It was a Tuesday in Milwaukee, but inside the Rave nightclub, it was a Friday night in a Texas roadhouse. Charley Crockett made it so.

He did it with a rapid-fire set of nearly 30 songs over 100 minutes, dealing one ace after another. Songs about cowboys. Songs about spurned love. Songs about murder - lots of songs about murder.

It felt like the kind of show you’d see in some beer-drinking place out on a country road; where you can listen to a band play loud and forget for a night about your goddamn boss, your goddamn job and that goddamn stack of bills you can’t quite pay this week; where you drink a couple-three beers and sing along, loudly and badly, but that’s OK because the band is louder and, “hey, who needs another round?!”

It made for a raucous night, the venue jam-packed and sweaty. Crockett led his crack band, the Blue Drifters, with a sonorous baritone and a guitar slung high on his torso. Not much chatter between songs – at a roadhouse, that’s just a way to lose your audience.

A half dozen songs came from his most recent release, the concept album “The Man from Waco.” The title track was a highlight, with its spaghetti western guitar and south-of-the-border trumpet supporting the tale of a man wracked by guilt after killing his woman – he aimed at her new lover but missed.

“Trinity River” swung and flowed, bouncing with trumpet and jaunty piano. “Just Like Honey” told its lament about a lying woman with a loping bass and weeping pedal steel. “I’m Just a Clown” beat with a heart of soul and R&B.

One of Crockett’s many charms is his mixture of styles. His music is rooted in Texas country and the Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens, but swirls in Cajun, soul, rock and other influences. His country covers from the ‘50s and ‘60s fit with his own compositions, but the music is miles from the syrupy smooth Nashville sound – think Marty Robbins gunslinger stuff instead.

His itinerant career informs his music. Crockett rode the rails around the country, busking on street corners for money. Doing that, he picked up folk, traditional and other songs from fellow musicians, sometimes not realizing until later that a song was from Hank Williams or Bob Dylan.

He told the story of learning a song from 1902 while playing on the street in the French Quarter of New Orleans about a man named Bill Bailey. A friend recently asked him to write a song for a movie, which he did, launching into “The Death of Bill Bailey.” The song tells the tale of a drifting singer, handsome and deceitful.

“It’s funny how I miss him, even though he done me wrong / I bought him a marble headstone and I buried him on a cold winter morn / When a young and green-eyed lady appeared through the golden haze / She asked me if I knew Bill Bailey / I just said all his debts had been paid.”

It might seem unusual that so many of Crockett’s songs are about murder. But the American canon of folk and traditional music is shot through with songs about tragic deaths and avenged wrongs. That’s what he’s channeling.

***Wyatt Flores - Photo by Janelle Rominski***

Ever the showman, Crockett included a town-specific tune in his encore. A couple hundred fans happily joined in singing “What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me).” It was a bottle-clinking toast to the joy of getting by.

Young Oklahoman Wyatt Flores opened with a full band. His music preceded him: Unusual for an opener, the crowd sang along to several songs.

Crockett’s tour continues through August in the U.S. and Canada before heading to Europe for a series of dates throughout September. Wyatt’s tour heads off on its own through the Midwest and West.