Charley Crockett, Sam Fender, Nikki Lane

Charley Crockett
The album cover you’re looking at might lead you to conclude Charley Crockett is on one hell of a roll. You wouldn’t be wrong. Ten records in six years is some kind of prolific. The latest, a double album, suggests the artist has some songs worth paying attention to. It’s clear that he’s invested as much time in the studio, recording storytelling songs, and making storytelling videos, as he has barnstorming around the United States and Europe playing live shows.

Not bad for a thirty-seven-year-old late bloomer.

Charley Crockett has been a fairly remarkable artist to follow. He’s got a sound. He’s got something to say. He has a look. And there’s a gauzy veil of mystery surrounding him suggesting he knows more than he’s letting on.

All those records in such a short amount of time have come with a “No Two Alike” guarantee, particularly the last three releases: the darkly prescient Welcome to Hard Times; the semi-autobiographical, hard-core country-roots The Valley; and 10 for Slim, his tribute of songs by the obscure and wholly authentic Texas honky-tonk maestro James Hand.

And still, despite his penchant for pearl snaps and western hats, Charley Crockett has managed to elude being pigeon-holed. Call him neo country-western if you’d like. It’s true that few contemporaries present themselves as part of a lineage harkening back to Hank Williams and George Jones like Charley does, and even fewer can pull it off convincingly.

Call him a bluesman, if you prefer. One of Charley’s first recorded songs “Trinity River,” about that “dirty river” in North Texas, is the perfect bookend to “Trinity River Blues,” the first 78 issued by Oak Cliff blues guitar giant T-Bone Walker 92 years ago. Charley knows where genuine music comes from and doesn’t hesitate to mine each vein he digs up.

His voice is one-of-a-kind. His distinctive, plaintive vocals crack unapologetically with emotion, and he phrases his lines around the beat like a jazz singer, while he expounds upon personal relationships and the world beyond.

So, who is Charley Crockett?

Which one are you talking about?

The Lil’ G.L.’s Blue Bonanza Charley, or the Lil’ G.L.’s Honky Tonk Jubilee Charley? Or the Homeric “Jamestown Ferry” Charley? Is that new artist who graced the stage of the Grand Ole Opry the same cat who played the Newport Folk Festival?

Best just to call Charley his own man.

However one may strain to describe such an enigmatic figure and his equally enigmatic music, it’s pretty obvious Charley transcends stereotype. Whatever you might think he is or isn’t, he’ll change your mind with his next song. That’s part of the fun riding shotgun with Charley Crockett. You know he’s a skilled driver familiar with all the roads. You just don’t know exactly which one he’s taking, or where he’s taking you, only that the journey will be a pleasurable one.

Now comes Charley’s tenth album in his six-year career. In the Crockett tradition, it is as ambitious and ground-breaking as each piece of recorded music he’s put out so far. And it’s not just an album. It’s a double album of Charley Crockett originals, each song going the distance to further define this singer-songwriter-performer-artist who came out of the proverbial nowhere.

Nowhere in Charley Crockett’s case would be San Benito, the largely Hispanic farming community in the Rio Grande Valley of extreme south Texas, his birthplace. He grew up poor in a trailer surrounded by cane fields and citrus groves, raised by a single mom. Fortunately for him, music was in the thick, humid Gulf air, because the Valley has a serious musical streak running through it. There’s a museum in San Benito honoring the father of conjunto accordion, Narciso Martinez. The likeness of Tex-Mex superstar and hometown hero Freddy Fender (nee Baldemar Huerta) graces the municipal water tower. Nearby Los Fresnos was hometown of Simon Vega, who served in the Army with Elvis Presley and built the Little Graceland shrine in tribute to his GI buddy.

That Valley was a perfect petri dish for a little kid with wide eyes and good ears. He could be anyone he wanted to be in this remote part of the world. When his family moved to Dallas, city life was not so kind to the kid who looked and talked different. This was where he learned the hard way how impoverished his family really was. His escape was going to live with his uncle in New Orleans, where as a teenager he developed skills free-styling and rapping, and first began performing in the streets. That led to busking on the streets of New York once he was out on his own.

He hustled hard to survive, living a transient life, taking whatever he needed, whenever he needed it, and hoping he wouldn’t get caught. He sold weed to get by, at one point working the harvest in clandestine marijuana fields in the northwest. Twice, he was convicted of a felony crime. Music provided the way out.

At thirty-two, he got serious. Even then, he chose the more difficult path, releasing his records on independent labels and inventing and reinventing his persona with carefully crafted, well-produced music videos. That top ten hit record may still elude him, but he’s built quite a fan base on his own, all his own, touring as relentlessly as he makes records, investing considerable time and money in companion videos that cumulatively add up to close to 50 million views online.

Charley has endured the collapse of the recording industry, no money, petty crime, societal ennui, the Covid-19 pandemic, open heart surgery, one-night stands, long distance rides in a van, loud truck stops and diners serving stale lukewarm coffee to get to where he is now.

