Seven years ago Charley Crockett graced the cover of the Chronicle, leaning out the window of his car with a wink that suggested he knew how fast that hot rod could run – even if no one believed him yet.
At the time, having just settled in Austin, it was clear that the perpetually rambling troubadour had the spirit and talent to make a unique mark, but the San Benito-born songwriter was unsure exactly how he was supposed to fit into the music industry with his defiantly throwback country style, hard luck blues-born rhythms, and soulful Gulf Coast twang. Turns out it was the music industry that needed to figure out how to keep up with him.
Crockett is at his best when he’s pushing expectations and carving his own path.
Dollar a Day arrives as Crockett prepares to launch The Crooner & the Cowboy Tour with Leon Bridges, where the two Texans will revisit their Deep Ellum salad days – now in arenas. The album also serves as the second in a Shooter Jennings-produced trilogy for Island Records that kicked off with this March’s Lonesome Drifter LP. Indeed, Crockett has kept his anachronistic recording pace in releasing 15 albums over the past decade.
The thematic thread between Drifter and Dollar seems tenuous, other than Crockett’s continuing fluctuation between casting himself as the downtrodden outsider fighting for a break and the uncompromising star kicking down the establishment doors. That paradox remains one of the most intriguing aspects of his catalog, a distinctly American dream of self-made success that encapsulates both the beaten-down underdog and the bombastic go-getter.
Crockett’s drive is compelled by the myth of escape and triumph shimmering just on the horizon – the perceived promises of “Crystal City” or “Silver City,” or even Nashville – that are of course never what they seem. It’s fitting that Drifter closes with George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning,” an apex of the just-one-more-shot genre.
Dollar a Day opens more ruminatively with the title track, the songwriter strumming acoustic and worn down from the grind. But lead single “Crucified Son” immediately punches back with swagger, a classic Crockett anthem updating his evolving origin story now that it’s brushing against success. Crockett’s pull between hustle and hard luck emerges best in the weary soulful standout “Stay Ready”: “My spirit won’t let me rest/ Always searching for another test/ There’s no promise what tomorrow brings/ So I stay ready for anything.”
Jennings keeps the production straightforward and tight, alternating between sparse reflections (“Woman in a Bar,” “El Paso to Denver”), dusty Southwestern ballads (“Sante Fe Ring”), and funky grooves (“Ain’t That Right,” “Lone Star”) that hearkens Waylon’s outlaw country.
A mid-album break via the cinematic Western instrumental “Age of the Ram (Theme)” surprises, and emphasizes how much the project’s 15 songs play like Seventies soundtrack classics – from spaghetti Western to Blaxploitation action to Midnight Cowboy drama. What it lacks in cohesiveness it more than makes up for in individually cut gems.
The closing double shot of “Destroyed” and “Alamosa” delivers Crockett’s best sound on Dollar, perhaps because they reach furthest from the classic country underpinnings that define most of the album. “Destroyed” rocks out with a horn-blasted Memphis roll, and “Alamosa” grooves gritty blues with basslines cut with sharp string bursts. They end the record with a reminder that Crockett is at his best when he’s pushing expectations and carving his own path, even if success may not be what he imagined.
Charley Crockett
Dollar a Day (Island Records)
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This article appears in August 15 • 2025.