“They better watch out in country music because I’m just getting started, brother.”
These are the defiant parting words from Charley Crockett, the amiable and polite Texan, at the end of an engaging telephone conversation. He’s holed up in Van Horn, West Texas, in the Guadalupe Mountains, when he takes my call. It’s where he’s been for the past five months, instead of touring his latest album, WELCOME TO HARD TIMES, which has been generating knockout reviews since its release last month.
Quarantine is unfamiliar territory and that goes for the nomadic Crockett as well who, since his teenage years, has spent his time on the road, living and busking in Dallas, New Orleans and New York, together with spells in France, Spain and Morocco. During his early days, once he was armed with a guitar, survival was never an issue. He could always find the means to perform and generate an income.
When recording became an option and since the release of his debut album, A STOLEN JEWEL in 2015, his modus operandi has been straightforward: record the albums cheaply and independently, and tour them five nights a week.
“Mentally it’s been difficult these times, real difficult. I think that since I picked up the guitar when I was 17, I’ve never been in a situation where I couldn’t tour. Before I toured, I was always able to go out to the public and play at a street corner or a subway platform and I could always make money doing that. Now I don’t have that, I’m stuck not playing. Financially it’s a strange place to find myself. I don’t have all the activity I had before, but also, I don’t have my team with me, which is hard. I’m used to being on the bus and having a ten-person crew on the road. All of those guys are unemployed at the moment, strange times.
It’s ironic because here I am not touring and not being able to play a single show in support of this album I’ve put out. All my guys are collecting unemployment and it looks like those benefits are about to stop for all of them.”
The title of the new album could reflect both his personal predicament as well as more global affairs. A distant relative of Davy Crockett, times have seldom been easy on him. Raised in a trailer park by a single mother, he lost a sister to drug addiction and his brother served seven years for fraud. His career was growing steadily, culminating with his 2017 release, LIL G.L. BLUES BONANZA reaching No.11 in The Billboard Blues Album Chart. However, a routinecheck-up lead to a diagnosis of a congenital heart condition, resulting in open heart surgery in early 2019.
“I had the heart surgery in January of last year. I wasn’t off the road very long, only a couple of months. I worked really hard, lived on the highway most of last year and then I wrote most of this record including the title track in November and we recorded the whole thing in February. I finished it about a month before America got turned upside down. Ironically, the record is selling unbelievably well compared with anything I’ve ever put out before.”
A prolific writer, he has recorded no fewer than seven albums since 2015. WELCOME TO HARD TIMES is his most personal, finding him exploring his own roots alongside that of the United States.
“I carry a lot of heritage and tradition in my sound from my life in Texas and Louisiana and my time being an itinerant and a hobo. I carry a lot of music with me and what I like about country music is that it gives me a clear identity. When I’m being looked at for my eclectic heritage and my colourful background it can be confusing for people to understand where I’m coming from. But I think country music gives me a canvas and an identity that people can understand”
The album is also his most country and western recording, abandoning his earlier, more blues slanted direction.
“It is my most country record overall. I wanted to get back to that 60s gothic country style, that darker western thing that George Jones, Marty Robbins and those guys were doing while, of course, bringing some West Coast country soul sound along with me.”
The album’s title is also the name of a 1968 Western film, which starred Henry Fonda. The western aspect to the album is highlighted by the dazzling videos that support a number of the tracks on the album - well worth checking out on You Tube. The enforced isolation of recent months gave Charley the opportunity to explore the cinematic aspect of his music to complement the songs.
“When my producer Mark Neil and I were making the record, he talked about it being cinema for the ears. I knew I needed to create visuals that could complement the record, rather than take away from it. A lot of artists in independent roots choose not to put out visuals a lot of the time, because if they’re not adding to the album, they can take away from it. One of the other ironies of this pandemic is that on a normal touring schedule I’d be lucky to have an afternoon to make one of those videos. Because I’m not touring and have that time on my hands, I was able to put a lot of time into them, to give them the symbolism and the storyline. I had time to think, get a small team together and then co-direct and develop that scenario, and give people a message that I always wanted to put out, but never had the time or financial resources to do.”
