas. Both Crowell—a Grammy winner and member of the
Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and most recently the author of the well-
received autobiography Chinaberry Sidewalks—and acclaimed memoirist/poet
Karr have long focused their work on the hard-scrabble region and chaotic
families from which they came.

A few years ago, Crowell read Karr’s best-selling, prize-winning debut The
Liars’ Club. “It was set just across the swamp from where I grew up, and it set
fire to my imagination,” he says. He gave Karr a shout-out (rhyming her name
with “Ringo Starr”) in a new composition titled “Earthbound.”

Soon enough, the song found its way back to Karr. “My sister’s secretary kept
telling me about this song that she heard on Houston radio that had my name in
it,” she says. “But I didn’t really believe her.”

Crowell, who made history with the five consecutive Number One singles from
his 1988 album Diamonds & Dirt, sent a note to Karr suggesting that they meet,
and they convened in New York City. “It was an instant friendship,” he says, “as if
we were next-door neighbors or brother and sister or kids who grew up together.”
Karr recalls that “within five minutes, we were talking about East Texas, and right
away he started saying we should work on songs together.”

Though she describes herself as “the world’s greatest music fan,” Karr had little
experience writing songs, but Crowell says he knew that she had it in her. “She’s
so nimble with language,” he says. “There’s something about Southeast Texas
culture—there are rhythms in the language, a sensibility that’s attuned to certain
visuals.”

During a telephone conversation, Karr dropped the phrase “If the law don’t want
you, neither do I”—which Crowell, who has also written hits for the likes of Bob
Seger and Wynonna Judd, instantly recognized as a promising song title. He
fleshed out a melody and emailed her a skeleton recording; she sent back an
additional verse and the partnership was off and running. The first day they sat
together and wrote, they finished two more songs.

“We started by laughing a lot about our families,” he says. “The alcohol, the

the culture.”

All the while, the pair had to grab stray moments when and where they could find
them. Crowell was finishing, then promoting Chinaberry Sidewalks, while Karr
was teaching and touring behind her most recent book, 2009′s Lit.

“Rodney kept saying they were really good songs,” Karr continues, “and I thought
he was just humoring me. When he said ‘Let’s make an album,’ I literally thought
he was joking.”

“It’s really weird to work with another artist from down there,” says Karr. “We
went to the same juke joints, listened to the same bands. We’re both so inured
in that milieu, and I just never met anybody before who knew what I was talking
about.”

Before it even came time for recording, Joe Henry—celebrated for his work
producing such artists as Solomon Burke, Allen Toussaint, and Bonnie Raitt,
in addition to Crowell’s last album, Sex and Gasoline—had gotten wind of the
project and called to offer his services. “Joe helped me undo the bad habits
I’d gotten into while recording,” says Crowell. “I needed to get away from
overdubbing and looking for perfection, and get back to recording the way Ray
Charles or Howlin’ Wolf did—get in the studio and sing the damn song.”

The songwriters eventually saw that the narratives they had created were about
half and half, male and female, with a strong sense of family interplay. The Kin
concept started to emerge, and they needed a range of voices to carry the theme
forward.

First came the female singers, starting with Norah Jones, Rosanne Cash, and
Emmylou Harris (who is “like a goddess to me,” says Karr). Feeling that the
album would feel imbalanced with only one male voice, they also enlisted Vince
Gill and Kris Kristofferson, and Kin “became one big family.”

Both writers describe the magic of the recording sessions. Lucinda Williams
delivered a magnificent interpretation of “God I’m Missing You” on the first take,
while Crowell was still teaching the song’s chords to the musicians. Vince Gill
added a guitar part behind Lee Ann Womack’s vocal on “Momma’s on a Roll” that
Karr compares to “watching a sunflower open—it was one of the most amazing
artistic experiences I’ve ever had.”

From pipe-dream conception to nuts-and-bolts execution, Kin was a project that
proved both joyful and revelatory. Crowell compares Karr’s writing to the work of
such true masters as Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. “She’s on that level,”
he says. “Her songs are like mercury falling onto the page and forming into a
shape.”