Singer-songwriter, poet, actor and multi-instrumentalist, Willie Watson, releases a powerful self-titled album… a debut of sorts.
Watson is already three decades into his career as a musician, with an enviable resume that includes being a founder-member of Old Crow Medicine Show and a respected collaborator with some big names in Americana, including Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, John Prine, John C. Reilly, Sara and Sean Watkins and many more. So it’s something of a surprise to discover that this is his first-ever solo album of original material. It will be equally surprising if we have to wait anything like as long for the follow-up… turns out he’s a fine songwriter.
Brought up in upstate New York’s Finger Lakes, Watson struggled through school, leaving as soon he could and soon discovered a passion and talent for authentic, old-time, American folk music. It was that passion that helped steer Old Crow Medicine Show’s early career and, ultimately, it was Watson’s passion and commitment to keeping things authentic that led to a clash with fellow founding member, Ketch Secor, and resulted in Watson leaving the band.
As his former band headed to commercial success with exhilarating, crowd-pleasing live shows, Watson about-turned and dialled it right back to basics, going on to release two well-regarded albums of stripped-down covers of old folk tunes, exquisitely produced by Dave Rawlings.
On this new album, he’s not abandoned the old songs entirely, with the mountain banjo song ‘Mole in the Ground’ and a tender version of ‘Harris and the Mare,’ by Canadian singer Stan Rogers. However, it’s Watson’s own songs that light up this album. It seems the intervening years were challenging for Watson, but having achieved sobriety in his mid-forties, he feels he has lived and lost and simply witnessed enough to know he has something to write about.
Album opener, ‘Slim and the Devil’, is an acoustic-driven response to Watson’s disgust at the imagery of white nationalists taking over the streets of Charlottesville, and sees him adapting the Sterling A. Brown poem, ‘Slim Greer in Hell’.
Next up is, ‘Real Life’. “A love song I wrote for my wife,” explains Watson. “It kinda turned out to be the story of my life and it’s clear now that she’s standing in the center of everything. We’ve been looking for each other for a long time and now we can’t even remember all the struggle it took to get here.”
‘Already Gone’, ‘Sad Song’ and ‘One to Fall’ all have that special quality that makes them feel vaguely familiar, yet fresh, timeless and profound. ‘Play It One More Time’ is a truly beautiful song, with a gentle arrangement and delicate playing. Coming in at almost nine minutes long, the closing track, ‘Reap ’em in the Valley’, is a moving, spoken-word musing on the concept of rural life as a place of spiritual renewal.
The album is produced by Kenneth Pattengale and Gabe Witcher, respectively of Milk Carton Kids and Punch Brothers, and as you’d expect of such a well-regarded duo, they’ve done a superb job. With bassist Paul Kowert, guitarist Dylan Day, drummer Jason Boesel and fiddler Sami Braman, Watson has assembled a superb studio band that has sensitively underpinned his own playing, his affecting voice and songs.
‘Willie Watson’ is such a fine album it’s easy to understand why he’s just stamped it with his own name.
