Interview: Willie Watson
Willie Watson is a believer in the power of addition via subtraction.
The Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and actor has, in recent years, pursued artistic and personal growth through a journey of self-discovery that includes shedding parts of his past selves — both seen and unseen — and making music to make sense of life.
“Life piles up, you know?” Watson says. “And it all falls into place when you realize you’re 45 and need to let a lot of shit go. I love to purge. The only thing I'm carrying around now is this record.”
He’s referring to his self-titled “debut” album released in September, and the nonlinear path preceding it. Watson was forced into a solo career in 2011 when Old Crow Medicine Show, the revved-up string band he co-founded in the late ‘90s, gave him the boot. After struggling to find his voice as a songwriter, he embraced the role of troubadour revivalist, lending his rustic, tremolo-inflected tenor to two albums of covers from the American folk songbook and touring with Dave Rawlings Machine. A role in the Coen Bros’ film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs fortified his dapper, old-timey look.
But Watson eventually grew tired of what started to feel like caricature, dropped the hat and roles of interpreter and entertainer, and tuned into the clearer frequencies of his newfound sobriety. Fully recommitted to his craft with the support of co-writer Morgan Nagler, Watson entered the studio with producers Gabe Witcher (Punch Brothers) and Kenneth Pattengale (Milk Carton Kids) to cut a collection of stark, unfiltered originals that find him looking in the mirror and finding comfort in the discomfort of its reflection.
Asheville Stages spoke with Watson ahead of his upcoming show at The Grey Eagle for a colorful conversation about his life, art, and career.
Jay Moye: You've been at this awhile, mainly singing other people's songs and collaborating with other musicians. Why, nearly 30 years into your career, is now the time to put out what you're calling your debut album?
Willie Watson: It's a tricky one to explain, but the simple answer is that I’ve held myself back and never allowed myself to fully have enough confidence to say, “This is what I do. I'm gonna write a bunch of songs and present them, no matter how they come out, as my art and my expression.” To just be a singer/songwriter with a guitar, which is something no one else seems to be so afraid of doing.
I did it when I was 16 to 18 with my first band [The Funnest Game]. But it wasn't serious, so it fizzled out. Then I did it with Old Crow, but it wasn't just me. I was part of this whole thing, and we played all this old music with all this other stuff around it — this whole other niche aesthetic. Then when I went out on my own, solo, I did nothing but the folk stuff. I wasn’t doing interviews talking about Willie Watson songs, what they mean, and where they come from. Now, these conversations are about the music and the guy who wrote it. Not the hat, not the stylistic aspect, not the genre or niche it fits into, not Lead Belly, not North Carolina. I've finally done the first thing everyone does.
Calling this record my debut is a cool way to sell it, but it really does feel like it. And here's my face on the cover: the purest version of me no one’s ever seen. I don’t have a fucking costume on.
JM: You haven’t totally abandoned covers. This record includes your takes on the traditional “Mole in the Ground” and Stan Rogers’ “Harris and the Mare.”
WW: I decided to put “Mole in the Ground” on there because it's fun, and I promise it's gonna be everyone's favorite song. It makes people happy. I was very concerned about the mood of this record. Everyone kept saying, “Everybody anybody wants to hear sad songs, Willie.” And I'm like, “I don't know, dude. I like to make people happy and be inviting and friendly. I want to pull people in and make them want to come to my show by giving them something hopeful to lean on.” And they’re like, “No, no, no! Have you heard Phoebe Bridges?” She's filling up stadiums, yeah, but it's the saddest thing anyone's ever heard.
JM: Sounds like you’ve got the wrong people in your ear.
WW: But I promised “Mole in the Ground” would be everybody's favorite, and I was right. I’m usually right about stuff like that.
JM: I mean, it’s not my favorite…
WW: When you come to the show, it will be. That's why that relationship I spoke about is so one-sided. I know what you’ll like in the show before you get there, and I know what you liked most when you leave. I know what you like more than you do. So everybody can know that when you come to the show, it won’t be a line of flat static. It’ll be an experience you can really get on board with and think, “I can follow Willie Watson tonight. He’s my leader.”
JM: Did you have that in mind when you were writing these songs? Was that in your head while putting pen to paper?
WW: No, the only thing I have to do or not do when writing a song is to not prevent myself from writing on the page. I just need to write line after line without stopping myself.
JM: You’ve struggled mightily with self-diminishment in the past, it seems.
