Rodney Crowell Announces Long-Lost Album ‘Then Again’ Featuring Guy Clark and Lyle Lovett

Rodney Crowell Announces Long-Lost Album ‘Then Again’ Featuring Guy Clark and Lyle Lovett

Release date: 26th June 2026
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​Country music icon Rodney Crowell has announced the release of a long-lost album many fans never expected to hear. Titled Then Again, the 10-track collection arrives on 26 June 2026 via New West Records.

Produced by Crowell alongside Steuart Smith, with additional production from Dan Knobler, Then Again was largely recorded more than two decades ago before being shelved and ultimately forgotten. The rediscovered sessions feature an impressive cast of collaborators including Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, Benmont Tench, and a bonus-track appearance from Emmylou Harris and Lera Lynn on “Go Light a Candle.”

“I guess you could call it a lost album,” Crowell says. “I stumbled upon it in my vault at home. I’d forgotten about it completely.”
Musically expansive and emotionally reflective, Then Again captures a younger Crowell while carrying the weight of time, memory, and loss. The album revisits old friendships, old ideas, and old versions of the songwriter himself, giving the recordings a resonance that feels especially poignant today.

“I’m glad I put it on the shelf, because now is the time for it,” Crowell explains. “It may not be the time for it for the rest of the world, but it’s time for it for me.”
The passage of time has given the songs new emotional depth, with Crowell’s lived experience lending added gravity to material first recorded decades ago.

Then Again will be released digitally, on CD, and standard black vinyl. Limited “Swamp Green” vinyl and signed CD editions will also be available through independent retailers.
Ahead of the album’s release, Crowell has shared two preview tracks. The first, “Are You One Of Us?”, is a powerful duet — and at times a pointed musical conversation — with the late Guy Clark. Built around themes of division and belonging in America, the song stands as the final recording collaboration between the longtime friends and songwriting partners.

Crowell has also unveiled “If I Could Speak to Leonard,” a tender tribute to Leonard Cohen. Featuring understated instrumentation, elegant guitar work, and one of Crowell’s most intimate vocal performances in years, the track imagines a conversation with one of his greatest artistic influences.

Although written before Cohen’s death in 2016, Crowell never had the chance to share the song with him.
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“I’ve always acknowledged Leonard Cohen’s early work as a songwriter — ‘Bird on a Wire’ and ‘Chelsea Hotel’ particularly,” Crowell says. “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.”
He continues: “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.”
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