Charley Crockett on the 'mystical' potential of album 'Man From Waco'

Charley Crockett is a collector and interpreter of spirits essential to the revival of joyous, universal popular music.

Calling him the last bastion of "traditional" country ("a pure street musician uncontaminated by radio," Crockett jokes), a bluesy, soulful Americana artist, or any other thing is wrong. It denies that, for as much as the San Benito, Texas native makes music, he's moreso invoking the presence of a mystical funk that creates transcendent musical spaces.

Many critics believe Crockett has released an album every 244 days since 2015 ("Man From Waco," out September 9, is his 11th album) because he's such a devoted fan of classic country music that he wishes to pay homage to the barnstorming legacies of George Jones (one album every 198 days), Johnny Cash (every 170 days) or Hank Williams (one single every 68 days).

"It's not any of that. It's all about trying to go into weird, scary places with my music," says Crockett. "There are cultural and political things that I'm still learning how to touch that inspire me. My albums allow me to defend myself from definition while I'm figuring this musicality out."

Attempting to define what he uses to defend himself causes him to try to pinpoint places where he gained his most significant ammunition and armor.

The musical and spiritual impact of his time in New Orleans -- a place where the Haitian voodoo concept of "mounting" (being physically and psychologically overtaken by characteristic behaviors of departed spirits) is a rationalized notion -- plays a role. Also, learning to play the down stroke -- yes, the very thing that funk pioneer George Clinton learned to remove his inhibitions and constrictions to get "up" for in 1974 -- is key.

"Some people think I'm in some primitive, nostalgic vacuum. But I've heard and seen some crazy s**t and had a lot of thankless days in my life." He continues, "my mama sang, I sang in school, then I sang over second-line brass musicians and guys wearing strapped-on bass drums in post-Katrina New Orleans."

That line causes Crockett to pause.

"Those guys, especially after that tragedy, were playing so loose and loud that, at first, I had to play hard and holler to get heard. Then, the musicians in the Tremé neighborhood got annoyed with me and finally taught me how to get rid of the homogenized things I was doing and incorporate down strokes and shuffles -- the shapes and positions of the rhythms, so to speak -- into my style."

Crockett's career is at a place where he's existed long enough, and achieved enough acclaim, that he's able to convene conversations about directly mirroring his art against clear inspirations like Cash, Jones, and Williams, plus the act for whom he's opening on 2022's Outlaw Music Festival lineups: Willie Nelson.

"Man From Waco" is the second time in three albums that he's honored Waco, Texas-born honky-tonk and roadhouse-playing country music legend James "Slim" Hand. Crockett met and played with Hand numerous times before the performer's June 2020 death.

When asked to contemplate the gravitas of the now authentic space that exists between himself, Hand, and Nelson (the two country icons grew up two exits away from each other -- between West, Texas and Abbott, Texas -- on Texas' Highway 35, and Crockett himself spent many of his formative years in Dallas' Deep Ellum neighborhood), he pauses for a minute. Complicating the matter for the renowned musician is that he's sitting in the Station Inn. Later that evening, he'll make his debut and occupy the same stage space where Bill Monroe and Dr. Ralph Stanley (among many) have played.

As if responding to the echoes that perpetually conjure within him, the answer he gives pays respect to their power:

"Country music encompasses everything."

Continuing, Crockett describes Nelson as an "intimidatingly mythological Texas icon" and Hand as a "mystical, shadowy apparition."

He recalls the moment of finally meeting Hand after a night of "drinking hard" by sneaking in through the back door of Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon in the Austin, Texas suburb of Allandale. There, he saw an "authentic" artist who crystallized his then-frustratingly "chameleonic" tendencies into a focused career aspiration.

"Cynical people say the good times are over. But I've seen some real things that make me think differently," says Crockett. Years later, he describes seeing Hand onstage after Memphis' Ameripolitan Awards where "it was like he wasn't really there." He continues, "He was out there with the spirits. While singing 'Lesson in Depression,' he was swaying, tears were coming down his face, and I became a believer. I'd only seen New Orleans blues players like Little Freddie King and J.D. Hill have moments like that."

What's troubled Crockett's career to the point that he's now fiercely independent is that the music industry's musical IQ has reached its lowest point. Sadly, understanding that he's not so much defined by the music he plays as he is organizing the mythologies that guide how he interacts with it is, to Crockett, a metaphorical bridge too far and high for many label executives to cross.

He feels that this lack of awareness -- especially in the past decade -- has caused the mainstream country music industry to neglect the dynamic nature of its street-artist roots. He feels this has negatively impacted the type of sounds it champions at the top of its charts and on its radio dials.

He recalls a moment while signed to a Sony Records development deal in 2012 after "the machine's apparatus" discovered him "in an R Train subway car underneath Manhattan."

"You're believable, but stop trying to be Woody Guthrie," he says an executive told him before he lost his deal.

Ten years later, he's returned to his angst about that advice and can finally address erasing much of its stinging impact on his life. Via "Man From Waco," he's finally created an album that best defines the standard that others can best attempt to emulate.

The most compelling moment of Crockett's career exists in the just-released album. No, it's not "I'm Just A Clown," the soulful ballad that merges his love of bluesy 70s R&B instrumentation with vocal performances that hearken back to country soul pioneer Arthur Alexander. It's also not "July Jackson," though that song's tale of "a wife with a couple of kids" who "took her husband's life with a smile and the twisting of a knife" artfully elevates the storytelling of the re-ascendant murder ballad in country music.

No, it's a decade-old stalwart of his catalog, "Trinity River." On the track, Bob Willis' western swing blends with horn-driven second-line New Orleans funk and an exotic, intercontinental blend of tribal polyrhythms. When played at the Station Inn, it inspired corners of the room to break into spontaneous two-stepping that recalled church revival exaltation and juke-joint jiving. Mix in Crockett's skill as a bandleader playing his guitar with a resolute posture and steely-eyed glare, and the song soundtracked a profound moment.

"I got anxious because so many people are trying to rub up against my sound these days," says Crockett when asked what inspired not just "Trinity River" but this album in general. "People are all around me, but they're not looking at me." He criticizes the idea that his slick suits, slyly cocked cowboy hats, and penchant for reclaiming numerous parts of country music's history is more lucrative than his humanity.

He describes his relationship with those wanting to create an industry around his interests by turning him into a corporate sponsor festooned NASCAR automobile-as-artist. "Though everyone goes to those things, I've never been to one of those races in my life." He adds a note from John Hand, his former talent agent, to punctuate his point:

"Stay away from the largest parts of the machine because they will clip your wings."

Though appreciative of the growing financial and social comfort afforded him by his ability to release multitudes of acclaimed albums and tour 200-plus days a year, he relates a full-circle story of success that reflects what truly feeds his mind and spirit at present.

"Leon Bridges, Abraham Alexander, and I finally got to play a big festival stage together," he starts. "A decade ago, we started playing backyards and street corners in Dallas. Now we're in a 4,000-seat auditorium in downtown Chattanooga, playing these blues, country, folk, pop, R&B, and soul songs -- all of that s**t. We're evolving, we're independent, and we feel safe in being this way.

"I'm done fighting all the things people say about me," Crockett says, wearily kicking back in his chair. But, at that moment, the echoes emerge again. Energy encompassing everything he's mentioned in an hour-long conversation -- farm parties to street corners and the Station Inn, Ryman Auditorium, Grand Ole Opry to opening for Willie Nelson at Central Park on September 20 -- settles in the air.

He inhales it in, then exhales the following:

All I know is that I'm the countryest motherf***er there is."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Charley Crockett on the 'mystical' potential of 'Man From Waco' album