[And how did he recover the patience that allowed him to await the arrival of songs for his 21st century trio of brilliant, contemplative, philosophical and socially conscious albums?] I just walked away from [the commercial career] and let it dismantle itself, ... I bit the bullet and crossed over that threshold to the realization that I may not be a big star in this thing. Maybe my path is something else. So I just started driving my kids to school and looking out after them. I stumbled onto a fantastic woman and built a relationship and became more solid inside myself and went back to work with a different mind-set, which is to please myself, because it's the only way I can be original.

Rodney Crowell