Charley Crockett

Busking and Texas

Matthew Charles Crockett was born on March 24, 1984 in San Benito, Texas, and raised by his mother in Los Fresnos and Dallas. He left school at 17 with a pawn-shop guitar and busked in the French Quarter in New Orleans, in Deep Ellum in Dallas and in New York, with later stretches of about three years in northern California and a year busking in Paris, and visits to Spain and Morocco. Garden and Gun says he busked for about a decade in New Orleans, Memphis and New York before returning to Texas in 2014, and that he says he is related to Davy Crockett. In New York a Sony representative saw him and gave him a management contract, and he declined a publishing deal, according to the Austin Chronicle.

He plays guitar, banjo, piano and sitar, and his band is the Blue Drifters, formerly the Train Robbers. He began with Get Up Outa Texas (2014), then A Stolen Jewel (self-released, May 2015) and In the Night (2016).

Records

Lil' G.L.'s Honky Tonk Jubilee (2017), on his Son of Davy label with Thirty Tigers distributing, is an album of 16 country standards, produced by Crockett, Billy Horton and Jay Moeller. He told Saving Country Music in 2017 that he had lived these songs, that it is the American struggle and that you just can't fake it. Lonesome as a Shadow (2018) was recorded in Memphis with Matt Ross-Spang, and the Austin Chronicle gave it four stars. The Valley followed on September 20, 2019, then Field Recordings Vol. 1 and Welcome to Hard Times (July 31, 2020, produced by Mark Neill).

10 for Slim (February 26, 2021) was ten songs by James Hand, scored 8 out of 10 by PopMatters, and he was named Americana Emerging Artist of the Year that year. Music City USA (2021), Jukebox Charley (2022), The Man from Waco (2022), Live from the Ryman (September 29, 2023, recorded at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on November 14, 2022), $10 Cowboy (April 26, 2024) and Visions of Dallas (2024) followed. He signed to Island Records in January 2025 and made Lonesome Drifter (March 14, 2025), co-produced with Shooter Jennings and cut live over about ten days at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, then Dollar a Day (August 8, 2025), and Age of the Ram is listed for April 3, 2026.

On stage

He played the Grand Ole Opry in June 2019 and made his Austin City Limits debut in 2021. His NPR Tiny Desk concert, recorded on January 23, 2023, was published on February 24, 2023, with five songs including "The Man from Waco" and "Welcome to Hard Times". Setlist.fm has 610 setlists and 1,961 attendances, with 123 shows in 2024, 96 in 2023 and 94 in 2022, and the Kessler Theater in Dallas as the most-played venue with ten. He won Musician of the Year and Best Country Artist at the 2022 Austin Music Awards, and the Stephen Bruton Award in 2023. NPR's January 2025 profile quoted him as afraid of getting fenced in.