Interviews (241)

• December 6, 2024
• Colleen Johnson
• 160
• 0

As we slide into the peak of the winter holidays, some bands are still on the road finishing their last few shows of 2024, and this next one is a must! I recently chatted with Willie Watson, known for his solo career and time as a cofounding member of the longtime act Old Crow Medicine Show. Watson is currently wrapping up his lengthy US run, one that will warm him up for the wild 73 shows he’ll be taking on next year as main support to Allison Krauss & Union Station on their recently unveiled insane 2025 tour. While Watson is no stranger to Boston, his upcoming appearance at The Sinclair in Cambridge will surely be a treat! It will be a chance for the new album to come to life in an intimate setting and we hope to see you there!

Below, you can find my chat with Watson! It’s a bit of a lengthy one, but for any fan of Watson it’s a must-read! Watson was very open about the recording of this album, what it’s like to release his self-titled effort, and much more!

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NES: Then maybe to jump right in. I know you’ve been so busy these last few months since the album came out. You’re in Nashville tonight; you have about a week and a half left of these dates. How have these last few months been for you? Maybe are there some highlights that stick out to you? You’ve gone to Australia, you’ve been on tour so much.
Willie Watson: I was so looking forward to getting out on the road and touring this record. When you make a record, there’s so much going on then. You’re making it, and you’re trying to be patient. Then, the process figures itself out; you let it go through the process itself. But at the same time, it needs to be done so I can be free. The songs are done, they’re recorded, and there’s pressure. It’s like, what are they going to sound like? What are they going to be like when they hit the tape? What’s the record going to be like? What form is it going to take? And then the record takes its form, and you’re so relieved. And it’s in it’s packaging, in it’s cellophane. And it’s on people’s record players. Then all I’ve got to do at that point, now that all that work’s done, all those songs and making sure they got recorded right, that’s all done. And that’s stressful work. And so I’m like god, I need to go on tour and I’m free. And all I got to do now, my job is so easy now, is that I’ve got to stand there and sing these songs that we’ve worked so hard on. They’re good to go, the songs are good, they’re ready to go. But then you get out there, and it’s all different (laughs).

It’s never the case, then all the songs kind of take on a new shape and a new life. So that’s what we’ve been doing and getting out on the road and figuring out how these songs fit into the world onstage. That’s what I tell myself, is that they’re always going to be different once they’re on stage. And now I’ve got this three-piece band, and I made the record with some of these songs with a five-piece band and a drummer. And I was like, I want the tour to be like that, I want to be able to make a five-piece band, maybe sometimes, on the road. And over time since the record has come out, I kind of wish I had recorded the record with my three-piece band. Just me, Sami Braman, and Ben Gould. I just love them. We’ve figured it out, I love it. In this last run, we had a long run. We had a long four-week run, and I never want to do that again. It’s way too much, and I told everyone already, “You guys, never again.”

And I’ve told them that before, but then they’re like, “Hey! You want to do this tour?” Let’s ask him. He wouldn’t do it, haha. And I do, I always do. I always say yes. So anyway, that last four weeks run, man I’m so happy with what shape and what form my band took. Our band, that’s what I call it, ours. And they’re part of it. And I hope they know it. I think they do. I think we’re a really legit thing that can exist in the world. Like it’s established, Willie Watson’s three-piece band and I want to stay that way as long as it can. But anyway, man, there’s all this room for us to listen to each other. The songs have really taken on life now. You don’t even know what’s going on when you’re in the studio. Some of those songs, we just recorded them, and I didn’t even know what was happening. And now that we have the time to dig in, anyways, did that kind of answer the question?

