Charley Crockett To Paint Raw, Real Portraits Of America With New Project
Charley Crockett. Photo: Ryan Vestil
Charley Crockett is gearing up for the release of his new album, $10 Cowboy, due out April 26 via Son of Davy/Thirty Tigers.
On the new project, Crockett identifies a universal thread running through the troubled streets of America today as people battle to just exist in a country that has always promised more. The album was produced by Crockett and his longtime collaborator Billy Horton. Penned over a two-month period as the artist wound his way across the United States on the back of a tour bus, the tracks offer raw, personal, vivid portraits of a country in transition.
“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,” explains Crockett. “A ramblin’ man like me, a genuine transient, is in a pretty damn good position to have something to say about America.”
“A $10 Cowboy is a country singer who made himself on a street corner in America,” he continues. “But the cowboy way, the cowboy mindset, that applies to anyone who doesn’t feel free, who feels fenced in and bound to something. Being out on the road gives you a first-hand experience of how different kinds of Americans see themselves as going through some kind of great struggle. The roughneck working the oil and gas fields in West Texas. The single mother raising kids by herself. The young man working a street corner because he thinks it’s his only option. I would be dishonest if I said I couldn’t see the thread. Each of ’em feel invisible. I am struck by the battles they are fighting internally, and the ways they have been entrapped by what America says they are.”
