Album Review- Charley Crockett’s “Visions of Dallas”

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#510 and #573 (Traditional country, Country blues) on the Country DDS.

You can leave Dallas, but Dallas never really leaves you. Whether you were born and raised there, or only spent a few years there, Dallas often leaves an indelible mark. Blame the skyline. Blame the hustle and bustle, and the metropolitan attitude that makes it feel like a foreign country compared to the rest of Texas. But once a Dallasite, always a Dallasite. This is true of Charley Crockett.

Dallas is not a music town. It’s a football town. But the musical roots there arguably run deeper than any other city in Texas due to the blues scene in Deep Ellum. When a musician is from Dallas, you know it because they come with a dogged determination from having to fight an uphill battle for attention at bars against cover bands and the NFL Sunday Ticket on 48 screens. They also have the blues deeply embedded in their soul.

Stevie Ray Vaughn and Ray Wylie Hubbard may be synonymous with Austin, but they were born and raised on the mean streets of south Dallas. Charley Crockett was born in south Texas, but it was his time both growing up and during the early part of his career in Dallas that makes his story feel synonymous with the city.

Charley Crockett claimed that his 2022 album The Man From Waco was his conceptualized album, inspired by real deal country legend James Hand. But listening through, it was hard to find the thread. $10 Cowboy Chapter II: Visions of Dallas is arguably the album with the underlying narrative, at least at the beginning. Even though it’s released as an addendum to his $10 Cowboy album from back in April, it deserves to be regarded as it’s own autonomous work. It also might be a pinch better.

Charley Crockett is one of the most important country and roots artists of our era. Those who question this assessment expose themselves as never having seen him live. But any honest Crockett fan will admit that his skills come on strongest as a stage entertainer and an interpreter of songs.

Charley Crockett’s albums are good, and his continued collaborations with producer Billy Horton have resulted in some of the best throwback country sounds you can find on modern records. But his original songs often work by calling to mind movements and songs in country music’s past and leaning on nostalgia, like the track from Visions of Dallas called “Avoiding Mirrors” that reminds you of Lefty Frizzell’s “I Never Go Around Mirrors.”


More than anything else, Charley Crockett might be one of the most thorough students of the music. The way he can pick obscure cuts like Hoyt Axton’s “Trouble and Misery,” or “Crystal Chandeliers and Burgandy” written by Jack Routh and make them sound like classic country hits is a feat all unto itself. When you saw the name “Loretta” in the track list, you hoped it would be the Townes Van Zandt song because you wanted to hear Charley Crockett’s take. He doesn’t disappoint.

All throughout Visions of Dallas are little tidbits tying it back to Big D. Townes Van Zandt is originally from Dallas’s neighbor, Fort Worth. On the well-recognized song “Lonesome Feeling” popularized by The Osborne Brothers, Crockett changes ‘Cincinnati’ to ‘Albuquerque,’ and ‘Kentucky’ to ‘Texas.” The opening title track was co-written with Charley’s fiancée Taylor Grace, who was born in Houston, but loves Dallas.

Crockett’s own feelings about the city come across as mixed. “Have you ever seen a red horse flying through the sky?” Crockett asks on the album’s second song “Avoiding Mirrors,” referencing the iconic Pegasus sign that was first lit up in downtown Dallas in 1934 atop the city’s tallest building at the time, and now rests in a municipal park. There is a reason the old Dallas TV show chose a flyover shot of the skyline for the opening. There is something about that those tall building rising up out of the flat prairie that inspires a sense of awe.

Charley Crockett’s career has been marked by releases of original albums, and albums of cover songs. But as he underscores on Visions of Dallas, he’s perhaps at his best when you get a mix of both. He’s just such a great interpreter of songs, it feels like sacrilege when he leaves this aspect of his music on the side. His treatment of Bobby Pierce’s “Losers Lounge” is pretty impeccable. Then when Crockett sings his own straight blues song “20-20 Vision,” you can envision him belting it out on a the corner of Elm and Walton in Deep Ellum.

Charley Crockett’s work ethic is admirable. He’s released two album in 2024 so far, with perhaps another on the way. But it’s also his breadth of knowledge, his skill across roots disciplines, and a sincere passion he brings to the music that is in turn conferred upon the audience that makes him nearly peerless in the country and roots space, and a marvel of modern music.

1 3/4 Guns Up (8.1/10)

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