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.
$10 Cowboy by Charley Crockett was produced by Billy Horton and is now available on his website.
Enjoy our previous coverage here: Show Review: Charley Crockett at The Rave in Milwaukee
