The cult of Crockett Seasoned Texas troubadour still honing country sound forged on street corners By: Alan Small Posted: 12:26 PM CDT Friday, Jul. 7, 2023

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This article was published 07/07/2023 (1060 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Charley Crockett asked for prayers before he crossed the border into Canada, worried about whether customs officials would let him in.

He needn’t have worried.

The Texas troubadour has spent more than a decade on the road, finding ways to make a buck or make it to the next destination. He’s hitchhiked across the country, jumped on trains as if it was the Great Depression and played street corners for tips in some of the most dangerous cities in the United States. Suffice it to say he’s been in tighter jams.

With his stories of a no-fixed-address lifestyle, he became one of outlaw country’s most fascinating commodities. He began recording in 2015; in 2022, his record The Man From Waco was named Rolling Stone’s No. 2 country album of the year.

“I started out as an itinerant performer on a street corner,” says the 39-year-old Crockett, who did manage to cross the U.S./Canada border earlier this week and will play the Winnipeg Folk Festival mainstage Saturday night. “Any one-horse town, any metropolis, if there’s money to be made on a street corner, there’s already going to be somebody there.”

Despite the title of his album, Crockett is actually from San Benito, Texas, the birthplace of country legend Freddy Fender, which is located as far south in the Lone Star State as you can get before you cross the Rio Grande and wind up in Mexico.

He left when he was 18, taking his pawn-shop guitar and not much else, and hit the road as a travelling musician.

“It was damn dangerous, but I don’t think it was as dangerous as what I was running away from,” he says.

“People look at modern-day America, modern-day world, and they look at train-hopping as a bygone hobo era, Woody Guthrie’s generation. They don’t realize that there’s three times the population in America today and trains haven’t changed. In some ways, there are more people doing (that) than there ever was. They just don’t realize it.”

“It was damn dangerous, but I don’t think it was as dangerous as what I was running away from.”–Charley Crockett

But he left the street corners and freight trains behind, and started climbing up to the offices of record companies — “I don’t make sense to them. I confuse them,” Crockett says — and has been writing and recording ever since. The Man From Waco is his 10th album in seven years and the second he released in 2022.

It’s been described as an old-school country-and-western record because it sounds little like what’s played on modern country radio stations.

His deep baritone voice, coupled with a reverb guitar reminiscent of scores from old western films and dashes of R&B, create a unique sound, even for someone who is included in the giant tent called Americana music.

The song I’m Just a Clown includes guitars that would feel at home on a Motown record, while a horn section adds soulful fills reminiscent of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and Amy Winehouse.

Not only is Crockett’s music putting a new spin on old-school ways, so are his thoughts on the music business. He wants to play the long game like so many of his idols, such as Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, who worked for years before finding success, but he butts up against record companies and fans who have short attention spans.

“The first record that got put out by me, out of Nashville, it didn’t do very well,” he remembers. “If I had sat back and played the game their way, that would have been the end of my story.”

He kept on recording and releasing records on the cheap, less than $10,000 each; in 2020, his album Welcome to Hard Times caught hold with new fans and lifted Crockett’s career to another level.

“I’m no household name — I’m not even close. I’m kind of seen as a cult figure,” he says. “But each record I’m a little bit better known than the previous.”

The folk fest is part of a cross-country tour for which Crockett was supposed to be opening for another cult country singer, Canadian crooner Orville Peck.

When Peck decided to cancel his tour on June 22 — including a folk-fest appearance following Crockett — citing his mental and physical health, Crockett soldiered on.

He recognizes the strain Peck and other artists face.

“He was working really hard a few years ago when I first met him, and I can’t really imagine how much he has (been) working lately,” he says. “Show business is tough, boy, it burns holes.”

Crockett rides in luxurious tour buses instead of riding the rails these days, but his success actually means he has to worry about a lot more than when his next meal will be or where the next town’s lucrative busking spot is.

“When I was playing on the street, travelling around, I wasn’t responsible for anybody, just hand to mouth,” Crockett says. “Now I’m responsible for 30 people. I’m proud to make a living and help the people working on my behalf (be) able to earn a living as well.”

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall

Alan Small
Reporter

Alan Small was a journalist at the Free Press for more than 22 years in a variety of roles, the last being a reporter in the Arts and Life section.

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