With the main record labels and their advertisers dictating the direction of country music and diluting it beyond recognition, supporters of traditional country music are dependent on a bunch of torch carrying artists to retain the link back to the classic performers of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Crockett alongside Zephaniah OHora, Jason James, J.P.Harris, Jeremy Pinnell, Joshua Hedley, Jesse Daniel, Colter Wall and Tyler Childers are among a hardnosed bunch of male diehards, determined to support a style of music they believe in. It’s a goal that Crockett is both passionate and optimistic about.
“There has been a great fall off in country music and a lot of other music in America. This has to do with business, consolidation and commercial interests. I find myself in what I think is a unique scenario. The type of music that I’m doing, the type of country music that I think I’m carrying with me is by American standards long past its sell-by date. The challenge for country music which other artists have spoken about is real. I really see that because even in the Americana world, where the roots artists are in independent country, I think even a large portion of those folks are not aware or capable of playing the country music that comes out of the forties, fifties and sixties and bring it to people. I do think though that it can happen. I’d like to think that what I’m doing is helping that and showing the high art that country music was.
Not outlaw country, because in my opinion it was the beginning of the end. Outlaw country was the start of country music being bought and sold off. For me the high art of country music ended at the close of the 60s. What I’m trying to do is bring that music to the fore, because I believe the production, the performances, instrumentation and arrangements reflected on all of the best parts of American popular culture. It could be found whether you were looking at country music by George Jones or popular music and R’n’B from Ray Charles – that was the best of the best. I think younger people can be interested in those sounds and they don’t necessarily need to understand where it’s coming from, simply that it moves you. It’s like hip hop, when young people find hip hop that moves them, they often trace it back to its jazz and soul roots. I think that country music can do that again. I don’t think that’s going to come from the folks that are claiming country music right now. Artists that don’t have the interest in the heritage of country music in the first place.”
It's a topic, together with the difficulty earning radio play, that Crockett is pragmatic about. He has strong views about the period in American history when the tables started to turn and commercialism began to suck the life out of country music.
“Corporate radio could play artists like myself but they won’t. When they hear the stuff that I’m doing, they don’t want to know. The people promoting what I’m playing would not even mention me to those stations, they couldn’t sell it to these stations. I do think if they played some of the cuts from WELCOME TO HARD TIMES, like the track you played on your radio show, Run Horse Run, it could be a sensation. Controversial maybe, but I believe the interest and call ins they would get from ordinary Americans would be tremendous. There is a resistance to do this. We could spend a whole conversation on what happened to country music since 1974. Look at America when we entered the Vietnam war and then the close of the Vietnam war and the exiting of Nixon. You can see a lot of things meeting their end that line up with the Vietnam era. Country music and a lot of other music was never the same at the close of that conflict, it says a lot about where America was going commercially.”
Ironically, what would have been daytime radio listening six decades ago has now got to look for shelter under the Americana music umbrella, which has given exposure to acts like Crockett to a wider audience. It’s generated an audience that has welcomed his sound with open arms.
“It is wasn’t for Americana we wouldn’t be showing up anywhere, there wouldn’t even be a chart for us. Of course, the charts may be skewed or maybe rigged or whatever, but if we didn’t have the Americana Radio Charts, we wouldn’t even show up on the map. But I’m not gonna stop anyway. This album cycle has got me a lot of press that I haven’t be able to get before, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and The Independent in England have all supported me and I think as long as I keep doing it, I’ll reach more and more folks. I believe one thing about country music that does make it different and that is we artists have to keep laying it down because young people need to hear this music in their time. It gives them a connection to the past. I feel that when you make a very good country record that has wide appeal, even if it does not initially get through the door because of a rigged market, an album can grow over the years by the spoken word. I’d like to think that my record, WELCOME TO HARD TIMES and the stuff that artists like Zephaniah O’Hora are doing, will be well known years from now because people will keep talking about them.”
From humble beginnings playing street corners, Crockett has learned ‘on the job’ exactly how the music business works and the required survival strategy. Fortunately, most of his aborted touring dates from this year have been kicked forward to 2021. He’s due in the U.K. next summer, so hopefully he’ll get over to Ireland for the first time.
“Yes, from the standpoint of the festivals and large show dates like premium venues, most of them have transferred the schedule to next year. I expect when they give us the green light, we’ll be back out doing shows but I don’t know what the guidelines will look like. I think some things will change permanently, safety regulations, protocol, there’s going to be lasting changes. I will be in the U.K and would just love to hop across to Ireland to play for you guys.”
Interview by Declan Culliton