With the music industry these days appearing to control the market and attempting to regulate the public’s listening choices more than ever, it’s very tough for independent artists to survive in a meaningful way. Charley Crockett’s career progression has not been dependent on the industry moguls. Instead, his trajectory has been based on an entirely different model. His early days of busking, wayfaring, train hopping and self-education, set him on a path of self-sufficiency, and an awareness of the possibility of existing in the industry without selling his soul to others. Eight years into a recording career that has yielded thirteen albums to date, his hard graft, patience and astute self-management, means Charley has carved out an effective survival path. His busking times are far behind him. These days he’s sharing stages with Willie Nelson and Chris Stapleton, playing The Ryman in Nashville and enjoying his days on the road. He was in his usual engaging and buoyant form when we chatted recently prior to his return to Ireland to play Vicar Street in Dublin on 5th September.
When we spoke in August 2020 at the height of the pandemic, you were still pretty upbeat and resolute telling me ‘They better watch out in country music, because I’m just getting started.’
That sounds like me alright.
They are the words of a positive man.
It all depends on where you’re coming from. People are always asking me if I’m doing ok out on the road, touring all the time. If you start out on street corners, hitchhike, ride trains and walk across this country the way I did when I was a younger man, riding around on two buses, having a crew and people that are taking care of you, which I do now, that’s a fantasy. I’m being honest when I say that the way that our business was paralysed during the pandemic was an advantage for me. It levelled the playing field a bit. I hadn’t been getting the money and resources that a lot of people in the business had been getting. While others were financially paralysed in the pandemic, I made a play, wrote my songs, and got to record them.
You have certainly been true to your word. Since then, you’ve been on stage with Willie Nelson and Chris Stapleton, played The Ryman, and recorded and released your most commercially successful album, THE MAN FROM WACO.
That record is interesting because I recorded it live to tape with my road band The Blue Drifters. The songs that we recorded were being viewed by business people around me as nothing but demos, but I took those so-called demos and we put them out. I was writing those songs on the increased visibility that my other records WELCOME TO HARD TIMES, MUSIC CITY USA, 10 FOR SLIM, and JUKEBOX CHARLEY, had got me. But more than that, I think that the song writing and magic of my band on THE MAN FROM WACO translated to people in a way that those messages would probably not have come across on a lot of really well-recorded records. It’s not necessarily how perfect a record sounds; it has a lot more to do with capturing the performance of the band and how somebody feels when they listen to those songs. You could take those same songs and build them piece by piece in a studio and it might not have the same effect as the live recording. I think that’s the main reason why that album did so well. Also, because it’s a concept album, where I was telling one big story about a character’s life, that also seemed to really connect with people.
You co-produced it with Bruce Robison and recorded it at his studio outside Austin. Was he surprised that you put the tracks down in one or two takes?
I think he was surprised but he was really laid back. I got to know Bruce from running into him on the old country circuit that we were both working for many years. We met in Oklahoma at a festival a bunch of years back and he invited me down to his studio to record. Both times I ended up down there to record, I was really surprised and pleased with how warm those recordings sounded after coming in and throwing down songs without hardly thinking about it. We’d do one or two takes, hear the playback from that two-inch tape on that old board of his in the control room and every single time I was completely surprised at how good it sounded. The thing I love about Bruce is that he went with everything I wanted to do with THE MAN FROM WACO production-wise. When I was sure of something I wanted to do with that record, he would follow me. If I had interfering record label business people around me, I would not have been able to record the way I did.
Had you road-tested the songs with your band before you recorded them?
No, besides the song, Trinity River, those boys hadn’t heard any of the songs. They were learning them as we were recording them.
That song, Trinity River, seems to be very special for you as your latest single is a live version of it from your show at The Ryman.