His reward – and yours – is this collection of Charley Crockett originals.

Sad, uplifting, hard, and sweet, complex and delicate all at once, his songs are like life its ownself, just like the songs’ creator: like nothing you’ve heard or seen before, a genuine Texas original.

Sam Fender
Back in the spring of 2019, this writer sat down with Sam Fender as he was still piecing together Hypersonic Missiles, the sky-scraping debut which six months later would go on to top numerous charts and mint Fender’s status as the most important songwriter of his generation.

Through the prism of an acutely aware kid from a council estate in North Shields, tracks such as Dead Boys, The Borders and Leave Fast yearned for escape while finding poetry and drama in the lives of those surrounding their author. They were songs with their eyes - and their hearts - wide open. As he sat in the afternoon sun, Fender reflected on the viewpoint within his songs with typical North Eastern self-deprecation.

“I find it easier to write about other people because I can be completely honest about them,” he pondered. “I can’t be completely honest about myself because everyone would think I was a miserable c**t.”

Fast-forward to 2020 and like the rest of the planet, Sam Fender was faced with little more than the four walls in front of him. There were no old boys propping up the bar at The Lowlights Tavern or Poundshop Kardashians to draw inspiration from. Instead, for the first time as a songwriter he had to turn his gaze to himself.

“I didn’t have anyone to write about. I’ve always relied on that stuff. On hearsay, rumours, stories, gossip… gossip made mankind,” recalls Fender today from his studio in North Shields. “I didn’t want to write about Covid because fucking no one is ever going to want to hear about that ever again, so this time I went inwards.”

You don’t need to be intimately acquainted with his backstory to realise Sam Fender’s own life isn’t short of material to draw from. Press play on Seventeen Going Under and in the surging double-header of the title track and Gettin’ Started you can hear the beats of his own story, his journey from North Shields and his own battles pounding through the music’s euphoric rush. You can practically feel the wind blowing in your face as the motor starts running and the vista of a life unfolding opens up ahead of you.

“Some of the stories are autobiographical so they write themselves,” he says. “In a sense though, you’re writing about the human experience, but you do feel exposed.”

Like only a truly great songwriter can, Fender turns his own experience into art that speaks to, and resonates with, all of us. It’s why his songs mean so much to people. On the soaring Get You Down, he might be looking unflinchingly at his own failures as a partner, yet as listeners we can all recognise something of ourselves within its New Order-meets-The E Street Band jangle. Similarly, you don’t need to have experienced the same sort of relationship with a parent or family member that inspired the heart-crushing Spit Of You to enjoy the fact that it’s the most moving songs written about the relationship between a father and son for decades.

Though in relative terms Seventeen (Going Under) is coming under two years after Hypersonic Missiles, Fender’s songwriting is lightyears ahead here. Musically, the songs are far more nuanced, more detailed and more textured than before. Be it the plaintive piano blues of Last To Make It Home’s closing-time regret, the modal strings that swirl around the The Leveller’s pounding confusion or the enormous boom and crunch of Long Way Off’s state of the world address, there’s a far wider scope of sounds and styles on display here, and the deftness with which Fender incorporates them is dazzling.

A great example of just how far he’s come as a writer is Aye. A track Fender sees as a follow up to Hypersonic Missile’s polemical broadside White Privilege. Compare the two to see how much more sophisticated he’s become as a lyricist, unafraid to move in grey areas and face ambiguities in a way that actually reflects what it’s like to be a human through these troubling and confusing times.

“Politics is so unpalatable at the moment and so polarised. The online world is becoming progressively more toxic. We're so conditioned to assign every person we talk to online to a camp that we've completely lost any human connection,” he says of the song’s feeling of being trapped within an echo chamber of fury. “The only thing I care about is people. I think we've got to fight the injustices in the world and one of them is the fact that we're being hoodwinked by the 1% permanently and we’re sat down here shouting at each other about some stuff on the news. It's a fucking cesspit.  Everyone's fired up and pissed off before they've even begun the conversation.”

If the album’s first half largely mirrors Fender’s own story, its second deals with the toll life and your own feelings of self worth can take. There’s a gentle feeling of joy within the War On Drugs-like Mantra as it speaks of the importance of learning to love and accept yourself, while the explosive, widescreen sweep of Paradigms is a powerful reminder that the toxicity than can unfairly extinguish lives is sadly still with us. The empathy within is palatable as Fender reaches out a hand, repeating the lyric “no one should feel like this”.

Perhaps the most important song on the record, however, is closing track The Dying Light. A piano-led epic that revisits the bars and promenades of North Shields and sees the ghosts in the town still there, the dead boys that still keep growing in number, but comes to the powerful conclusion that as human beings we owe it to ourselves and everyone we love to keep fighting, that life will triumph. It’s a remarkable end to a remarkable album.

