CHARLEY CROCKETT : $10 COWBOY

CHARLEY CROCKETT : $10 COWBOY

$10 Cowboy
America
Hard Luck & Circumstances
Good At Losing
Gettin' Tired Again
Spade
Diamond In The Rough
Aint' Done Losing Yet
Solitary Road
City Of Roses
Lead The Way
Midnight Cowboy

Label : Thirty Tigers

Length : 39:49

Release Date : Aprifl 25, 2024

Review (Heaven) : De Texaanse singer-songwriter Charley Crockett schijnt een verre nazaat te zijn van de legendarische Amerikaanse woudloper en volksheld Davy Crockett. Hij ontleent er ook de naam van zijn eigen platenlabel aan en je zou zelfs kunnen zeggen dat zijn rootsy americana diezelfde frontiers-mentaliteit heeft, al is dat wellicht teveel hineininterpretieren. Hoe het ook zij, sinds hij in 2015 debuteerde, bracht ij al twaalf albums uit, regelmatig meer dan één per jaar, en verscheen recent zijn dertiende en misschien wel allerbeste plaat $10 Cowboy. Voor liefhebbers van onvervalste alt.country zijn al zijn platen wel de moeite waard, maar $10 Cowboy is zo'n album waar echt alles aan klopt en dat tegelijkertijd net iets breder kijkt dan gebruikelijk. Daardoor zou het ook buiten de gebruikelijke countrykringen aan moeten kunnen slaan. Met een stem die aards en soepel tegelijk is, en eerder neutraal dan uitgesproken Texaans klinkt, voorziet hij zijn tijdloze countryliedjes van soul- en blueselementen, die in eerste instantie niet eens opvallen. Ze geven de muziek net die andere insteek, waardoor nu al vaststaat dat $10 Cowboy een van de alt.countryplaten van 2024 is. En dan mag je van ons dat alt ook gerust weglaten. Niet omdat het de lading niet zou dekken, maar omdat het in dit genre zo'n feilloze plaat is dat het daar eigenlijk gewoon bovenuit steekt.

Review (America Highways) : With his latest album $10 Cowboy, the studio follow up to 2022’s equally brilliant The Man From Waco, Texas native Charley Crockett continues to add to his growing stature as one of Americana music’s most original, vibrant, and essential singer – songwriters. With a wide ranging and charismatic sound based in country, blues, soul, folk, jazz, Cajun, and R&B, Crockett’s songs are uniquely American sonic creations and are drenched in the everyday experiences and struggles of all of us who live here in this great country of ours. Written as his crisscrossed America on his tour bus, the twelve songs on the record (of which the titular track, “Good At Losing,” “Diamond In the Rough,” “Ain’t Done Losing Yet,” ”Solitary Road,” and “Lead The Way “ are the strongest) specifically tell stories of people trying to make it in today’s world amidst the stress, tears, and heartbreak that life can bring to our collective doors. Eternally vigilant and compassionate like all great chroniclers, Crockett not only sees and understands what the people he comes across are going through, he also sees and celebrates their inexorable spirit to survive in the face of it all as well. There is beauty to behold in all of their stories and Crockett is a superlative storyteller and an ever improving master of capturing the moments and emotions that people are experiencing and feeling. The fact that he alludes to his own American journey from being a street musician to becoming a rising star in the music world, lends a realism to his work that sets him apart from a vast majority of other artists. No one is creating Americana music, or country music for that matter, quite the way Crockett is doing it right now and he is doing it at an almost superhuman prolific pace ($10 Cowboy is his 13th studio album since 2015). Coupled with his flourishing artistic growth, there is good reason to believe that Crockett is destined to be considered one of the all-time great purveyors of American music before he is through.

Review (Spin) : There’s always someone who’s shit out of luck in Charley Crockett’s songs, but the desperation is especially palpable on $10 Cowboy, his 13th studio album in nine years. He populates these songs with the usual assortment of ramblers and gamblers, roustabouts and rounders, but these hard-livin’ folks have been hardened by the empty promises of American life in the 2020s. On the Bakersfield-style two-stepper “Ain’t Done Losing Yet,” a woman holding court at a roulette table tells Crockett, “I ain’t done losing yet / It takes money to forget.” Like so many of these at-loose-ends characters, she’s aching for the next paycheck or the next jackpot or the next one-night stand that will keep her going just a little longer. These are country music people. Yet Crockett isn’t singing about them simply because he styles himself as a country artist. Rather, he’s a country artist because that genre makes space for the people he wants to sing about. He clearly identifies with the lowdown and lost, and in these songs he counts himself among their ranks. He spins a sad road story on “Good at Losing,” chronicling run-ins with the law and countless professional setbacks, yet his voice remains stoic in the face of unending hardship while the pedal steel sobs for him. As he wanders lost highways and tries to fit in somewhere, Crockett identifies his and others’ troubles as symptoms of a larger national sickness. “America, how are ya?” he sings on “America,” which plays off Arlo Guthrie’s “City of New Orleans” but without that song’s rosy optimism. “America, it’s easy to get lost in this land.” Crockett doesn’t go quite as hard as you might like—Why is he apologizing? Why is he not demanding an apology?—but he makes clear that he only feels comfortable among the downtrodden and forgotten. That’s crucial, as it makes Crockett more than simply a student of classic country music. He does have a sharp facility for steely Bakersfield guitar licks and cinematic countrypolitan strings and clever honkytonk wordplay and so many other elements that defined country in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. But he never feels out of time on $10 Cowboy. Rather than a throwback or a neo-neo-traditionalist, he just sounds like a guy singing his sad, sad songs to the huddled masses.

