On paper, Rodney Crowell and Jeff Tweedy seem like an almost too-perfect pairing. Crowell once positioned himself as an alternative to the Nashville machine but, over the last 50 years, has become one of the town’s most accomplished and revered songwriters, while Tweedy is the consummate music nerd with a predilection for outsiders and a longstanding reverence for the classic country-rock of the 1960s and ’70s. Both share instincts for emotionally earnest lyrics and expanding the sonic terrain of traditional folk and blues.
On The Chicago Sessions, named after the Wilco Loft in the Windy City where the album was produced by Tweedy, Crowell’s delight and comfort in working with a kindred spirit is readily apparent. His recent efforts, including 2017’s Close Ties and 2021’s Triage, trend darker than his earlier work, showcasing the deepening crags of his weathered voice on songs about mortality and societal ills. Conversely, right from the bright honky-tonk piano flourish that opens its first track, “Lucky,” The Chicago Sessions is limber, breezy, and full of joy.
Case in point: On “Lucky” and “Oh Miss Claudia,” Crowell ruminates on the redemptive power of love, while on “Everything at Once,” he clings to “the hope that tomorrow may bring.” Even the album’s more lyrically cynical songs go down easy thanks to their spry grooves and touches like the excitable fuzz guitar that drives “Ever the Dark,” which turns a diatribe on the inevitability of darkness and misery into something of a romp.
Tweedy wields a light touch as producer and accompanist, mostly keeping Crowell within his acoustic country-folk and boogie-based wheelhouse, abetted by simple, crisply recorded arrangements. If anything, Tweedy could have stylistically asserted himself more to further distinguish the album within Crowell’s vast oeuvre. “Everything at Once,” a duet between them, is plenty spirited but sounds like a song either of the two could have written on their own.
The pair hit on something more unique with “You’re Supposed to Be Feeling Good,” a lament that Crowell originally wrote for Emmylou Harris in the ’70s. Toward the end of the track, over a bittersweet chord sequence, Tweedy starts vamping on a harmonized electric guitar riff redolent of Wilco’s “Impossible Germany.” It’s a simple but thrillingly unexpected moment.
When working with a legend like Crowell, Tweedy seems to recognize that sometimes the best approach is to just hang back. Indeed, you don’t really “produce” a track as natural as the stunning closer “Ready to Move On”—you just roll tape. “I’m tired to the bone and I want to be left alone,” Crowell half-whispers ominously over hushed strumming. But even as he goes on to list the various sources of his world-weariness, there’s an undeniable uplift to his delivery.
When “Ready to Move On” reaches its gently built climax, the conviction in Crowell’s voice as he recites the title phrase suggests profound revelation more than it does hopelessness or disgust, as if he believes “The day we turn the TV off” and put aside our animus might actually one day come. This is Crowell at his prettiest and most unvarnished, and exemplifies why The Chicago Sessions, even if it isn’t necessarily a pivotal effort, is marked by an endearing lack of affectation that only one of the greatest country songwriters can achieve.
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