It is. I wrote that song standing over a small bridge over the Trinity River. That river forks above the Dallas Forth Worth area. The west fork runs through downtown Fort Worth and the east fork runs south of downtown Dallas. When it floods that river can be as big as the Mississippi and it has these huge levees on either side of it to try and control it. Without those irrigation systems that area would be nothing but marsh. When I was coming in and out of that area, I would spend a lot of time hiding out down there between those levees, down at the river writing songs. One day, probably ten years ago now, I sat down there and that song came to me and it really felt like the river gave that song to me. I put it on A STOLEN JEWEL, the first official album that I put out. Over the years the song became a staple in my live shows and I decided that I should record it again for THE MAN FROM WACO, when I realised that I actually knew what I was doing. That’s something that I learned listening to guys like Willie Nelson or even Jimi Hendrix. He would rerecord the same songs all the time because he was progressing so quickly. A lot of jazz and blues guys also do that.
As you mention Willie Nelson, tell me about playing with him in Central Park, New York, last year, very close to where you used to busk early in your career.
You can’t make that kind of stuff up. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. That was a fourteen-year circle, from the first time I played under that bridge in Central Park, to be a hundred yards from that bridge on a stage with Willie Nelson. I’ve never felt anything like that in my life. Willie saw how important that was to me that night and I saw one of the greatest of all time. Even after his eight-decade journey, I could see his appreciation for the crowd that night when he was finishing the show and taking his bow. I had never stood next to a man like that, a man so far into an eight-decade life journey who had done it his way and it worked. I’ll be eating from that plate for the rest of my life. I had gone to the Warner Music building that afternoon and shook the hands of some record executives and gave them a little wink and a ‘no thanks’, and then walked back to the park to play with Willie Nelson.
That journey for Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings wasn’t over night success either. They had to deal with an industry just as unsupportive in their early careers, in some ways similar to what you and others face today.
There are a lot of things that are similar now to the period from the 60s leading into the early 70s. There are similarities between how the country music charts worked then and how the Americana charts work today. Waylon Jennings talked about that. He said that when he was on RCA in the 60s, he was often at the top of the country charts but it was a broke deal. He’d be at the top or near the top of those charts and playing seven nights a week, and he couldn’t keep his head above water. I was reading about him talking about that at a time that I was at the top of the Americana charts, but could still be shut out by the broader business. Even if the DJs and programmers were spinning you on Americana radio that didn’t necessarily translate to making ends meet or being able to sell tickets to a broader audience.
Eventually, those guys pushed their way into the forefront with the Outlaw movement, as it was called at the time. The industry had to take notice because their popularity was steadily growing. Do you see an almost identical pattern emerging with artists like yourself, Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers and Colter Wall, and women like Summer Dean, Sunny Sweeney and Brennen Leigh?
All those guys talk about what they’ve experienced and it’s also like what I’ve gone through. Waylon said that ‘there’s always one more way to do it and that’s to do it yourself,’ and he was right. I’ve experienced this in the way I’ve had to come up and the path I’ve used. That’s the way it was when I was playing street corners, if you were walking up to a subway platform waiting on your train, I was in the way and you were going to have to deal with me. I was lucky in a way because I went from there building my chops up firstly as an itinerant and then getting into the bars. When I finally transitioned to Thirty Tigers, I was making my records for next to nothing, getting my repetition in, and cutting my teeth as to how to properly make records. As hard as that old record label model was, at least back then if you did get signed like Willie and Waylon did, you’d be ok. One of the very big struggles that I see today is how a Willie Nelson or Waylon Jennings type is going to arise in a system that is built around discovering artists that are pretty much naïve and inexperienced. The industry blows them up and milks maybe the one record for three to five years and then moves on with another artist. That’s something that I became aware of very quickly while I was making records cheaply and putting them out fast. I just knew that I needed to do that. So, very quickly I’ve managed to get to a number of records, twelve or thirteen now, maybe more than that with a couple more that I’m sitting on.
With all those recorded albums, another couple in reserve, and a hectic touring schedule, do you write on the road or when you get time away from touring?
It works for me either way. It’s a constant thing, writing on and off the road. The one thing that I need to finish songs is to book sessions. That gives me a deadline and a reason to finish songs, otherwise, I would just continue to start more and more stuff. I need those deadlines.