Review (No Depression) : Albums such as Welcome to Hard Times, Music City USA, and his last release, The Man from Waco, highlight Charley Crockett’s unique meld of the tragic, the wistful, and the satirical. With his 13th album, $10 Cowboy, he offers his most fully realized set. Occurring as a cross between Hank Williams, a low-key carnival announcer, and the Coen brothers’ Buster Scruggs, Crockett has perfected his craft: $10 Cowboy is a 2024 standout. The title song combines lounge-y synths, ringing acoustic guitars, and hyper-catchy hooks. Grounded in a vintage mix, the tune also exudes a semi-surreal vibe. This is Nashville meets Las Vegas; imagine a Grand Ole Opry production scripted by David Lynch with advice from the ghosts of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. “America,” meanwhile, points to Crockett’s soul and R&B influences, including a dance-y beat and sax part that owes as much to Maceo Parker as it does to Muscle Shoals. When Crockett sings, “America I love you / and I fear you sometimes,” he could be adopting the voice of an immigrant struggling to embrace “the dream” or stepping up as a spokesperson for someone who has spent years laboring but doesn’t have much to show for it. The piece is topical, modish — a tribute to the hard-working and unsung — without being heavy-handed or overtly political. On the unshakeable chorus of “Hard Luck & Circumstances,” Crockett’s drawl is complemented by an upbeat drum part, shimmering synth chords, and perfectly placed backup vocals courtesy of Lauren Cervantes and Angela Miller. With “Good at Losing,” Crockett continues to offer alluring vocals and hooks, his voice accented by warm swathes of violin and cello. “Diamond in the Rough,” with its chugging guitars, finds Crockett fantasizing about finding his “jewel of the night.” On “Ain’t Done Losing Yet,” he offers his take on the drinking and gambling life, addressing how the things we do to lessen our pain can actually perpetuate it, how distractions only serve their purpose for a short time. Brimming with simple yet nuanced images, “City of Roses” lands as a portrait of an idyllic locale, on one hand, and a transcendent vision of purity or paradise on the other. “Lead the Way” is built around a synthy riff and Crockett’s echoey vocal. Seamlessly merging country, easy-listening, and folk, the piece conjures Glen Campbell at his most ethereal, Neil Diamond experimenting with dreampop, Father John Misty playing the karaoke singer in some smoke-filled bar on the Honky Tonk Highway. Throughout $10 Cowboy, Crockett proves himself an exemplary melodist and unmistakable singer, projecting a persona — downhome yet worldly-wise, no-frills yet poetic, stoic yet sincere — that eludes simple categorization. Drawing from broad sources, Crockett seamlessly integrates various atmospheres, tones, timbres, and poses, all the while remaining loyal to the country genre.

Review (Paste Magazine) : Over the past decade, few musicians have been as dialed in as Charley Crockett. On all fronts, the Texas country singer-songwriter delivers with uncommon consistency: He always looks dapper, in a cool thrift-store outlaw sort of way. He has released one or two albums per year since 2015, all through his own independent label, Son of Davy. His songs never stray too far from their comfort zone, instead finding new ways to fuse country, folk, blues and soul over and over again. And his concerts are masterclasses of efficient entertainment, with rarely a note, a vintage shirt collar or a toothy smile out of place. Crockett is a machine, in other words, and that machine has a name: Jukebox Charley—dependable, irresistible and seemingly stocked with an endless supply of terrific tunes. His new full-length, $10 Cowboy, adds a dozen more to his arsenal, this time inspired and informed by his extensive travels, first as an itinerant young man busking on street corners and more recently as a busy touring act. “This material is written at truck stops, it’s written at casinos, it’s written in the alleys behind the venues, it’s written in my truck parked up on South Congress in Austin,” he has said. “A ramblin’ man like me, a genuine transient, is in a pretty damn good position to have something to say about America.” On $10 Cowboy, Crockett’s stories often revolve around hard-living folks, people just scraping by and those on the wrong end of the war on the American dream. In “Hard Luck & Circumstances” – an album highlight – he laments their plight against a gospel-tinged chorus and classic honky-tonk: “For folks like me / There ain’t no justice / Only the road and it’s long / You might find it funny / My line of thinking / But that don’t make me wrong / It’s hard luck and circumstances / That brought me here / And if they hang around much longer / I might just disappear.” Crockett recorded $10 Cowboy live to tape at Arlyn Studios in Austin with a small army of musicians, including a saxophonist, keyboard players, backing vocalists and a string section. As a result, the album sounds remarkably warm and alive and real; it feels like you can step on the bass lines, put the twinkling piano notes in your pocket or reach out and touch the pedal steel guitar parts. A stretch of tracks in the middle of the record—“Good At Losing” and “Gettin’ Tired Again” and “Diamond in the Rough”—feature beautifully lush string arrangements and act as a sort of baroque-country mini-set within the larger work. Elsewhere, Crockett bounces around from sound to sound, mixing country with slinky blues (the title track), searing rock ‘n’ roll (“Solitary Road”), moody pop (“Lead the Way”) and funky horns (“America”). The latter returns to the album’s main theme, expressing both love for and fear of the country he has criss-crossed so many times in his career. “America / You promised / And I’ve been waiting patiently,” he sings, as the song soulfully seethes around him. “America / It’s easy / To get lost in this land.” It is heartening to hear Crockett use $10 Cowboy—and his fast-growing platform—to speak up for the little guy; here’s hoping he will continue to do so. His track record tells us he will, and he will do so very effectively.