SAN ANGELO, TX — "Blaine’s is a famous bar that I had been wanting to play it’s just a matter time before I made my way through the great city of San Angelo," said Charley Crockett.
Born in the same town as Freddy Fender, San Benito Texas has bred yet another wild musician
"I lived all over America playing in the streets New Orleans to New York city to San Francisco and everywhere in between but these days I’m hanging my hat in Austin Texas again,” said Crockett.
He strummed his first string at 17.
"My mom got me one out of a pawn shop in Irving Texas," he said.
And like most young boys he says mischief was not a foreign notion.
"I was getting in a lot of trouble, and I found my way out of it through playing music,” he said. “My uncle was living in the French quarter in New Orleans when I was younger and I my momma sent me to live with him.”
"He was working at a restaurant there called La Louisiana down in the French Quarter and spending my days with him and there in between Bourbon and Royale is where I got my first taste of the street music, eventually I became one of them."
Some could say Charley's found humble fame down in West Texas. But he says there's odd experience where all his knowledge comes from.
"I used to perform in the train cars in New York city with spoken work poets, rappers and I would do a combination of my type of blues and soul country stuff mixed in with the hip hop and they would free style maybe about the logo on a man’s shirt or the train on the next stop or the flowers on your shirt or something."
Some of his craziest shows were the ones played on the streets and often for a homeless crowd.
"Sometime people you know we'd be performing in a train cars and pick pockets would use us as a distraction to maybe rob some lady and get in her purse while she was busy focused on us playing on the train,” he said.
And the bar scene is tame now for what he's played through.
"On New Year’s Eve in Dallas last year I played in fifteen-degree weather outside still got paid though," said Crockett.
While it's taken him years to get here selling out the bar of San Angelo’s dreams is a milestone.
"The fact that I can sell a bunch of tickets on a place I’ve never played before I’ve got nothing but gratitude to the folks that support me it really does mean everything to me," he said.
Charley travels with a group of guys he says are perfect.
"They look like men but they're really just a bunch of stray cats," he said.
While most say there is no I in team, for Charley Crockett and his band, there is no 'end' in friends.
"My tour manager Los herding around got some of the best boys you can get," said Crockett.
"It’s these little pictures of life that I can take with me you I know and when I’m an old man I have those recordings to look back on a feel like I did something," said Crockett.
And selling out is not a sheet in his music book.
"I’m an independent artist and everything out on my records i do and it’s me at the end of the day i get to make the last call and decision and I fought hard for that, I’ve been offered a lot of deals that maybe could make me more famous than I am now but it just wasn't what I wanted to do and its not to say I’m real grateful for the opportunities I’m real proud of the fact that i got here my way."
"I’m proud of that," said Crockett.