With his handsome gangster face and his thick accent, Charley Crockett seems to have come straight out of a spaghetti western and embodies, right down to his Stetson, the image of the outlaw who owes nothing to anyone, except the oaths he has made to himself.
At 40, the Texan has been rocking since the release of his first album (Stole Jewel2015) the promise of a country washed of all its useless artifices and having instead the grace to borrow, as with Willie Nelson and other Waylon Jennings to whom it is the heir, from soul, blues and rock’n’roll.
A reputation built on the authenticity of his past, that of a troubadour who, from the age of 17, crisscrossed America and Europe with his bundle and his music, hitchhiking, jumping on freight trains and screaming in the street.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Charley Crockett
But on this Thursday in May, Charley Crockett is sitting in his tour bus, parked behind the MTelus, where he was preparing that evening to perform the songs of $10 Cowboyhis 13e album in less than 10 years.
Extract of Gettin’ Tired Again
With a guitar on his lap, which he will strum throughout the interview, and a half-smoked joint in the ashtray, our host chats without being asked about his former life as a vagabond, which he sometimes misses.
“It’s true that everyday life is difficult when it’s cold outside and you don’t know where you’re going to sleep. I don’t miss that part,” he confides. “What I miss is being able to do what I want without telling anyone.”
But for me, the closest thing to freedom is to be constantly on the move, and that’s still my life.
Charley Crockett
“When it comes to bad luck/I got perfect timing,” he sings in Hard Luck & Circumstances, one of the many reflections on adversity contained in $10 Cowboyan album that came out last April when, ironically, his star had rarely shone so brightly.
Extract of Ain’t Done Losing Yet
“I know I may sound like I’m complaining, saying that I’m a subscriber to bad luck, at a time when my business is going well,” he says, also talking about his pieces. Ain’t Done Losing Yet And Good at Losing.
“But my point is that I was warned by many people that the life choices I was making were going to lead to my downfall, when in reality, these people were simply too afraid to take any risks. In America, we are taught from a young age that we must become winners, but we are never taught that we must also learn to lose.”
Life begins at 40
Charley Crockett underwent open-heart surgery in 2019, made necessary by his Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome and a leaking aortic valve. Big deal.
“It was a very worrying time, because many people around me felt like I was either going to die or have to give up my career,” he recalls. “What happened instead was that I started to see things clearly.”
The cowboy tells me about his encounter, somewhere on the road, with an old wise man who had told him, like an oracle, that a man only really begins to live at 40. The problem was that he was only 28.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Charley Crockett
“But now that I’m 40, I understand what he meant!” he says, laughing softly. “The first few years after the operation were very dark. I had a hard time looking at my scar without getting tears in my eyes.”
Which is no longer the case at all. Our philosopher was in California a few months ago, to record a new album. Already. “And smelling the jasmine, I told myself that this is the most powerful spring in the history of the entire world. Or maybe it’s just that this is the first time I’ve really noticed it. What is certain is that what I experienced makes the mountain more beautiful, the colors more vivid.”
What America Inspires
“America, I love ya/and I fear you sometimes,” Charley Crockett announces in Americaone of his rare songs with a political subtext. A statement that might surprise, because on the surface, you don’t get more American than him.
He was walking between the slot machines and “suspended souls” at the Kansas Star Casino in the middle of the night after a show when these sentences came to him.
“I see a lot of beauty in my country, especially in the people, but there are also a lot of things that scare me without common sense,” he explains. “America is defined a lot by fear: you have the king of finance in his skyscraper who is afraid of the poor and the poor down there who are afraid of something that the rich have convinced them they should be afraid of.”
“And the crazy thing,” he says, half amused, half sorry, “is that this song resonates all over the planet, because everyone has a reason to be afraid and fascinated by the United States.”
Charley Crockett, who belongs to the most fascinating part of his country, is expected for his sound check. Knock, knock on the door of his coach. A final, vigorous handshake before he disappears into the darkness of the wings. “Great talk,” he is told. The answer is in broken but deliberate French: “With pleasure, my brother.”
At the Quebec Summer Festival, this Thursday at 8 p.m.
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