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One of our goals at Alvies is to be a cowboy boot company for non-cowboys — to challenge the stereotype that you have to sport a huge belt buckle and a drawl to enjoy wearing boots. So we were selective when considering country music artists for our Waterloo collaboration.

But everyone at Alvies HQ (aka The Boot Cave) agreed that we had to include Charley Crockett’s new record. Similar to what we’re trying to do with boots, Crockett set out to make an album that would challenge the ideas of what country music is and can be. And did just that. While we think everything he has released since moving to Austin in 2017 has been great, Welcome to Hard Times is possibly his best work yet.

His intent was to make a more eclectic record, like the country albums of the 50s and 60s that paired rhumba beats with honky tonk, blues with cha-cha. The result is something that can’t easily be pigeon-holed, but that producer Mark Neill calls “dark gothic country.” The sound draws on honky tonk piano, blues and soul blended together with country into something all its own — something that must be heard.