WW: My whole life, I’d sit down, start to write, then stop myself. I'd look at what I’d written and say, “That sucks. Stop.” That's what I did when I sat in my basement office at this little desk in Nashville. I lived there for eight months after I got kicked out of Old Crow, thinking, “I gotta write songs right now.” I panicked. My [now ex-] wife was telling me I needed to stay visible and not disappear. I got kicked out of the band, and it was traumatic. I didn't know what to do. I had no direction. My life had fallen apart because, without that relationship with an audience I spoke about earlier, I felt like I didn’t have a place. My band was the outlet for that, so without them, I didn't see where I fit into the world. I couldn't see it at the time, but I see it now.
I tried to write songs, and I wrote one everyone liked a lot. Blake Mills wanted to record it, but I didn't like it at all. Dave Rawlings told me to stop writing and just sing “Midnight Special.” So I listened to him, and we decided we were going to start using the term “folk singer” again for the first time since 19-fucking-60-whatever, because it wasn’t cool. When you heard “folk singer,” all people thought about was the Kingston Trio and the Brothers Four. People would say, “I play roots music or Delta Blues, or jump band music from Cincinnati.” Never folk music. So I fully took on this moniker no one had used for 30 years.
Everyone seemed to get what I did, but I didn't get much attention for it. Then, all of a sudden, everybody’s a folk singer with a hat. The younger people who cleaned it up came in and got all the money. I was frustrated.
JM: When did you outgrow that chapter? Was there a breaking point?
WW: By the time I was doing Folksinger Volume 2, it was like, “Here we go again.” When I put out Folk Singer Volume 1, 300 people came to my shows each night. [Editor’s note: the album names are intentionally spaced differently by the artist.] By the end of the tour, it was down to 150. When the second one came out, 100 people showed up. And by the second leg of the tour, when the record had been out for a year, it was down to 50 or so. The numbers just didn't grow. Those records didn't further my career. They hindered it. It was a downslide right from the start.
JM: So you dropped the persona cold turkey, with no trappings of the look or caricature?
WW: It wasn't a persona I created on purpose. I like clothing. I wasn't trying to look like George Harrison. Well, there was one point where I was trying to look like George Harrison, but that changed once I saw the Leaves of Grass cover with Walt Whitman looking awesome. I was like, “That’s my guy.” I was feeling it.
None of this stuff is on purpose. I'm not living out here in LA crafting my persona. I don't wear the hat anymore because it's uncomfortable. I don't want to wear boots anymore because they hurt my feet, and they hurt my spine. I don't want to wear stiff jeans anymore because they're uncomfortable [Editor’s Note: When Watson isn’t touring, he hand-sews his own line of jeans and other garments.]. I don't want to walk around in the winter with layers of leather and denim and canvas and metal buckles because it’s uncomfortable. That's the only reason.
JM: You’ve harped a lot on what didn’t work during that period where you were doing the folk stuff. But what did work about that material, and even rewinding to your time in the Dave Rawlings Machine? How did that seep into what you've done with this record?
WW: I don't know really how it worked out in the world. People seemed to think it was important, at least at first. But I don't really like how I sounded. And that's why God, the universe, or this great spirit of the world — whatever you want to call it — has directed my life.
I had a daughter who was one year old [in 2011, when he left Old Crow]. My marriage was shitty, my band situation was shitty. I was a miserable sack of shit. I was not happy and not doing great, personally. I needed to be set straight and have things removed from my life. There was no way I was going to take myself out of Old Crow Medicine Show, but God had to come in with that swift hand and remove me for the benefit of me, for the benefit of my daughter, and for Old Crow to be able to go and be the shitty band they wanted to be.
They wanted to start turning into a really shitty band. It was killing me, for years, to be in a band that was starting to suck. We were so good and I loved us so much, but then the music just was awful. Once I was out of the way, they were free to be as terrible as they wanted to be. I just did a bunch of shows with them, and that’s fun for me, but 50% of the music that gets played on that stage is so bad and I don't want any part of it. But I couldn't see that. God had to do it.
I had to make sacrifices and suffer for the benefit of others. That's life, and that's God. That's how shit works. I had to face the fact that I’m the only person who got myself here — it’s nobody's fault but mine. Those are the biggest, hardest lessons of humility. In the video for “Already Gone,” that's what's going on. It’s a guy looking at his life, and also saying, “Back off, you monsters. Everyone needs to ease up, because you guys are down my throat and it's hard enough on my own. I don't need brute men pushing me around.” I'm not a woman, and I cannot say that I can speak to the experience of a woman. But I am a skinny man, and I've gotten mansplained to just as much.
JM: I'm a fellow small dude myself, also with a 14-year-old daughter.