NES: No, that was great! And then, I know it just got announced, and you still have dates on this run. But you say you hate a long tour, but maybe an hour or two ago it was just announced that you’ll be out for 73 shows on one tour next year. But it’s going to be such a great tour with Allison Krauss & Union Station, their first tour in over a decade. You have the time to curate these sets now, but how are you feeling with that announcement just coming out? That’s an insane tour to be on.
Willie Watson: Yeah, it’s crazy. Well, what I love about that is kind of what I was just talking about. Thinking it’s going to be easy, and in my head, that’s going to be easy. Like, oh, what a relief! I didn’t necessarily know what 2025 was going to look like or what route I was going to go. We wanted to go over to England, we wanted to do a lot more. But I didn’t know how it was going to look, and it also looked like it was going to be a ton of work. But this is great! I got that offer, and I was like, man, that makes 2025 easy for me. Right? I show up a little bit later than everybody else, at fricking Red Rocks. Roll into Red Rocks, they’re already been there all day. If I get my twenty-minute sound check, so I’ll go eat dinner and go play my forty-minute set and hang out! So in my head again, I’m like, oh, it’s a relief. It’s quite a relief. An exciting relief, I’m thrilled, but once we get out there, I’m fooling myself once again. I’m going to get out there, and the first night, it’s going to be some huge stadium and I’m going to not know how to play again. I’ve played in rooms like that before, it’s definitely different, but I haven’t done it in a long time. And I never did it a lot. I never got good at playing in an arena. You can’t put me in a Civic Center, I don’t know how to play in a Civic Center. It’s going to be a whole experience that I’m really excited about. And ready for. I’ve never played at Red Rocks. I’ve always wanted to play there. I’m so excited to go play Red Rocks and drink beer and all the Civic Centers I will be at.

NES: Then you’ll be in Boston (Cambridge) in a week at The Sinclair. Then I know you’re going to New York, where you first got started, so I’m sure those are going to be some special shows. Maybe as far as this run, how did you kind of curate these sets? I know you had Sami in the studio with you, but how did you curate what songs you were going to choose to play, how did that all come about? That planning process.
Willie Watson: We kind of improvise it. I haven’t put a list together or organized things. I did Old Crow’s sets every night, every night, for many, many years. The sequencing of things. So I do an outline in my head, I mean, I knew we would be starting the show with Slim and The Devil before we recorded Slim and The Devil.
NES: That was always the plan. Like you knew that would be the kick off?
Willie Watson: Yeah, yeah. I start thinking about this stuff a lot. If there’s one thing I will start thinking about two years in advance, it’s the shows. Maybe the only thing I’m capable of looking at in the long run. It’s the one thing I can do. Well, it’s not the one thing I can do.
NES: You have multiple things. I think there are multiple things.
Willie Watson: Definitely, but it’s like one at a time. If I try to do too much, it’s going to be a mess. And so then, we just had to get out and do it. I know I wanted to do every song on the record and get as many of my old songs out of the way as possible. I wanted to do a few songs from Folksinger One and Folksinger Two and anything from the past. So I can get them done and away with it. And I didn’t want to do “Midnight Special”, so I got that one out of the way. And hopefully, I don’t think I have to sing Midnight Special again on stage. Ten years of that, I’d be really happy. But other than that, it’s just the three of us getting up there and doing it every night. And figuring it out as we go. I wouldn’t typically write out a setlist. Maybe a week or so into the tour, I’ll start writing out a setlist. But in the beginning, I don’t want to have to be bound to any list. If I need an outline to remember which songs I have, so I don’t forget the songs, I’ll put them on a list but not in any order because I want to be able to feel it out. Because that’s what you’re talking about. Like curating the set and curating the show, the music is one thing, but it just boils down to the order of songs. What songs you’re playing, and in what order do they go in? Because that’s everything. And then, when I’m up there, I play three songs, and someone says, “Midnight Special!” If I did that, now the show’s over, guys. People don’t understand how important it is, where songs go.

