Earlier this week, the eternally prolific Charley Crockett announced his major label debut, Lonesome Drifter, which will be released in March on Island Records. Crockett is no newcomer: Lonesome Drifter arrives after a decade of touring and more than a dozen studio albums from the 40-year-old singer-songwriter (“I just keep dodging them,” Crockett said of major labels last year when speaking to Rolling Stone).
After teasing the album with a trailer, Crockett released a music video for the title track, the first full taste of Crockett’s record, produced by Shooter Jennings. The preview of Lonesome Drifter should assuage any fears that Crockett’s leap to a major label might seriously impact his sound. It’s a slow-burning country-blues rocker that finds him telling the tale of a vagabond traveler, complete with a searing guitar solo. “Desdemona, where do I begin?” Crockett sings at the beginning of the song. “Who among us is without sin?”
Filmed in Colorado, New Mexico, California and Texas, the video opens with a narrative title card: “In a land of cheap traders and thieves, a powerful shadow syndicate had near total control of the territory. Where bitter range wars raged endlessly, a lonesome drifter appeared…” Crockett is that drifter, determined to be free and leave a life of violence behind.
Crockett said the song was inspired by his long-ago period of busking in New York City. “It’s how I learned to play electric guitar with an amp on my shoulder,” he said in a statement. “While I was waiting for the next train, I wrote songs. A few years later, I was in California working on the ganja farms, and I came up with the ‘Lonesome Drifter’ section. When I arrived on the West Coast, I worked to stay out there as a drifter, so I could get away with playing music for a living. At night, I was doing heavy electric blues and hillbilly shit at local bars for six hours. Shooter got me back into that mindset.”
Lonesome Drifter will likely introduce and expose Crockett to an entirely new fanbase. It also includes some re-recordings of songs he’s has cut in years past (“Jamestown Ferry,” made famous by Tanya Tucker) as well as new covers of country classics like George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning.”
Lonesome Drifter was recorded last March at Sunset Sounds Studio in Los Angeles. “The album made itself,” Crockett said in a statement. “Shooter knew how to cut loose and let this thing unfold.”