Austin: Charley Crockett at C-Boy’s Heart & Soul

In December 2022, Charley Crockett sold out two consecutive nights at ACL Live — the 2,750-seat theater that anchors Austin’s music corridor. After the second show, his whole organization walked south on Congress Avenue to C-Boy’s Heart & Soul. Texas Monthly called it “his favorite Austin haunt.” He has been coming here since before those crowds existed.

C-Boy’s sits at the corner of South Congress and Elizabeth Street. The room books soul, blues, R&B, and funk on a stage that faces a narrow dance floor. The bar is long. The sound system is right. On the night after Crockett’s ACL run, veteran Austin R&B singer Jeanmarie Stokes — who had made her name in Austin clubs through the 1980s — was already there. Crockett was in a booth, deep in conversation, while fans gathered in a semicircle around him. They waited. He stayed.

The Gulf and Western Room

Crockett calls his sound “Gulf and Western.” It borrows from T-Bone Walker and Motown as readily as from Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb. C-Boy’s books exactly that intersection. The room runs the same spectrum he grew up hearing — country, blues, and R&B in the same week, sometimes on the same night. That is partly why he keeps coming back.

He moved to Austin after his early Dallas years gave him a following. He found his fiancée, Taylor Grace, after a night dancing at Austin’s White Horse dance hall. He recorded $10 Cowboy at Arlyn Studios in town. He plays ACL Live when he headlines. And after the show, he goes to C-Boy’s. The Texas State Historical Association has charted the full arc of Austin’s music heritage — the tradition that C-Boy’s carries on six nights a week.