Charley Crockett — A self-taught Texas country, blues, and soul singer-songwriter who rose from street and subway performing to chart success. Known for a prolific catalog and a fierce commitment to authenticity, now recording a trilogy with producer Shooter Jennings.
The gist
Charley Crockett recounts his improbable path from a poor South Texas childhood and street/subway busking in New York, Europe, and California to becoming a touring country artist. The conversation dwells on authenticity in music and comedy, the predatory and unregulated nature of the music business, and the legacy of outlaw country (Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings). Crockett shares his near-death heart condition and self-advocacy through open-heart surgery, while Joe details how the pandemic shutdown drove the comedy scene's migration to Austin and the founding of his Comedy Mothership. They close on big-picture tangents: AI and the singularity, the moon-landing conspiracy, and ancient Egypt.
Big reveals
- Crockett says he never got addicted to drugs despite his whole family being in AA and his sister dying from substances, crediting near-zero alcohol tolerance and his mother's example.
- Crockett recounts almost dying in the back of his tour bus from an arrhythmia, leading to open-heart surgery he had to self-advocate for after the Affordable Care Act covered him.
- He explains refusing a mechanical heart valve over stroke risk and choosing an Edwards bovine cow valve instead, carrying the product number in his wallet.
- Joe explains the Austin comedy scene only exists because every 'green light' hit: COVID shut down the Comedy Store, comics were unemployed, and his Spotify money let him build a club.
- Crockett attended a Viper Room party announcing three legitimately unreleased Waylon Jennings records, tied to his work with Shooter Jennings.
- Crockett reveals a Sony 'star maker' tried to package him and his subway crew through focus-group training around 2010-2011, which he walked away from.
- Joe claims Coca-Cola is the biggest producer of medical-grade cocaine, extracting cocaine from the same coca leaves used for the soda's flavor.
Things worth remembering
- An 1800s Sears Roebuck catalog sold a heroin kit with two needles for about $1.50.
- Outlaw-era artists like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings were making two or three records a year; Aretha Franklin 'popped off' on her ninth or tenth record.
- Waylon Jennings broke the Nashville system's stranglehold by winning the right to use his own band, studio, and producer.
- A journalist framed it as: if Willie Nelson is country music's Che Guevara, Waylon Jennings was the 'long-haired prince of darkness.'
- Waylon Jennings learned to play bass on stage backing up Buddy Holly, who at the time was bigger than Elvis.
- Crockett and his crew could reach roughly 3,000 people in half a day busking subway cars, far more than a month of club residencies.
- Joe describes the Eye of Horus as essentially a diagram of the pineal gland, the brain's 'third eye' that produces DMT.
- On the Kardashev scale, a Type 1 civilization harnesses all of a planet's energy, Type 2 is stellar, and Type 3 is galactic.
- Whale bones are found in the Sahara desert, which was a rich rainforest thousands of years ago.