Rodney Crowell: More Diamonds Than Dirt : Finally accepting that suffering is not a requirement for songwriting, the country singer will bring his newfound optimism to four acoustic sets at the Crazy Horse.

Based on major lifetime stress factors, the past three years should have sent country singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell into the danger zone. His 18-year marriage to Rosanne Cash ended last year.

His two most recent albums, 1989’s “Keys to the Highway” and last year’s “Life Is Messy,” failed to achieve the gold album status (for sales of over 500,000) of his 1988 breakthrough album, “Diamonds and Dirt.”

Beyond that, Crowell dissolved his band and fired his manager and publicist. On his own in Nashville with two children (one from his first marriage and the eldest of his three children with Cash), Crowell has been coping with all the difficulties of single parenthood.

So why is this man smiling?

“Damn it! I’m happy,” Crowell said in a phone call from Nashville earlier this week.

“There was a 2 1/2-year period there from 1989 through last Christmas when all I could think was, ‘Is life this painful?’ It wasn’t just the divorce. It was being a single parent. It was a whole lot of things.

“As I progressively healed and became happier,” he said, “I like the songs that I’ve been writing. I no longer believe I have to suffer to write songs. I always wondered. The jury was always out on that, but now I have my verdict on it. I’ve finally learned that I don’t have to be in pain and torment to write.”

Crowell, who wrote such hits as the Oak Ridge Boys’ “Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight,” Bob Seger’s “Shame on the Moon” and Waylon Jennings’ “Ain’t Livin’ Long Like This,” has long been one of country’s most respected and successful songwriters and producers.

For many years, though, he was in a perplexing situation: While everything he touched turned to gold for somebody else, he couldn’t get a hit with his own records.

It was frustrating to Crowell, who loves to perform and longed to be a star in his own right. His fifth album, “Diamonds and Dirt,” changed all that. “Diamonds and Dirt” produced five consecutive No. 1 country singles.

Crowell made an important discovery about his own values when his success as a solo artist didn’t bring him as much happiness as he had always dreamed it would.

“It wasn’t as satisfying as I thought it would be,” he said. “I found that all the No. 1 records and all of that doesn’t make you happy. The things that make you happy are writing the songs and the relationships that you develop with the people that you work with.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “It wasn’t a bummer. I much prefer success, but it’s not the end of the day. The truth of the matter is that even after you make a record like that, the next day you’ve got to go back to work on something else. OK, what have you done now?

“The thing that I learned was that I had what I’d wanted all along. I was creative and I was functioning. My job gave me a lot of freedom. I was really inventive with it, and I loved writing songs. I loved the musical relationships I had, and that’s more important to me now than anything.”

To get even more deeply into his renewed love affair with his songwriting and his music, Crowell has embarked on an acoustic tour that takes him to the Crazy Horse on Monday and Tuesday. He’ll be accompanied only by ex-Desert Rose Band guitarist John Jorgenson.

“When it’s just the guitar, one other person and me, I can’t hide behind the production or the arrangements,” he said. “What it really does is to throw a pinpoint light on the language that I use and on my communication skills. It is actually how you act a song. The performance and the actual way that you use the language really gets intensified.

“This tour came about because I caught a few shows on the ‘MTV Unplugged’ format that I really liked. I liked the way it shed a new light on the songs. . . . If I were working with my band, we’d have to go and rehearse the songs and we’d get locked into certain arrangements. When it’s just myself, I can play the songs in 700 different ways and decide what I think the personality of the song is.”

By playing his new songs live in such an intimate setting, Crowell is able to see how they are received by his audience. “You can feel the way an audience responds to a song,” he explained.

“It’s a lot like having a conversation with somebody. Playing my songs in an acoustic setting is like sitting across a table from somebody. You know when what you are saying is being received and when you are actually articulating your feelings and emotions. It puts the songs in a conversational light that is really interesting. I’m really trying to find out about the language of a song and what it is I’m saying.”

One thing listeners should not expect is for Crowell’s next album to be the latest installment in an ongoing recorded dialogue with Cash.

“She lives in New York, and I live in Nashville,” he said, “and we don’t have much to say (to each other).

“The extent of our conversation revolves around the co-parenting of our children, because she has two of our children and I have our oldest daughter. Our conversation really stems around arranging to spend time within the kids. We don’t have that much else in common any more. We have written songs (in the past) because we were both living through the same situation, but not any more.”

Rodney Crowell sings Monday and Tuesday at 7 and 10 p.m. at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 1580 Brookhollow Drive, Santa Ana. $27.50. (714) 549-1512.