Rodney Crowell has announced the release of an album which many fans thought would never see the light of day, Then Again which arrives on 26th June 2026 via New West Records. The 10-track set was produced by Crowell and Steuart Smith with additional production by Dan Knobler. Largely recorded two decades ago, the previously unreleased album features appearances by Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, Benmont Tench, as well as Emmylou Harris and Lera Lynn on the bonus track, Go Light a Candle.
Crowell says, “I guess you could call it a lost album. I stumbled upon it in my vault at home. I’d forgotten about it completely.” Musically, Then Again is varied and inventive while the twenty-year wait means it is haunted by ghosts: old songs and old possibilities, as well as old compadres, old heroes, and at the centre of it all an old version of Crowell himself. He says, “I’m glad I put it on the shelf, because now is the time for it. It may not be the time for it for the rest of the world, but it’s time for it for me.”
The recording has been waiting for the moment when its songs would hit hardest. And they hit incredibly hard now, largely because age and experience have granted Crowell a richer perspective.
Then Again will be available across streaming platforms, compact disc, and standard black vinyl. Limited “Swamp Green” vinyl and compact disc editions, both autographed by Rodney Crowell, will be available at Independent Retailers and are available for pre-order here.
Crowell has shared two preview tracks which you can listen to below. The first single is Are You One Of Us?, a duet, or perhaps more accurately, a musical debate with the late Clark alongside a conversation with Crowell. The song is the final recording between the two friends and collaborators and is about fractured communities in America, defining themselves as much by who they exclude as by who they welcome.
He has also put out If I Could Speak to Leonard, a newer song he added to Then Again. Delicate and downcast, with some fine guitarwork and a beautifully grave vocal, it’s a love letter to the late singer-songwriter-poet Leonard Cohen, with Crowell imagining a meeting with his own hero. Crowell wrote the song before Cohen’s death in 2016, but he never got to play it for him. He never got to meet him and say any of the things in the song. Crowell says, “I’ve always acknowledged Leonard Cohen’s early work as a songwriter. Bird on a Wire and Chelsea Hotel particularly. But once I heard the live version of Waiting for a Miracle and the next three albums he’d release, especially Old Ideas and You Want It Darker, I came to believe he was the most important songwriter of our time. I say that with all due respect for Bob Dylan and Tom Waits. Seeing him in concert after coming down from the mountain in California, I was convinced he was the most generous performer I’d ever witnessed. His message was spiritual, his artistic presence a blueprint for how to achieve your most inspired work later in life. Thanks to his breadcrumbs, I have more work to do.”
