Charley Crockett is finally speaking up about the tempest in a Satanic temple stirred up last month when he dropped the Beelzebub-loving band Twin Temple from his tour over what he said was their evil vibe. (The actual quote a spokesperson shared with Billboard at the time was: “I thought they were like Black Sabbath, but they ain’t. Not today, Satan.”)
And while the story both sides told was that Twin Temple were bounced for their overt “satanic imagery,” which they do, in fact, embrace with glee, in a since-deleted Instagram post on Tuesday (Aug. 18) “The Hallelujah Trail” singer Crockett appeared to have exorcised his demons over the incident by sharing his real feelings about the band and their last-minute champion, Jack White.
According to Rolling Stone, weeks after White invited the band to open some shows for him in the wake of the controversy, Crockett issued a statement to “clear things up right quick,” in which he poured cold water on the notion that the self-proclaimed L.A. Satanic doo-wop duo were bounced because of their love for the dark lord. He suggested that the band “made it up and dragged me by a rope real good,” then added that some unnamed artists who had spent years praising him used the opportunity to “kick me in the d–k.”
He had specifically spicy words for White, claiming that the former White Stripes leader “used it to sell ticket too and I lost a lot of respect for him.” Crocket then mused about why White “wasn’t so outspoken” during his White Stripes era 20 years ago, saying the band “purposely avoided political issues,” while suggesting that White was “worried about losing audience back when it was all on the line and he needed all the help he could get.”
As RS pointed out, the Stripes released the Grammy-winning song “Icky Thump” in 2007, a track that specifically laid out a criticism against anti-immigration blowhards (“White Americans, what? Nothing better to do?/ Why don’t you kick yourself out? You’re an immigrant too.”) In addition, White has been a frequent and vociferous critic of Donald Trump during both presidential terms, calling him a “wannabe dictator” and slamming the former reality star for using White Stripes music at his rallies.
Well, you know White had something to say about all that. In an Instagram response on Tuesday night, White, 51, offered up a little ditty about the imbroglio, writing, “I never said nothing about this young buck before but since he’s trying to drag me into this here rodeo again, here’s my official response to Cowboy Charley’s accusations.”
What followed were what looked like lyrics to an unheard song, which read:
“So you think you’re bad, with your rap
Well I’ll tell ya pilgrim I started the crap
When you were in diapers and wetting the sheets
I was at the Ponderosa rapping to the beat
Da haahh, da haahh
Da ha-hahh ha-hahh haahh
Sure I rustled some cattle and tended the sheep
But my main concern was rapping to the beat
I don’t bother nobody I’m a real nice guy, kinda
laid back like a, dead fly
Da haahh, da haahh
Da ha-hahh ha-hahh haahh
I’m talkin, here and now
Later for the cattle and rustlin the cow
If I had a chance to do a repeat
You can bet your sweet dippy I’d be rappin to the beat
Da haahh, da haahh
Da ha-hahh ha-hahh haahh”
The lyrics with no tune — which swing from paying homage to the 1984 novelty hip-hop parody “Rappin’ Duke” to a Beverly Hillbillies theme song cadence, with stops as Stephen Foster’s “Swanee River” by way of Chaka Khan’s “I Feel For You” — also manage to rope in Ronald Reagan’s rise from actor to president while taking digs at Washington fat cats.
Crockett also weighed in on what he said really happened with Twin Temple, claiming he’d decided to drop the group a month before the planned shows because their “production raised eyebrows,” not due to the Satan-worshipping content, but because “we couldn’t accommodate them physically.”
While he didn’t detail what that meant, Crockett also admitted that the whole Satan part wasn’t his bag either. “Then I noticed some of the things they’d been doing on stage and after thinking about it for a couple days I decided to cut em loose,” Crockett said of the band whose songs include “Sex Magick,” “Burn Your Bible” and “Let’s Have a Satanic Orgy.” “We told em the vibe just wasn’t right for an all ages audience, and we paid em in full,” Crockett wrote.
The singer also claimed that the band and their team “plotted for days” before dropping a statement about the booting that was “designed for effect” and made to look like they’d been kicked off the whole tour, when, in fact, the God Is Dead band were among a handful of acts slated to open on his Age of Ram summer tour and had only two dates booked on the outing.
At press time a spokesperson for Twin Temple could not be reached for comment on Crockett’s claims.
Crockett also called out Twin Temple for what he deemed their “dog-whistling about religious and creative freedom.” He wrote, “It’s my fault, I let ’em slip through and being that this here’s my outfit, I’m the responsible party. I reacted. I might respond differently now but everybody’s got perfect vision in hindsight. I think the most difficult part of the whole deal was the way the media, save for one outlet, cared nothing for the truth. They sanitized these folks’ image for their own uses in the click bait traffic game that is America’s left-right culture war.”
Finally, Crockett noted that he “won’t forget” the unnamed artists who he painted as applauding while he was “face down in the dirt coughing up blood,” ending with some fighting words of his own. “Funny, I’ve got everything to lose right this minute and I still shoot from the hip,” he reportedly wrote. “I’ve been speaking from my heart against the wishes of the machine my whole life. Real patriots think for themselves.”
