Outside in Rodney Crowell finds his own voice BY TED DROZDOWSKI

Nashville-based songwriter Rodney Crowell’s feisty new album is called The Outsider (Columbia), but don’t take that title too much to heart. "I’m both an insider and an outsider," says Crowell, who plays Johnny D’s with his quartet tonight, August 25. "I’ve worked very deliberately to cast my own mold, but my songs sometimes find their way through the big corporate machine I rail against every now and again and make me a really good paycheck."

Recently his "Making Memories of Us" and "Please Remember Me" found their way to Keith Urban and Tim McGraw, respectively, who kicked them up the country charts. And his history of writing first-rate songs for others dates back to 1974, when he was barely 24 and the Alabama siren Emmylou Harris — who duets with Crowell on a cover of Dylan’s "Shelter from the Storm" on the new CD — recorded " ’Til I Can Gain Control Again" and "Bluebird Wine" on her debut.

But these days Crowell, who’s cut 11 of his own albums over 25 years, is more interested in making his own connections. The blunt, guitar-driven Outsider is part of his ongoing effort to rebuild himself. It began in 1991 when he and Rosanne Cash divorced and Crowell had to establish a new relationship with his four daughters; then he met his current wife. At the same time he was re-establishing ties with his dying mother and, as he puts it, "dismantling the persona I had built for myself, rejecting the things that weren’t true to me."

In his writing, meanwhile, Crowell began to aim for language that was more precise and using the insights he was gaining. His autobiographical and moving 2001 album The Houston Kid (Sugar Hill) was followed by 2003’s Fate’s Right Hand (Sony). Like that pair, The Outsider tells spare tales of desire, frustration, and spiritual struggle. Unlike them, The Outsider is electric, and it rocks, carrying a torch ignited by his extensive tours of Europe last year fronting a two-guitars/bass/drums line-up — "Just," he observes, "like the Beatles."

There’s a little of John Lennon’s spirit in the title track and "The Obscenity Prayer (Give It to Me)," which find Crowell considering spiritual issues in concrete terms. The latter is a cracking critique of corporate greed tersely sung in the persona of a white-collar thug. "The Outsider" is more complicated, since, as Crowell explains, "the ‘Outsider’ is God. In the extreme shouting match between the far left and the far right, which would be groups like Muslim radicals and the Christian right, God was disenfranchised years and years and years ago. That’s my point, although I’ve worked to veil it a bit. I want people to have to think about these songs. In ‘Don’t Get Me Started,’ which is the closest I come to an outright political rant, I adopt the character of a guy at a bar who warns people, ‘I can be a drag when I’ve had a few.’ I don’t want to manipulate the audience. The key to good storytelling is showing people, not telling them, what a song is about. When you’re writing about world affairs, you need to focus on a story to humanize them. And when you’re writing about a put-upon child, it’s easy to drag out the fiddles to tell people they should be sad. I work hard to avoid that."

Crowell hasn’t disowned his earlier work, but he has taken a step back. "I’ve always been happy with my songwriting, but for a long time I didn’t want to hear myself. I didn’t like what I heard. Now I think I’ve found my own voice, which is a cliché among us writer people, but I’ve learned that it’s a cliché for a good reason."

Rodney Crowell + Stan Martin | Johnny D’s, 17 Holland St, Somerville | August 25 | 617.776.2004