“This album is a coming of age story. It’s about growing up. It’s a celebration of life after hardship, it’s a celebration of surviving,” reflects Fender. “I think it’s fucking leagues ahead of the first one.”

Sam Fender had nothing to fear. By turning his gaze inwards he hasn’t come out sounding like a miserable c***t. He’s come out with an era-defining, life-affirming masterpiece. Seventeen Going Under is a celebration of life itself and is a triumph on every count. He’s right to feel proud of it.

Nikki Lane

Nikki Lane grew up First Baptist, but always felt like an outsider; her parents were divorced, and didn’t have a lot of money. Before music, fashion was Lane’s outlet for creative expression. She remembers being a teenager in Greenville, South Carolina, dressing up for Christian punk shows her parents allowed her to go to. "Remember the Aerosmith video where Alicia Silverstone changed her outfit in the car? That's really what the fuck I did.”

She dropped out of school at 17 and within two years had moved to Los Angeles, which led to New York City, and then down to Nashville, where she began writing her own songs.

2011 saw the release of her debut album Walk of Shame, which proved Lane could sing anything from swampy rockers to tender love ballads. It was a stepping stone for her more ambitious second album, 2014’s All or Nothin’, which was produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, whom she met while selling clothes at a Nashville flea market. Auerbach helped Lane amp up her sound, touching on doo-wop, surf-rock guitars and funky rhthyms. It worked - the stomping opener “Right Time” has racked up more than 10 million Spotify streams. It was then followed by 2017’s Highway Queen, where she made no secret of her big ambitions. The album received wide critical acclaim and was featured on multiple year-end best-of lists.

But then she wasn’t sure she wanted to make another one.

She was tired of saying yes and tired of the touring grind. She had lived up to her Highway Queen persona, touring from Boston to Barcelona, and back again. Lane did it all - driving the tour van, keeping track of the merch she designed, performing, meeting fans. “It was hard playing all the roles. There was very little left,” she says.

When the grind came to a halt, she was happy staying home, hanging out with artists like Sierra Ferrell (“One of the most raw, original talents I’ve ever heard - She's my favorite”). Lana Del Rey enlisted Lane to write and duet with her on last year’s Chemtrails Over the Country Club (Del Rey has also become known to jump on stage during Lane performances). Lane also collaborated with Spiritualized on their acclaimed Everything Was Beautiful.

“I hadn’t made a record in years and did not really feel interested in making another one,” she says. But Lane had been secretly stashing away ideas. “What I realized was how many little nuggets I was sitting on,” she says.

Enter Joshua Homme.

She and the Queens of the Stone Age frontman connected over the phone in May 2020 when the world was shut down. Like Lane, Homme was feeling overwhelmed with everything happening. “Neither of us knew what the year was going to hold and if it was going to work or if it was going to be easy.”

Energized by their talk, Lane and Homme found themselves in his Pink Duck Studios months later. Lane came in with new songs and Homme put together a studio band of big-budget talent including his Queens of the Stone Age collaborators Alain Johannes on guitar, Dean Fertita on organ & Michael Shuman on bass, as well as drummers Matt Helders of Arctic Monkeys and Carla Azar of the acclaimed post-punk band Autolux. Homme asked Lane to bring a bandmate of her own, and she chose her steel player Matt Pynn. Since Lane felt out of her element, Pynn became a crucial support system in a room of new faces: “I’d be like ‘Did we get that vocal?’ And he’d be like, ‘Fuck yeah.’”

On Denim & Diamonds, Lane combines her love of Nuggets-era bands like The 13th Floor Elevators with the back porch wit of Loretta Lynn - an artist Lane hadn’t discovered until she was in her twenties (“MTV was my babysitter growing up,” she admits). Later, Lynn immediately felt a kinship upon hearing Lane’s sharp-witted biographical vignettes. “She’s a lot like me,” Lynn told CBS’ Anthony Mason. “I just feel like we always knew each other. We might have met in another lifetime.”

Homme helped Lane take her sound to new places. He took her empowering kiss-off, the title track, “Denim and Diamonds,” and turned it into “the most Homme song on the record,” complete with a swaggering blues riff and dynamic snare-drum pummeling; On the heavy “Black Widow,” Lane uses spider superstition as a parallel to warn about a dangerous lover.

One song Lane keeps coming back to is “Pass it Down,” a buoyant folk singalong that came out of a phone conversation about her relationship with her father and her deeply religious upbringing. “It could be about religion, it could be about AA,” she says. “It’s about getting it off your chest in order to move on.” Lane realizes she may have stumbled upon the theme running through the entire record. “I'm attracted to things that might catch me on fire, because that's the inkwell,” says Lane. “I got my confidence back in some ways. I remembered what I was good at. I’m in a good place.”

For Lane, Denim & Diamonds was a chance to take stock of her first decade as a songwriter. She traces her story of origin, from her religious youth in South Carolina to Nashville Rebel. It’s a wild, heavy journey into the mind of one of today’s most talented songwriters.