Rodney Crowell uncorks 'joyful' show, plus Zach Bryan, more

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The Americana icon regaled fans at St. Cecilia amid a week filled with varied musical spectacles at West Michigan venues, from Jinjer to Dixon’s Violin at Bell’s to Chicago Farmer at Listening Room.

Closing out 2021 in Grand Rapids: Rodney Crowell at St. Cecilia Music Center. (Photo/Jeff Wilkinson)

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For obvious reasons – if you’ve ever watched them perform – singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell calls it “a joyful situation” to roll out songs new and old with members of his crackerjack touring band.

So Friday night’s tour stop at Grand Rapids’ St. Cecilia Music Center as part of the Acoustic Café folk series brought out smiles in abundance for both musicians and fans as the multi-award-winning Americana artist delivered a career-spanning affair.

Crowell and his band — fiddler Eamon McLoughlin, keyboardist Catherine Marx, standup bassist Zachariah Hickman and percussionist Glen Caruba – dusted off early classics and mid-career gems, including 1995’s “Jewel of the South” which got things started. Crowell often unveiled the tales behind the tunes, including anecdotes about stars such as Johnny Cash and Guy Clark.

‘This Band I Love’: Crowell and Co. impressed the St. Cecilia crowd. (Photo/Jeff Wilkinson)

And it didn’t take long for “This Band I Love,” as Crowell calls it, to impress the crowd of about 350 with its instrumental and vocal prowess. The fourth song, 2015’s “The Weight of the World” (co-written with Emmylou Harris) boasted a splendid mix of jazz, bluegrass and rockabilly, showing off the chops of McLoughlin and Marx in particular.

There clearly also was band enthusiasm for Crowell’s newest material: the musically diverse and lyrically absorbing “Triage,” an album released last summer and created as a means of “adequately framing the healing power of universal love.”

The band delved into the new release — including “Triage” and the powerful “Something Has to Change” — about a dozen songs into Friday’s show. Crowell had told Local Spins earlier that he “worked really hard on the language” for songs on “Triage.”

“The melody comes relatively easy for me and the chord structure will present itself and I’ll have it worked out in a pretty short amount of time,” he said. “Where I spend a lot of my time is the language and revising the language to where my narratives are solid.”

For Crowell and his band, the show also served as the exclamation point for 2022: It was the group’s final tour stop of the year.

“I think this is the perfect place for us to hit it on the head for the rest of the year,” said Crowell, who praised Royce Auditorium and the congenial crowd.

As Crowell put it, the only thing that really gives him satisfaction and happiness these days is a night on stage like the one that West Michigan fans experienced on Friday.

“At the end of each workday, I feel I was really blessed to do the work that I do,” he told Local Spins. “The only thing I need in payment is know that I gave it my best.”

PHOTO GALLERY: Rodney Crowell at St. Cecilia Music Center (Friday)
Photos by Jeff Wilkinson