"When the new traditionalist movement in country music in the 1980s needed leaders, it was Rodney Crowell who answered the call. He was born in Houston, Texas in 1950 and was interested in music from a very young age. He formed a band in high school and by 1972 had moved to Nashville in order to start his music career. In Nashville, he met Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, two singer/songwriters. He started performing all over the City, and his song ""Can't Keep Me Here in Tennessee"" soon got him a publishing deal. He became a guitarist for Emmylou Harris' band in 1975 and also started writing for the star.He started his own band in 1977 called the Cherry Bombs. They released an album in 1978, Ain't Living Long Like This, the same year he started working with Rosanne Cash, who he would later marry. He released his second album, But What Will the Neighbors Think in 1980 and also produced a hit album for Cash. That same year, the Oak Ridge Boys found success with one of the songs Crowell had written. He released a couple more albums but was finding more success as a songwriter than a singer. He focused on producing and songwriting until he released the album Diamonds & Dirt in 1988. The album was his most successful, reaching number eight on the country charts.The 1990s saw the ending of Crowell's marriage to cash as well as an album that featured his musings on the breakup Life is Messy. His other two albums in the 1990s didn't do as well as Life Is Messy, and he started a band called Cicadas in the late 1990s. He went back to a solo career in the 2000s by releasing The Houston Kid in 2001. He followed it with Fate's Right Hand in 2003, The Outsider in 2005 and Sex and Gasoline in 2008."