\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 1963, Marty Robbins released a rodeo tune called \u201cOld Red.\u201d The title is the name of an ornery bull that had \u201cnever been rode\u201d until he drew Billy McLane, a brash young cowboy who had \u201cnever been thrown.\u201d Both meet their demise at the hands of the other when Old Red flips on his back, breaking his neck and crushing McLane to death. Neither the bull nor the cowboy gave in, and they were buried together, so the song goes.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI think that\u2019s a good death,\u201d Charley Crockett<\/a> says. \u201cThat\u2019s all you can do, you know? Try to be sticky.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut Crockett\u2019s world is art, where characters don\u2019t have to die. The prolific Texas songwriter revived Billy McLane as the central character in Age of the Ram<\/em>, his latest studio effort released on Friday via Island Records. The 20-track LP serves as equal parts music and cinema in which Crockett weaves a tale of McLane as a cattle rustler on the run from the law who \u2014 eventually \u2014\u00a0gets his redemption.<\/p>\n \n\tThe record once again finds Crockett paired with producer Shooter Jennings<\/a> at Sunset Sound Studio 3 in Los Angeles, where the two recorded Lonesome Drifter<\/a><\/em> and Dollar a Day<\/em> \u2014 the first two installments of Crockett\u2019s \u201cSagebrush Trilogy.\u201d Age of the Ram<\/em> completes the series and gives Crockett three major albums since mid-March 2025.<\/p>\n \n\tCrockett may have centered the record around McLane, but he\u2019s putting himself on full display from start to finish. McLane\u2019s character provides endless allegory for the music industry dynamics that Crockett has eschewed over his two-decade career. His story, from New York City busker to his felony conviction for running drugs to a full-scale breakthrough over the past five years, runs parallel to that of McLane. If the cowboy in Age of the Ram<\/em> were real and here today, he\u2019d be going toe-to-toe with Gavin Adcock<\/a> or praising Bad Bunny\u2019s authenticity<\/a> in a crowd of posers or getting turned away trying to enter Canada<\/a> because of past transgressions.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere were two storylines going on,\u201d Jennings says of the prior installments in the Sagebrush Trilogy. \u201cOne of them was about Charley\u2019s real life, intertwined in songs like \u2018Easy Money.\u2019 Then, there was this kind of fantasy story, which you hear in \u2018Lone Star\u2019 and some other songs, but they were also still telling Charley\u2019s story \u2014\u00a0particularly the story of his career with labels and managers and things. He had this concept to reveal that character in the fantasy storyline to be Billy McLane.\u201d<\/p>\n