Dale Watson – Open up the honky-tonk
“But then I could still say that I’m extremely surprised how things have gone for me. I’ve had a couple of reviewers say, ‘Well, he’s just got sour grapes. He’s moanin’ because it’s not him.’ And that’s really not it. I’m happy doing just what I’m doing, and I make a decent living.
“But what I’m pissing and moaning about is the fact that country music can’t be country music anymore. I think they’ve pulled the rug out from under anybody who loves it. I don’t even tell people that I do ‘country music’ anymore, because of what they’ll think I mean by that. When they ask what kind of music I do, I say ‘original.'”
Watson does not want to give the impression that he doesn’t see talented artists attempting to work within the system. He mentions Dwight Yoakam and Alison Krauss as two who managed to pull it off with relatively little compromise, and Travis Tritt and Vince Gill as terrific voices that might have, but bent with the winds.
“And Alan Jackson is, I think, a really good example of someone who’s reached as high as you can go,” he says. “A great talent, great writer, great singer. But his records have that Nashville sound. I love his Here In The Real World, and a lot of songs off that record — but to me, it’s still something I won’t listen to like I do a Merle Haggard album.”
He says this well aware that Nashville currently finds itself amid one of its occasional “credibility scare” moments when some talented newcomers are being signed — for instance, young Joe Nichols, a fellow Haggard disciple, weighing in with a heavyweight new rendition of the Gene Watson/Jimmy Dickens classic “Farewell Party”, and “Long Black Train”, the major-label single of the year, coming from young Josh Turner in a style that evokes the best of Johnny Cash.
“It’s good that they’re out there,” Watson acknowledges. “There are lots of good ones out there. But if the record companies want them to change to something else, it’s bound to happen. LeAnn Rimes stood out, and that first record ‘Blue’ was the thing. But she never did that again. That’s my point: The machine is what’s controlling what you hear.”
But if comments like that make you think you’re going to hear a lot of “Country My Ass” fingerpointers on the new record, you’re in for a surprise.
“Songs like that one, from Live From London, those were the latest thing I recorded just a month before Terri died,” Watson explains. “And that’s where my head was at, and what I was doing. I was having fun just coasting along that way.
“But when something like Terri’s accident happens, you turn to a lot of introspection, looking into your life and priorities. And the songs that I wrote after that meant a whole lot more to me — and they still do. Had all of that not happened, I would still be going out and doing what I did. Now, even Dreamland has a tinge of Every Song I Write; in fact, it’s the best example of putting that perspective into what I do.”
He has a point.
The lingering effect of those experiences are clear enough on the new album’s title track, a new, upbeat “at least I see you in my dreams” number. But it’s most noticeable on the album’s ballads, such as the tuneful, steel-laced “I Wish You’d Come Around” and the more plaintive “She Don’t Care”. Both ballads, in different ways, are explicitly about waiting for some sign or word for someone who’s gone, and the anguish of getting no answer.
“I wrote those when I was looking all over for answers, and in my frustration, going to psychics, doing anything to try to get in touch with Terri, and thinking, like everybody thinks when somebody dies, ‘at least I’ll get a little signal here or there, something other than just dreams, if there is anything after this.’ So even ‘She Don’t Care’ is really about Terri; hopefully it will work for people in a variety of situations.”
On closer examination, even the light opening shuffle “Honky Tonkers Don’t Cry” marks this evolution in Watson’s work. He may be singing another “good time at a bar” number, but he reminds the listener (or dancer) explicitly that there’s a lot of crying in the beer on hand as well, and then he moves on.
That song is perhaps the most representative of where Watson seems to be now, as he heads back to the road with this new material. He seems optimistic that there’s a future for hard country honky-tonk music, not just a past.
“I sure do,” he affirms. “As long as our type of genre is special. Honky-tonk music has become like bluegrass music used to be, kicked out of country and out on its own now, leaving the syrupy shit behind. I don’t think it will turn into a museum piece, but who knows; it could.
“What I do is a watered-down version of what Hag did, what Johnny did — without the really raw, gut edge that they had. You’re never going to get the same bite the original had. In fact, originality is what’s missing in today’s music — and I mean originality from roots, from what the songwriter is.”
Yet Watson seems very comfortable with the role in that music he has come to play, and with the limitations he has come to accept. “I think now that my niche, what I do really, is loving and appreciating all of these different country artists who influenced me,” he suggests. “That’s probably my thing. And I’m fine with that. For some reason, I’ve just kind of fallen into the place where somebody listens to me and then moves on to the records of those legends — and that’s cool, you know. Not a bad place to be!”
A starring role in a new Zalman King film, Austin Angel, set to be completed later this year, may bring Watson to more people’s attention. He’s cast as a country singer who sells his soul to the devil to save his daughter, and he gets to sing. The devil is scheduled to be played by Martin Sheen, but if West Wing shooting interferes, it may yet turn out to be Willie Nelson — a theological conundrum for those who believe Willie is God.
But those who have seen Watson throw himself into a show when he’s ready and raring to do so, even after some 25 years playing in bars, taking requests for some of his encyclopedic stash of hard country classics, and making up a new honky-tonk number on the spot from crowd suggestions (a regular stunt), still have to wonder if he sometimes espies the possibility out there for his music to reach a mass audience.
“Yeah, I do,” he admits, “but it’s not going to happen with radio. And it’s not gonna happen in Nashville, either. What’s beautiful right now is where it can happen, which is the internet and satellite radio. That’s what’s new and taking off — it’s a focused, group thing — right now. They’ll hear me on satellite radio, and on the internet radio, and they’ll keep seeing those live shows. It’s kind of like the old days, really, when people got together and toured in package shows — taking it to the streets.”
ND senior editor Barry Mazor is at work on a book about American singers overlooked by historians for falling outside of musical categories, set to be published by the University of Massachusetts Press.