“Watson has dug ever deeper into plainspoken roots and traditional folk music” – NPR
Soon before Willie Watson turned 18, he met God in an apple orchard. Or at the very least, he met there a man named Ruby Love, the older friend of a high-school buddy. Also, Love had an enormous Martin guitar and a seemingly bigger understanding of the American folk songbook. Watson, a high-school dropout from upstate New York’s Finger Lakes, was existentially thirsty. Furthermore, he was fast on his way to his first heartbreak and in a first band that didn’t take itself seriously enough. Then, in that magical apple orchard, Watson and Love sang those old songs together: “Worried Man Blues” and “Tennessee Waltz.”
It was the first time Watson had cried while singing. Furthermore, it was the first time he had made the connection between making music and making sense of his life. He never saw Ruby Love again, but within months of that foundational 1997 rendezvous, he met the musicians with whom he’d soon start Old Crow Medicine Show. Call it revelation, fate, resurrection, whatever you will. Then, for Watson, more than a quarter-century later, it was a duet with the divine.
Finally, at 44, he feels that 2024’s Willie Watson is his first-ever true album. Moreover, he’s finally lived, lost, simply witnessed enough to know he has something to sing with his exquisite rural tenor.
The nine songs on Willie Watson find a bona fide songwriter dealing with the difficulties of his past to suggest a renewed future. What’s more, he uses his keen, expansive understanding of an old lexicon to add his own new entries to it. As with the best folk songs, you will recognize your own burdens here. As with the best folk singers, you will feel compelled to sound them out, too.
Recommended for Fans of Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlings, Old Crow Medicine Show and The Milk Carton Kids.
LEARN MORE: https://www.williewatson.com/
📸: Hayden Shiebler
- Genre:
- Americana
