By james art 
Charlie Croquette spends so much time on the road, he says he sleeps better on his bus than on a real bed.
“This big diesel engine sings my sleeping songs at night,” he says. “It’s really soothing to me. You know, the low noise of the motor and satellite TV, turned low in an old -time movie.”
In the last year, Croquette has played more than 100 performances – in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and throughout the United States and its preference for the bus, he says, explains why there is not much in this dressing room behind the scenes in Yaamava ‘Resort & Casino in San Bernardino. The counters are scarce – a mescal bottle, a bowl of lemons and ginger, a bag of tortilla chips and a case of Topo Chico.
“I take the lemon and I just put it in my mescal there,” he says. Asked if the mecal is good for his singing voice, he replies: “Yes, let’s continue with it.”
Outside the dressing room, in a corridor, lined with signed nails, its wardrobes are open, filled with exquisitely preserved vintage Western clothing – a dream of the collector. There are jackets Pendleton and Houndstooth and smooth golden leather leather with fringes and complex stitches. He removes a box of beautiful cowboy boots with tan, with cream rodeo riders in the middle of the flight on the side.
“I bet I paid too much for that,” he says. “I started dressing up on the street in New Orleans. And the main reason was, being, being [the] Hobo that I was, I started dressing so that tourists would take me seriously, you know? Then I wore Wingtip shoes and old Newsboy hats. I made a little jig for tourists in front of Café du Monde. “He bursts into a jig in the carpet. He still has it.” I was a man with a song and a dance. ”
Crocket is still a man with songs and dance. But he has been a long way since his days get on the streets of New Orleans. Now he is performing theaters in front of thousands of people. He decorated the scene in Rayman’s legendary audience of Nashville and is clogged with Willie Nelson. He even got Married in the Ranch for luck to Willie Nelson Last year. To limit everything he is ready for his first grams, for the best album of America, for his recording $ 10 cowboyS
Crocket says that family Lor connects him to the border and politician Davy Crocket – “Davy’s Son” is written on big red letters on his tourist truck. He was born in the state where Davey died, in San Benito, Texas, just miles from the Mexican border in the lower valley of Rio Grande. He spent his early years living near there, in a single trailer with his mother, among grapefruit and orange groves, cotton and sugar cane.
Croquet recalls that it was influenced at an early age by Johnny Channels Show – The music showcase, aided by the eponymous singer of Tedjano – and Croquette says that he was boarding milk, sports his nose, waving his hand and shouting “Take it!” To repeat the host signature order.
When he was 8 or 9 years old, his mother moved them to the Dallas Form Worth area. Then he started spending the summer in New Orleans. He lived with his uncle, who worked as a Boucer at Bourbon Street Strip Clubs, gave cards to Casinos and worked in Bingo halls.
“I saw the culture of the French Quarter when I was 8, 9 years old,” Croquet recalls. When he was more adult, he started playing and sings on the streets there. “And it was really in New Orleans, where I learned all the different styles. I learned to drink songs, playing in front of Royal Street tourists. I got a sense of jazz time, how to really accumulate a guitar, how to choose a guitar for a match, until stirring.
It is in New Orleans that he says he has learned to play for the audience; How to entertain and talk to crowds – a skill that he spins in New York by playing in parks.
“I played in a place that no one wanted,” he says. “And then slowly, but for sure, for more than a few years I started to improve because I played 10 o’clock a day. But I couldn’t compete with the noise of traffic, only a young man and a guitar.
Underground, for metro platforms And inside train carsS He began to introduce himself to a group called “train robbers”, and in one video you can see a croquet, in a T -shirt of Beanie and Black, singing as mentally like his friend Jaden Wuderd between the verses.
Performance in New York has brought other options. He headed for California, Colorado, Copenhagen, Paris and Morocco to Busk. But the further he got, he says, the more he felt that his roots in Texas were showing.
“I think I’ve been running away from Texas for a long time. In the end you run far enough from the home that you realize at one point that even if you try to get out of it, it tells you who you are.”
They laughed at me in New York
I called me a fool in LA Hey
I doubt Nashville saw me coming
Apart from the people who work until late
Played every room in the state of Texas
All in California too
So many nights I can’t remember
Maybe I played a song for you
Leaving San Francisco hastily
I was escaped from the city of Fort Worth
It was at the bottom of New Orleans
They river boats make a lonely sound
– “good in the loss” from the album $ 10 cowboy
As he takes the scene for the sound check at Yaamava theater, he plays a pale leather jacket, a plaid western shirt and calm jeans. It is on a big white cowboy hat, and its initials are large above the tape, the two CS side horseshoes, strewn with lights.
In addition to the exhausting schedule of the croquet tour, he played a fruitful amount of music. He has released 15 records in the last nine years, all of his own label, Davy’s son. In March he releases another, Lonely driferCopped by Sagittarius Jennings, son of Waylan Jennings and Jesse Colter.
In the middle of all, in 2019 he underwent an outdoor heart surgery for a potentially fatal problem with heart valves. But even that didn’t slow him down.
“I think with my heart surgery, when I woke up on the other side of it, it’s not the pain or a scar on my chest – I suddenly realized I would die,” he says what he took from that.
If anything, it made him work more. He is afraid to stop, he says.
“I guess I’m afraid not to enclose, do you know? As you move further in this business, ticket sales are rising. The ticket price goes.” Well, I have to do more. ”
It sounds a bit like he says “to do it” because an artist means constantly feeling inadequate – as you are not enough.
“I didn’t want to say it like that. But I want to say he could just say that hammer.
He can even win him Grammy.
“I’ll give it to my mother if I ever get it.”
Ailsa Chang and Kira Wakeam have contributed to this story.
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