Charley Crockett is the 21st century's answer to the days of cowboy songs and outlaw country, a dose of grounding, old-school realness in the midst of a hyper-evolving digital world.
The steady-voiced singer and songwriter brought his throwback vibe to the Wilmington faithful on the last night of summer (aka Monday, Sept. 21), playing a nearly two-hour set at Live Oak Bank Pavilion filled with some two dozen rootsy rockers, stark folk ballads and jammy side quests that showed why there isn't a country artist today quite like Charley Crockett.
Monday marked the fourth night in a row for a concert at Live Oak after two nights of Widespread Panic and one of pop stalwarts Foreigner. The venue's lawn seating section looked pretty sparse, with Live Nation
employees hawking $10 seat upgrades to folks who walked through the gate. Attendance looked to be roughly a third of Live Oak's 7,200 capacity.
Then again, it was a school night, and perhaps Wilmington's concert-going audience was simply too exhausted to pack the venue for a fourth night in a row.
That's not to say the crowd wasn't into it, hooting and hollering at the many North Carolina references Crockett inserted into songs and sitting in rapt silence during a stunning mid-show sequence that had the crowd-laser focused on Crockett performing solo with just an acoustic guitar.
"I sure have missed North Carolina," Crockett said at one point. "This is the best crowd we've seen on this tour so far, bar none."
And while Crockett may say that to all the crowds, he certainly did sound sincere, a sincerity that's the hallmark of his considerable style.
Taking the stage just after 9 p.m. with country bouncer "Crazy Women Ridge" from 2026 album "Age of the Ram" — the first of two albums the prolific singer has released this year, and his 17th since his 2015 debut — Crockett wore a white cowboy hat, boots, a plaid shirt and jeans.
His voice deep and true, Crockett broke out his hit song "$10 Cowboy" early, the soulful, organ-driven groover an autobiographical meditation on how he rose from his origins playing Texas street corners to touring the nation with a crack five-man band.
"It's all blues, I learned that playing on the street corner," Crockett said at one point, telling a story about how the first album he bought with his own money was one by bluesman B.B. King.
Crockett and his band certainly draw from a wide array of musical traditions, starting with country and blues but also encompassing rock and R&B. Then there was the stirring murder ballad "Man From Waco," with its mariachi horns and Western vibe, and the Jerry Lee Lewis-adjacent honky-tonk dancer "Baby, Baby, Don't Tell Me That," a cover of a song by obscure singer James Hand, who Crockett said "taught me what it is to be country."
Crockett's always been a great interpreter of songs, and the strongest part of his set came when it was just him and his guitar. He covered stoic weeper "Tecumseh Valley" by Townes Van Zandt, then played an original, "The Death of Bill Bailey," which Crockett said was "me trying to be Townes Van Zandt."
He ended the solo portion of his set with a spine-tingling rendition of what Crockett called the most hardcore cowboy song he'd ever heard: "Diamond Joe," the tale of a crooked Texas ranch owner that dates to the 1940s and has been covered by the likes of Bob Dylan.
Crockett and his able band then cranked it back up for some funky country rock in the Hank Jr./Waylon Jennings mold with "Eagle and Crow" and turned North Carolina native Link Wray's "Fire and Brimstone" into a wild, dancy rocker that had Crockett boogieing across the stage.
Some of the band's songs had similar vibes and rhythms, and as the set got jammier and the night went on, some audience members dipped out. Still, the vast majority stayed and called for an encore, and Crockett obliged with "Waylon Rides Again," a tribute to Jennings written with the late country star's son, Shooter, and "Jamestown Ferry," the Tanya Tucker cover "that put me on the map," Crockett said.
Prior to Crockett taking the stage, opening act Durand Jones & The Indications laid down a sweetly pristine set of soul and R&B, with falsetto-singing drummer Aaron Frazer scoring chills and lead singer Jones proving the high-pitched answer to Barry White on "Lover's Holiday."
At one point in his set, Crockett said he's been told that he's both "too country" and "not country enough."
Safe to say that means he's found his own way, and that makes Crockett not only a true artist, but also the real deal when it comes to playing songs inspired by old-school country music.
John Staton is the arts and culture reporter at the StarNews. You can reach him at jstaton@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Wilmington gets old-school on a school night with Charley Crockett | Exclusive
