Watson's 'Ameripolitan' at RR Blues

Dale Watson's finally coming to Alpine. Honest, one of the critically acclaimed musicians working in America will be at Railroad Blues on a rare live-music Monday.

It's about time; Watson's metro-retro-honky tonk music fits our diverse sensibilities like few other artists.

Watson's Alpine appearance opens a coming-out tour for his latest album, "From the Cradle to the Grave." Monday's festivities at the Blues starts at 9 p.m. and is billed as a CD-release party.

If you're in the audience Monday, please don't use the "C" word. Watson might take offense.

You see, Watson, a longtime Nashville basher, is fed up with what "country" has come to represent in modern times. In fact, he offers "Ameripolitan" as an alternative.

"I've been trying to come up with a name that best describes this music [we] do," Watson says. "When folks ask, I hesitate, down right embarrassed really, to say country. I didn't used to be that way, but with the change in country, the term doesn't mean the same as it used to. If you say traditional, or old, or western swing most folks think 'retro' and dismiss it without hearing it.

"I wanted a name that didn't say country anything and didn't give anyone a preconceived idea. I came up with Ameripolitan. I even put it in Wikipedia, defined as: Original music with 'prominent' roots influence."

But Watson might be over-thinking the subject. As a fan said in "Crazy Again," a documentary on Watson's life, "Son, you play country like country was when country was country," which might be the best piece of critical analysis this century.

"My influences have been people like Buck Owens and Bob Wills, the guys that my Dad was listening to and playing along with back in the '60s," Watson says. His dad was a truck driver and working man back in Tennessee, later moving to Pasadena - the Texas version - where Watson went to high school.

"My Dad played music, listened to music, got out the records out on Sundays," Watson said. "and I liked it."

Watson's sound is one of the nation's hottest; critics love him, fans love him.

It doesn't much matter what you call it; his music is a soulful blend of emotion, words and melody. That, friends, is what country music was before it was overwhelmed by today's hyper-marketed pop nausea.

"A lot of the places we play in these days are rock-and-roll venues," he says. "Our music [reminiscent of the hard-driving country sounds of an early Buck Owens or Waylon Jennings or Johnny Cash] fits that venue.

"It's strange how things turn upside down, isn't it? It's what country used to be; these days it's considered rock."

Fittingly, Watson worked up his latest album in Tennessee's Johnny Cash country.

"I got up there and basically wrote 10 songs in three days," Watson says. "At first I was adamant about not writing anything even remotely reminiscent to Johnny Cash ... I figured I'd be dismissed for trying to copy his vibe, but his presence was so strong up there that I decided, why fight it?"

Watson's empathy for everyday people and their struggles is squarely in line with the Cash tradition.

That empathy translates to riveting music, music that demands that you consider the words. For instance, in "Justice For All," Watson confronts the ageless moral conflict between revenge and forgiveness. He sings: "An eye for an eye would leave the whole world blind, forgiveness is the way, but I can't forgive his crime, and if I had the chance in truth I'd have to say, I'd gun that b...d down with a smile on my face."

Strong stuff, raw with reality. "I wrote 'Justice For All' after hearing the story of a guy who kidnapped and murdered a little girl," Watson says. "I have daughters, so I could put myself in the shoes of the girl's father and feel his need for justice and revenge."

As part of the hoopla around the new album, "We're releasing a video called 'Hollywood Hillbilly' this week or next," he says. "It's about Johnny Knoxville, who's kind of a modern-day Jed Clampett, living in a Hollywood mansion, Willie and Waylon blaring on the speakers and an old crippled dog following him around."

Knoxville (born Philip John Clapp) is an old Tennessee buddy of Watson's. A comic actor and daredevil, he's been featured in a number of films, but is best known as the co-creator and principal star of the MTV series "Jackass" and its subsequent films.

By the way, Knoxville has another mansion. This one is back in Tennessee, in the mountains, once owned by Johnny Cash - and the place where the latest album was recorded.

If you listen to Watson's music for any length of time, you sense that he's capable of finding light in the darkness, insight in the pain - and, always, the words that seem to pierce to the heart of the human condition.

Watson at his best - and that's very, very good - offers husky, sweeping melodies, classic rhythms and touch of pedal steel and fiddle. Friends in the business call him the last pure honky-tonk singer.

Early on, Watson positioned himself as a tattooed, stubbornly independent outsider who was only interested in recording authentic country music. As a result, he never sold many records, but his music was championed by numerous critics and alternative country fans.

He was born in Alabama in 1962 but spent his teenage years near Houston, which means he became a Texan. His father and brother were both musically inclined, and he began writing his own songs at age 12, making his first recording two years later. After high school, he spent seven years playing local clubs and honky tonks. He moved to Los Angeles in 1988 on the advice of Rosie Flores, and soon joined the house band at North Hollywood's now-legendary alt-country venue the Palomino Club.

Not long after, he moved to Nashville and spent some time writing songs for the Gary Morris publishing company.

Obviously, Watson didn't find commercial country much to his taste, and he relocated to the more progressive-minded Austin scene. Several successful albums followed, including "Cheatin' Heart Attack" and "Blessed or Damned."

In 2000, Watson's fiancée was killed in an auto accident. He was devastated, withdrew from the music scene for more than a year, re-emerging in 2001 with the deeply sorrowful tribute "Every Song I Write Is for You."

In 2004, with his heart still on his sleeve, but a thicker skin, Watson released "Dreamland." He was inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame one year later. He took a break from music for the majority of that year, moving to Maryland in order to spend more time with his daughters, but 2006 found him back in Austin playing gigs, and the documentary - "Crazy Again" - premiered at SXSW that year. The film charted Watson's breakdown following the death of his fiancée.

"I'm living fulltime in Austin now," he says. "Or at least what passes for fulltime. It's two weeks on the road and then a week at home and then it starts all over again."

"I have my daughters with me for the summer - one's 14, the other's 8. The rest of the year, I fly back and forth to Baltimore."

As Watson rolls into Alpine, "Things are going great," he says. "But if you'd asked me two years ago, I would have had a totally different answer. But God don't give you anything you can't handle."

"It's a nice time, almost scary good," he says.

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Watson's 'Ameripolitan' at RR Blues

Dale Watson's finally coming to Alpine. Honest, one of the critically acclaimed musicians working in America will be at Railroad Blues on a rare live-music Monday.

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Avalanche staff report

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