Rolling Stone Launches Musicians on Musicians Tour With Charley Crockett and Noeline Hofmann
By Carys Anderson, March 25, 2025, 4:00pm, Earache!
Rolling Stone brought its Musicians on Musicians series from the page to the stage Monday night, launching a tour of its artist conversation program in Austin with a joint interview between Charley Crockett and Noeline Hofmann.
The magazine’s Senior Music Editor Joseph Hudak, who moderated the event, explained that each conversation in the tour – coming to sponsoring Sonesta Hotels in New Orleans, Washington, D.C., New York, and Portland throughout the year – is curated to fit the musical heritage of the city. Alberta-born Americana artist Hofmann, who called the province “the Texas of Canada,” and Lone Star native Crockett, thus opened the trek with a country twang.
Almost immediately, Hudak asked Crockett – who was born in San Benito and spent time in New Orleans, New York, and Dallas before settling in Austin – to explain his love for the city. In the first of many anecdotes offered in the evening, “Charley with an -ey” replied:
“Things are always changing in every town, and the more you try to hold on to it, the more the short time that you have is running out on you. Any place that I ever showed up, playing music on the street or trying to push my way in the bars, there would always be some old-timer around the corner going, ‘Ah. Charley Crockett, man, you missed it. The good times are gone, buddy. We had ‘em, and they're gone. This town sucks now.’
“I'm like, Dang man,” Crockett continued. “This happened to me on Sixth Street about 10 years ago. I was like, 'Dang. You got a funny accent. Were you born and raised in Austin?'
“‘No, I moved down here from Pennsylvania, and it's getting too expensive. I'm moving back to Pennsylvania with my parents.’
“This particular person,” Crockett concluded, “they left, and it was probably two, three years later, they were back.”
The event's pairing of Grammy-nominated songwriter Crockett with rising artist Hofmann felt like a showcase of cross-generational mentorship. Though Hofmann blew up thanks to a duet version of her song “Purple Gas” recorded with fellow 20-something artist Zach Bryan, she noted that Crockett brought her on the first tour of her career in 2024.
“I played hundreds of hole in the wall bar gigs and whatnot leading up to this, but I'd never been out on the road,” she shared. “We met at the Commodore Ballroom on the first night of tour, and we were playing a song during sound check called ‘Big River,’ and Charley said, ‘I heard you guys playing that Johnny Cash song. You did right by that song.’
“And you wouldn't believe how nervous I was on this day, standing [by] the stage that first night, watching the clock tick down to eight o'clock. I was thinking, the first step I take on this stage is the first step of the rest of my life. And it's really true. It was the first step into this chapter in my life. It's a complete 180.
“Before I went on that tour, it was a lot of talk about what was going to happen, a lot of build up, but not a lot of action,” she concluded. “But the first step I took on that stage was the first real action, and it's been hair straight back ever since.”
Hofmann will again open for Crockett, who talked at length about his own history of busking and pushing CDs on passersby, on select dates of his upcoming The Crooner & The Cowboy Tour with longtime friend and Fort Worth native Leon Bridges. Recalling the time he met Bridges in Dallas, Crockett shared:
“I gave Leon a CD, and I had seen him playing that night on different corners of Deep Ellum. I didn't really know him, but I liked his voice, and he was always such a good guy and special in his own right. But he liked my music, and always told his audience that he liked me and I could never understand why. But we've been really good friends for 10 years now, and here we are, finally doing a tour together, talking about making a record together.”
After the interview, Hofmann and Crockett took turns performing solo acoustic sets. Alongside “Big River” and “Purple Gas,” the former played cuts from her 2024 debut – plus a cover of Luke Bell’s “The Bullfighter,” a song she said served as a “mantra” during a particularly rough ranch job and again as she pursued her music career full-time.
Performing the song on the road with Crockett “has brought this magic, has made me many friends, and brought me strength and friendship during my loneliest times,” Hofmann said.
Guitar hung high, armed like Cash, Crockett played songs from his fresh, Shooter Jennings-produced 15th album Lonesome Drifter in addition to deep cuts from throughout his career. His voice boomed and guitar crackled during stripped-down versions of new songs like “Game I Can’t Win” and “Easy Money,” but “Get Up Outta Texas,” a decade-old blues number he said he used to play on the street close to the hosting Stephen F. Austin Royal Sonesta Hotel, hit the hardest, especially since he’s settled in the Lone Star State – no longer busking, instead signed to a major label and performing for Rolling Stone – once again.
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