So again, it’s just me up there, like winging it. As it moves on, I’ll just look at the crowd and see how the room feels. Be like, what do people want next? But if you think about it, when we’re putting on a show and figuring out how the show will go, you put yourself in a different situation. Like, what is it like listening to a record? I can think about the albums that I listened to when I was fifteen and sixteen, and I know the sequence. And that’s important to me. And I remember those songs. When I think about that song on the Nirvana record, how it ended, and how it faded out, I put myself in my bedroom, and I can hear the next song start. And so all that stuff stays with you and has an impact. It dictates the ebb and flow of your show. So you’ve just got to wing it for the first few nights and feel it out song to song.

Then, the music takes care of itself because, with Sami up there, I don’t have to ask anything of Sami. The only thing I have to ask is that I show up to a show and I know what my issues are going to be. I don’t have a sound guy that I tour with, so I know my sound guy might be a problem. And then other than that, like if I don’t have a tour manager, I got to go mess with the merch, and it’s going to piss me off. But other than that, those are the only hiccups I’ve got. Because I’ve got a band that knows exactly what they’re doing. They’re firing all the cylinders they need to fire. So that can clear the way for me to worry about what I need to worry about. If I have to worry about that, then I can’t focus on the things I need to be able to think about.

NES: From what I’ve seen, you’ve played in Boston recently in 2021 and 2022, but your Boston dates as a solo artist date back to 2015. When did you kind of start working on this record? You’ve released two albums before this, but when did this one kind of start coming together for you? Were some older songs and some much fresher?
Willie Watson: We wrote songs for like a year, me and Morgan Nagler. Morgan Nagler is a great songwriter. She’s done a lot of co-writing with people you might not know about. That Phoebe Bridgers’ song, “Kyoto,” she co-wrote that with Phoebe Bridgers. Tons of other stuff, and Morgan, she’s been a pal, an acquaintance. We’ve been friends for many, many years. We were introduced through Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. We had never worked together or written songs together. So naturally, it all started taking shape because I wanted to write songs. And I hadn’t written songs. I used to write a lot of songs with Old Crow, and I had always done it with them. And when I went solo, went out of that band, I was like, I guess I’ve got to keep writing songs. But I had a hard time finishing songs and writing songs by myself. It was a thing; I knew about keys, I could sing, I knew exactly what to do, and I knew exactly how to do it. And I can see it through, and I know what it’s going to look like at the end because I’ve done it. And I had to get up there, and I had to do it a ton to understand it. I had to practice and do it to know it. You could tell me how to do it and I could just follow some instructions. So with the songwriting, it’s a thing that I had never done by myself, in a room, it’s never a thing I allowed myself to keep going at. I would basically write a few lines on a page and say, that’s stupid and close the book. And that’s what I did for my whole life. Unless someone else was around to say, “That’s not stupid; stop saying that.” And I’d be like, “Oh really? Okay, cool.” Then I would look at some of my old notebooks, and I’d pull out an old one, in between tours, just on this last run, like an old notebook out of my desk. And I don’t know how old this one was, ten, fifteen years old, and then I was flipping through the pages, and that was exactly the story that it was telling. Like there’d be a page with four lines on it at the top, some big line at the bottom, and drawings and some scribbles because I got distracted and didn’t finish. It’s like a kid at school, with ADHD, that’s just how they do it. When I see a paper, it’s like school, I’m like can’t do it, and I just would run away.

So there’s Morgan all of the sudden, so I got sidetracked, I would look at the notebooks and these four lines that I wrote fifteen years ago. That I thought were stupid, and they were awesome. And I’d be like, “What the hell? Why didn’t I just keep writing this song.” Because I just hated myself too much. It’s just part of it, it’s a conversation, it’s a lot to get out in these interviews. Because it’s just a pyschological situation, you know what I mean. And it was the story of my life. I mean, what was the question again? What am I even talking about (laughs)?

