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Last year, Texas-based roots singer Charley Crockett played more than 170 shows. With his holiday break, he hit the road again, this time with his girlfriend to shoot a new music video for his version of “Jamestown Ferry,” released last September on his covers collection Lil G.L.’s Honky Tonk Jubilee.
Written by Mack Vickery and Bobby Borchers, “Jamestown Ferry” became a Top 10 country hit for Tanya Tucker in 1972. Crockett’s loping take accentuates the heartbreak, with his raspy voice and Cajun inflection — he got his start busking on the streets of New Orleans — elongating the song’s sorrowful phrasing. The video, which Crockett wrote and directed with Lyza Renee, was shot against the scenic, mountainous backdrop of Colorado towns Durango, Silverton and Ouray, including scenes inside the Strater Hotel in Strater.
Clocking in at only three minutes, “Jamestown Ferry,” even though it’s a cover, fits the mold of Crockett’s typically concise songwriting. “I like the simplicity of a short song. The street taught me to do that,” he told Rolling Stone Country last October. “I could never play a song on the street that didn’t get tips. If it didn’t, I had to throw it out. [As a street performer] nobody’s asking you to be there.”
Lil G.L.’s Honky Tonk Jubilee, Crockett’s first LP since 2016’s In the Night, was his debut release for Thirty Tigers. He’s currently working on an album of originals slated to be released sometime in 2018. Crockett will be touring the West Coast this month with Jaime Wyatt before performing on the Cayamo cruise in February.