WW: Yeah, so you know it sucks being around the brutes all the time. They push you around. I have a huge resentment against men.
JM: Back to the record, how are the live shows going? You’re out with a stand-up bassist and a fiddler player.
WW: I think I’ve figured out how these songs are gonna live in the world. They live on the record forever, but change when you play them in front of people. I always think they get better. Our show has a lot of ups and downs and dynamics to it, which is important to me because I don't want the audience to be just a flat line of static. It needs to be much more because it’s too important to me. But at the same time, I’m learning that I need to just let go, relax, and trust in my three-piece band and these songs.
I tell a story on the record that was basically born out of telling stories at shows. It was my loose play to tell the same story at my show, but I came up with some other stuff to talk about and the story changed. I talk about how the relationship I have with the people who listen to the records and come to the shows means everything to me. It's one of the most important relationships I have in my life, so there is a severity to it for me.
JM: I was curious if you'd be doing that one [the eight-and-a-half-minute, album-closing gospel soliloquy, “Reap ‘em in the Valley”] live.
WW: It’s my God story, which I’m always talking about. I’ve got a bigger picture in mind, and I’m trying to figure out where and why it is. And I feel like I'm making headway in my relationship with the world. I seem to be, at times, the only person who's really aware of the relationship I have with the audience.
JM: There’s a line in your press bio that grabbed me. It describes your songs as “stories of heartbreak and hurt, backlit by the corona of hope that only growth can provide.” Do you want your music to offer hope?
WW: As an artist, I would love to. Some songwriter said that. It might have been Leonard Cohen, but it also might have been Vince Neil from Mötley Crüe or Dave Mustaine.
JM: Probably not…
WW: Any art I've ever thought was beautiful, any song I've ever loved, has given me hope. And hope can come in the form of someone else just knowing what's up.
I’ve never been able to get my head around the fact that people connect to things so humbly. I hear a song and think “I already knew that.” The first time I ever heard Hank Williams, I was like, “That's fucking mine! And no one else here will understand it but me.” I come from a small town in upstate New York. I was the first kid to get an earring, the first to wear clothes from California, the first to like weird music. And I was younger than everyone else. So I was in the face of that my whole life.
JM: In a recent interview, you said you’re still trying to figure out if you're any good. A lot of people sure think so. Do you?
WW: Here’s the honest truth about what I think of myself and the reality of how my ego looks inside my head: I'm just as good of a singer as anyone on the planet. Some of it has come through on record. Some of my real, true, good thing only came out on the shitty Old Crow record I made before I got kicked out. I sing really fucking good on that record. I've been a little delusional about my voice, but now I understand how to open it up.
There's been times in my young life when I've tapped into how good my voice can be. But no one’s really heard it unless they came to a show on this last tour. I sang really open in some beautiful, big halls. And the people were like, “Whoa, that's Whitney Houston up there!” Because it was. And I want people to know that so bad. I'm always trying to do it right, and that severity comes into play when I get on stage and am all in my head and try way too hard. If I try too hard, it gets all clouded and distorted. It’s me getting in the way of a simple job God has given me to do.
JM: And to put a finer point on that, now you’re finally marrying your true voice with music you’ve written that reflects your true self.
WW: Yeah. There’s notes and ranges and keys I'm finding now that are making me better. If I can get my voice in a certain place, it takes on a whole new shape and a whole new character. It’s more truly me. I'm still trying to find that again, because I let it go. I abandoned it and I abused it.
I have a lot of regrets about my voice. I smoked for a long time, which hurt it. And alcohol hurt it. I had to train my voice to sing high harmonies in the bluegrass way, which is good. I'm always in search of how to rearrange my voice and discover what else it can do. And I'd like to think there's still time for me to be able to get that back. With Old Crow, we always did “The Weight” [by The Band].
JM: You did that one with the Dave Rawlings Machine, too.
WW: Yeah, the Machine would do it too! Like, really? You guys are still doing this trading versus thing? It’s in everyone’s show now. But anyway, I sang my verse and I guess it was in A, and I realized those notes in that key are built for me. And that I needed to go home and figure out how to write songs with them. The fact that I give a shit about that stuff makes me good. And I can’t worry about whether or not anyone sees or hears it. That's a struggle for me. The less I care about that stuff, the better I am. My band is happier, and the shows are better. It's standing ovations as opposed to claps.
IF YOU GO
Who: Willie Watson with Viv & Riley
When: Wednesday, Dec. 4, 8 p.m.
Where: The Grey Eagle, 185 Clingman Ave., thegreyeagle.com
Tickets: $30.25
(Photo by Hayden Shiebler)
