Globe-trotting troubadour, Davy Crockett descendant and prolific recording artist Charley Crockett made new album The Valley personal, just in case he didn't survive open-heart surgery.
"I ended up having two lifesaving heart surgeries in January of this year," says Crockett in a press release. "I recorded this album one week before those surgeries. I needed to have these songs in case I didn't get through. I needed them just to tell people my story. To show folks what I've been through in my life. I feel like I'm living on borrowed time in a lot of ways. It was luck that we discovered my desperate condition and I can't help feeling that I cheated death somehow. Maybe the creator threw me a bone for pouring my life into my music and putting it first at all costs. I don't know. What I do know is that life is the valley and everybody has to walk through it, often times alone. I hope that you can hear the sounds of my life in these recordings. They've come to mean more to me than any I've offered up in my 35 years."
Crockett looks back on his raising and musical development with songs reflecting the country, blues, rock and ethnic regional sounds he learned in Texas and Louisiana.
Read More: Charley Crockett: A Honky Tonk Hero For the Modern Era
The Valley's advanced singles are its title track and "Borrowed Time," a co-write with Evan Felker of the Turnpike Troubadours. Both tell chapters of Crockett's story with the traditional instrumentation and tell-all lyrics expected from a student of Hank Williams' songwriting and George Jones' vulnerability.
Based on his album cover, Crockett admires another Jones devotee.
Little Darlin/Thirty Tigers
The Valley is out Sept. 20 via Thirty Tigers.