Another recent milestone for you was performing at The Ryman in Nashville, despite having a dig at Music City on your 2021 album MUSIC CITY USA.
As Texans, you always feel that you’re on the outside in Nashville. The regionalism of Nashville is obviously going to heavily favour Appalachia, that’s just natural and makes sense. But in truth, the industry, business, and the parlour floor in Nashville is bigger now than it ever was in its heyday. In its heyday, it was strictly country music, and country music from a Nashville point of view. RCA and those big studios were spending huge money on music back then. Those walls have been broken down and Nashville is now the international entertainment capital of the world, and in a way that I never thought would happen. Nashville didn’t previously rival New York or the West Coast, but it does now. Its business is throughout and across the genres and entertainment, beyond solely the music business. I’ve got a song that I’ve recorded that isn’t out yet and I have a verse in there that says ‘They laughed at me in New York City, called me a fool in L.A., I doubt that Nashville saw me coming, besides the bar folks working late.’ But really, I’ve never had a problem with the working folks of Nashville, and all the business people that have become good partners of mine are pretty much all based out of there as well. The people working in the bars when I was playing street corners there, open mics, and jams down in Printer’s Alley, I found nothing but good people. Like any kind of business when you start getting into the real scene, the music can become something besides the music, and that can be the jungle that is Nashville. So, to get to the stage at The Ryman and have that experience, I think people were looking at me from the outside in, because I’d put out that record MUSIC CITY USA that is critical of Nashville, but I found that people actually identify with that and that’s why they’re showing up.
You seem to be making all the right business decisions, have a killer band, and are steadily growing your career. Are you getting good advice from your team? I was struck by how you came over to Ireland with a full band last year, which must have been a loss leader. But, as a result of that, you’re due back over here and will be playing in a considerably larger venue and to hugely greater numbers.
I hear everybody out and then I usually don’t do anything that they say. To be honest with you, they wanted me to come over to Ireland as a solo act because they didn’t want me to lose money. I said ‘no’ because I can’t be told that I’ve got a big future over there and then shoot myself in the foot by cutting corners. I can play great by myself but I’d rather roll the dice, invest in myself and bring everybody over, which I did and which is a policy that I have. It’s the same with Australia and Canada, anywhere we’re going, I’m bringing everybody. If people are coming to see me, I want them to get their money’s worth and not feel like they are only getting a piece of me because we’re crunching numbers on some spreadsheet.
You’re about to play more shows with Chris Stapleton, performing to very large crowds.
I’m really grateful for that. I wasn’t too sure what to expect going out with Chris. The first night I played with him, I was really overwhelmed. Playing in front of twenty-five thousand people is not the cult world that I’ve come out of. But by the third night, I shook that off and figured out what I needed to do playing in front of a crowd that size. It was, and is, a wonderful opportunity and I’m the kind of guy that will try and make it work anywhere. There are a lot of people that we could be playing in front of where it wouldn’t make any sense, so we wouldn’t just go out and play in front of anyone. I’d be just spinning my wheels. Chris Stapleton is somebody that deserves to be in the outlaw conversation that we spoke about earlier with those other men and women. When I was playing on street corners in New Orleans twelve or thirteen years ago, there was a guy that would stand around on the corner with us collecting our money and keeping some of the gutter punks away from us. This guy kept showing me this video of a guy playing this song that he said I needed to cover. It was a song by Chris Stapleton when he was in the band, The Steel Drivers. It was a You Tube video of Chris playing the song If It Hadn’t Been For Love, under a ten-by-ten tent with nobody paying attention.
Your vocation has been described as ‘a last resort career opportunity that’s going to go on for a lifetime.’
Yes, it is. This is not America’s Got Talent, this is not a TV show model, which unfortunately is the way most of the business behaves right now. They look at finances, they look at strategy, promotion, and investment in artists, much like those game shows and reality shows. It works well for the industry but not for the artists. That’s why you always need the breed of artists, like you said that can push their way through that.
Interview by Declan Culliton