Charley Crockett goes from strength to strength on his second major label release.
There’s no doubt that Charley Crockett is on a roll. “Dollar A Day” is his 15th album, with his last four being released in little more than a year. Along the way, he has risen in stature from his busking days to playing the regular dives and small venue circuit and then moving on to his current status, where he is regularly nominated for several awards, including a Grammy and playing amphitheatres such as Red Rocks. Released hot on the heels of “Lonesome Drifter“, “Dollar A Day” finds Crockett retaining producer Shooter Jennings in what is purported to be the second of a threesome which he has christened The Sagebrush Trilogy.
“Lonesome Drifter” was criticised by some who felt that Jennings’ production overegged the pudding somewhat, but on “Dollar A Day,” there are no such quibbles, as Crockett delves into his western tropes with some vigour while retaining a fine degree of funk in some of the numbers. ‘Lone Star’, ostensibly a song about an anti-hero, is delivered as if it were a Bobby Womack soundtrack number. In contrast, ‘Ain’t That Right’ weighs in as if it were recorded in the same steamy sessions which produced Shooter’s daddy, Waylon Jennings’ “Lonesome, On’ry and Mean” as Crockett continues to express his distrust of the music business in general. “Tennessee Quick Cash” also cleaves fast to Waylon’s template as it rocks and rolls with some great pedal steel guitar playing. “Santa Fe Ring” rattles along with a wide screen optic to it, a sense emphasised by the following instrumental, “Age Of The Ram,” which evokes Western soundtracks in their gentler moments (such as .
Crockett continues to both romanticise and critique the whole cowboy/country music idea throughout the album. It’s clear that he is in thrall to his predecessors (as evidenced on his Lil G.L albums) and, despite now being on a major label, he’s not ready to be swallowed by the maws of the industry. He opens with the straightforward and simple strum of the title song, a cowboy’s lament which recalls Willie Nelson. It’s followed by ‘Crucified Son’, a fantastic wail of a song (reminiscent of Levon Helm) which seems to allude to the media’s habit of praising an act to the hilt and then dragging them back down. In the interim, Crockett excels as he delivers separate portraits of familiar figures. There’s the ruefulness expressed on the disarming ‘All Around Cowboy’ as expressed by the line, “Maybe tomorrow things will get better if the devil lets loose of his soul,” or the worn-out bravado of a swell-dressed barfly looking for a bottle of rye on ‘Ballad Of A Lonesome Drifter’. He ends the album with a flourish on the sweeping ‘Alamosa’, a string-laden ballad soaked with Western relish and, as with the earlier ‘Lone Star’, reminiscent of the era of Blaxploitation.
With a very tongue-in-cheek album cover, “Dollar A Day” finds Crockett forging ahead. Along with the likes of Sturgill Simpson and Tyler Childers, he’s redrawing the map, and he does so with style.
