Critic's Corner – County Highway

Concert

Charley Crockett’s Big Fat Mouth

Part cow and part man, he’s heir to the outlaw-country tradition

He complains: As talented as many Nashville songwriters are, none of them know any fucking songs

It’s the latest installment in the Battle of Waylon & Willie vs. The Machine

By Millan Verma

Walking through a backstage maze of tour buses, Charley Crockett looks out at the Atlantic and takes a big sip of air. “This tastes like home. I was born on this here Gulf Coast, way down in South Texas.” It’s the third time he’s mentioned his roots to me, and when he takes the stage a little later, he lets the crowd know, too. “Hello, my name is Charley Crockett. That’s Charley with an ‘E-Y’ — like Pride — and Crockett with two ‘Ts’ — like Davy. I’m from a little town in the Rio Grande Valley called San Benito.” We’re in Clearwater, Florida, on the seventeenth stop of his joint tour with soul singer Leon Bridges, a tour they’ve aptly dubbed “The Crooner & The Cowboy.” It’s certainly hot, but the humidity is merciful. Crockett is wearing a brown ten-gallon hat with scuffed boots, a short-sleeve button-up, and bootcut jeans exclaimed by a big shiny buckle. A large silver necklace depicting an Egyptian Horus falcon pokes out of his shirt. In Egyptian mythology, it’s thought to …

Festival

Healing Appalachia Through Song

A music festival by and for recovering addicts and people who love them

Chris Stapleton’s voice has a mineral quality come from somewhere beneath the earth’s surface

38,000 black headstones, each commemorating someone who died of an overdose.

By Farahn Morgan

The Panasonic table radio in my grandparents’ living room held a strange fascination for me. During the day, I’d stand in front of it, studying its matte silver facing and smooth faux-woodgrain finish. At night, with the sun hidden behind the arched backs of the Eastern Kentucky mountains, I’d pretend to sleep on the plush velour sofa, listening for the soft click of the knob and the lonesome lullabies that came tumbling into the black licorice night. For a long time, I forgot about the radio, forgot about the AM station’s lo-fi crackling. The memory comes back to me while I’m heading north on US Route 23 in Kentucky. I’ve been asked to cover Healing Appalachia, an event that bills itself as the largest recovery-based music festival in the world. The truth is that I almost didn’t take the assignment. I’ve seen addiction at close range — how it tears through families, through whole communities. It’s painful to think about. I try to push it out of my mind. What brought me around to the …