Charlie Robison

One Liner: An old favorite, back from the dead, for more boozy fun

Wikipedia Genre: Country is what Wikipedia says, but he's more Texas County and Red Dirt.

Home: Bandera, Texas

Poster Position: small Type 
Saturday.

Thoughts:  There was a time when I would have put Charlie up there in my top ten of artists that I wanted to hear on any given day.  The Life of the Party album landed right around the time I graduated from college, and that was right about the time that my interest in country music was at its apex.

After college, I moved to Dallas right when KHYI started broadcasting with a great mix of classic country and newer Texas-centric artists who were picking up the torch from Jerry Jeff and Robert Earl.  I don't know if they were the first to try that sort of programming move, but they were certainly the first that I heard.  I immediately got in to Bruce Robison ("Wrapped" should have been the first dance at my wedding, but I wasn't thinking straight), his brother Charlie Robison, Slaid Cleaves ("Broke Down" is a classic, with "Lydia" one of my favorites), and Chris Knight, and then started going back to some classics from Cash, LeDoux, Steve Earle, and Waylon Jennings.  It was an eye-opening time for me to realize the depth of great song-writing available in the country genre if you had a well-curated playlist provided to you.

And the classic, untouchable tune from that 1998 album is still classic and untouchable, an amazing lyrical tale of a slacker who isn't going very far but is pretty well okay with that.  "My Hometown," his biggest streamer at 30.1 million streams.

Even that video is classic.  Haha - they changed the lyrics!  Says they spent all their money on "shots" instead of "pot."  That is lame.

Not long after that album came out, I was at a music festival of sorts that was being held in the mansion from the TV show Dallas called Southfork Ranch.  KHYI put on a little music festival inside of the Southfork.  I have no recollection of who was there, and I'm certain that the Dixie Chicks were not playing, but I am certain that Charlie Robison was one of the headliners.  Well, Charlie was married to Emily Robison, the extremely attractive guitar and banjo player from the Dixie Chicks, and one of the guys I was with had the balls to go ask Emily to dance (the show was in a big ballroom with a dance floor included), during her husband's set, and she actually said yes and danced with him.  Legend.  

Charlie and Bruce are from Bandera, Texas, and are both badass songwriters in their own respective right.  Bruce has been covered by the Chicks, George Strait, and Faith Hill & Tim McGraw.  I thought that more people have covered Charlie songs, but it looks like those were songs that I thought Charlie wrote, but I just knew his version before someone else (like Kenny Chesney) then covered.  Like, also from that 1998 album, "Loving County" is a brutally perfect story of murder and consequences.  Just excellent songwriting.  "Barlight" is a little cheesy, but a good singalong anyway.  "Indianola" and "Sunset Boulevard" are good tunes.  The whole album is great, really.

2001's Step Right Up has a few other really good songs on it as well.  Personally, I love "The Wedding Song," a duet with Natalie Maines of The Chicks, because it is all about a wedding in suburban Seguin, and I was likewise married just outside of Seguin, Texas on the Guadalupe River.  Luckily no one played Bachman Turner Overdrive or served hot dogs at my wedding, but we were in that wheelhouse for sure.  "Desperate Times" is great, "John O'Reilly" is good, "Life of the Party" is solid.  I had kind of forgotten about some of these songs.  I will definitely say that the album opener, "Right Man for the Job," gets under my skin because of the droning quality of the chorus.  This has Kelly Willis instead of Natalie, and is live, but a great version of this tune.  

So cutting and rude, but still kind of cute.  "The freshman fifteen killed all your dates" is brutal.  Damn I love Kelly Willis' voice.  I wish she was on this poster!  His Wikipedia says that he really did play football at Texas State, which was derailed by a knee injury, and then moved to Austin and joined up with a handful of bands over the years before striking out on his own.

One more tune, this is his second-biggest streamer, which I suspect is because of people's holiday playlists.  From the album Good Times, from 2004, you get "New Years Day."  Just over 29 million streams.

Part of what makes this appealing is just the shambling, drunken, looseness of the whole sound.  Really sounds like he's your college buddy who is still just stumbling around trying to find a good time and make bad decisions along the way.  The last time I saw him was when I was living in Corpus Christi for a summer with my friend Tate.  We got tickets to see him in the little stage off to the side of the Executive Surf Club, which is an awesome venue, and Robison seemed drunk and belligerent throughout the show, which made it even more entertaining.  This is the kind of music that you can have a great time singing along to.

Several years ago, Charlie announced that he was permanently unable to sing.  Apparently, he had surgery, and because of resulting complications, he said that he was permanently unable to sing.  But now, four years later, he was apparently able to perform at a private party in June of this year, and has booked three shows in Seguin, near Tyler, and Dallas for the end of November.  I think I might actually be in Seguin on November 23.  Screw it, I just bought two tickets.  Let's gooooooo!

(and yes, I'd obviously go watch him play at this festival as well...)