Rodney Crowell Recruits Lukas Nelson and Larkin Poe for New Album ‘Airline Highway’

Rodney Crowell’s next album ‘Airline Highway’ has quite a few guests including Larkin Poe and Lukas Nelson as well as Ashley McBride, Charlie Starr and Tyler Bryant.

Ashley McBryde co-wrote and sings on “Taking Flight,” Lukas Nelson co-wrote and sings the opener “Rainy Days in California,” Blackberry Smoke guitarist Charlie Starr sings on “Heaven Can You Help,” while Rebecca & Megan Lovell from Larkin Poe add harmonies and slide guitar throughout the album.

“This record is a document of me falling in love with these musicians,” says Crowell. “That’s one of the great perks of this job—falling in love with the people you’re playing with. And we caught that on tape.”

Airline Highway began when Crowell met Bryant, a young guitarist and producer whose band The Shakedown have toured with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Guns n’ Roses, AC/DC, among others. Crowell says, “He’s one of the most impressive young men I’ve met in a long time. As soon as I met him, I thought, ‘let’s go!’ We immediately started going back and forth between my home studio and his, making demos and talking about what we wanted to do.” A few months later, they packed up a truckload of gear to make the journey down to his old friend Trina Shoemaker’s remote Dockside Studio, in Maurice, Louisiana. “It’s right at the place where nowhere becomes now here,” Crowell laughs. “It’s got a great vibe, and the band all lived under the same roof. The beautiful Vermilion River is nearby. We thought with any luck we’d get eaten by alligators.”

The band worked fast and loose, rarely doing more than two or three takes of any particular song. The lively music and the humid surroundings unlocked old memories and complicated feelings for Crowell, and the players made sure the music reflected all that joy and loss and regret and wonder. “There’s a romance to the swamp, the semi-tropical climate. We put it to good use, even if it was just me romanticizing my connection to Louisiana.”

Airline Highway focuses on finding new perspectives on your past while living contentedly in the present moment. This is an album about moving on to something new—a different place to call home, a more compassionate understanding of an old love affair, or just the next song on the jukebox. “At a basic level there are a lot more years behind me than there are ahead of me,” Crowell says. “I’m up in my seventh decade of my life,” he says with a laugh, “and I’m glad that I’m still looking forward to certain things I want to do. My ambition isn’t to be a household name anymore. My ambition is to be satisfied with the work that I do. I’m at a place where it really is about having fun.”

Airline Highway Track Listing:
1. Rainy Days In California (Feat. Lukas Nelson)
2. Louisiana Sunshine Feeling Okay (Feat. Larkin Poe)
3. Sometime Thang
4. Some Kind Of Woman
5. Taking Flight (Feat. Ashley McBryde)
6. Simple (You Wouldn’t Call It Simple)
7. The Twenty-One Song Salute (Owed to G.G. Shinn and Cléoma Falcon) (Feat. Tyler Bryant)
8. Don’t Give Up On Me
9. Heaven Can You Help (Feat. Charlie Starr)
10. Maybe Somewhere Down The Road

Rodney Crowell On Tour:
September 9-13 – Nashville, TN – Americanafest 2025

October 1 – Los Angeles, CA – Largo #
October 21 – Pittsburgh, PA – City Winery *
October 22 – Phoenixville, PA – The Colonial Theatre *
October 23 – Washington, DC – Lincoln Theatre *
October 25 – Westerly, RI – United Theatre *
October 26 – New York, NY – City Winery *
October 28 – Richmond, VA – Tin Pan #
November 7 – Houston, TX – Heights Theatre ^
November 9 – Dallas, TX – The Kessler ^
November 11 – New Orleans, LA – Chickie Wah Wah (A Benefit for the New Orleans Musicians Clinic) #
November 13 – Montgomery, AL – Montgomery PAC *
November 14 – Decatur, AL – Princess Theater #
November 15 – Atlanta, GA – Center Stage *
November 18 – Madison, WI – Atwood Music Hall +
November 19 – Iowa City, IA – Englert Theatre +
November 20 – St. Paul, MN – Fitzgerald Theater *
November 22 – Chicago, IL – Old Town School of Folk Music *
Mar. 13 – 20 2026 – Miami, FL – Cayamo Cruise 2026

* With guests The Secret Sisters
^ With guest Thomas Csorba
+ With guest William Elliott Whitmore
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