NES: It was, when did you kind of start writing the self-titled record?
Willie Watson: Yeah! It’s been a long time since I’ve had an album out. It’s been seven years. We’ve come around the other end of Covid, and I needed to do something. I didn’t want to put out another Folksinger album. That was the last thing I wanted to do in this world. If I was going to have to put out another Folksinger album, and go tour by myself, I was just going to have to quit. I was just not going to do it, like I can’t. It’s too scary. And so, we wrote songs for like a year. Must have been 2020 or 2021, a year and a half we wrote songs, and  by that time,  we had a batch. We finally got together, and I hadn’t done much cowriting. I didn’t have enough experience to be able to say, this is amazing, that every single time we get together, for four, maybe five hours each time, we would get this songs and it would just be dope. There’s like two songs that didn’t make the record, we just did great, and I didn’t even know how great we were doing. It was cool! She kept getting excited about it, she wanted to just keep doing more, and that was just inspiring. Then all of the sudden, I’d be doing it, and I’d be like, oh, I did that today. How did I do that today? How did we do that today? How did I do that with Morgan today? I look at it now, and say I did that. And I knew how to do it, and I know I did a good job on it. I’m a songwriter, I wasn’t going to be able to call myself that unless I had done it. And like felt like I had actually done it. That was part of this whole big project or whatever. It’s part of this whole thing. For anyone who’s been in the realizing part of the whole thing, for me midway through, when it came time to be making the record. Or when it came time to get into the studio, I didn’t know where that was going either. And I didn’t want to have any pressure, and making sure there was no pressure. Because as soon as there was going to be a bunch of pressure on it, I was going to get scared and run away. And so when I had some conversations with people who were interested, and who were loving my new stuff, I was singing songs like “Real Love”, “Slim,” “Harris” and some other songs that didn’t make the record. And Kenneth (Pattengale, the producer of Watson’s latest), a bunch of other people heard those songs, and really wanted to record them. And Kenneth told me, he said, “Why don’t you just come to the studio”. And I was like, I don’t know, your studio, I don’t know. “What’s your studio like?” And he’s like, “I don’t know, I don’t care, you just need to be a part of what you’re doing.” And I was like, “Well, what do you mean?” And he was like, “You’ve been doing this for so long, I think you’re fucking amazing. I know that you don’t really think you’re fucking amazing, but I promise you, you are. And why don’t you come to my studio and you and I, whoever else we get, but you be a part of it. You make your record, and I’ll make it with you.” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s what I’ve always wanted. But no one else has been able to see that I could.” And that’s one of those things, like if I’m around a bunch of people, I can feel their doubts and man I start seething. It’s game over for me. Once someone gives me some instruction, and once someone tells me I did something that wasn’t quite right, I can’t handle it. And I’m working on that, I’m working on that. I’ve worked on that for decades now. But I have a really hard time with it still. So once I get the recognition, the acknowledgement, and other people are like no, he’s good. Look at him go, I’m like yes, fuck yeah, and fuck you, all at the same time. Like you didn’t see it. I hid behind the shadow of Ketch Secor, and Old Crow Medicine Show for a long time. And no one could see what I could do, back there, no one the whole time, what I could do. And it would be like, “Hey everybody, look at me too.” And I know that really sounds narcissistic, but yeah, I wanted that attention, and I still want that attention. It’s what I’m doing. That’s how I was built, I’m a singer. Singers, we want attention. I’m not a guitar player man, I’m not a drummer, I’m not a piano player, I’m not a bass player, I’m a fucking singer. I’m right up front, and of course I want attention, and I’m not going to be ashamed to admit that. And I’m so glad to be finally getting it. So glad that I could put out a record, that I could put out a record where I could sing. Even now, I’m still like, oh, I could have sung better. If I had another week, I could have opened up my voice a little more. But I think I sang on this record in ways I don’t think people didn’t know I could sing. I’m really glad that people can finally see that. And yes, I do want recognition for that shit. I need it, I really, really needed it. It’s helping me a great deal that people know what I can do.

NES: Then like you said, and what we’ve been talking about, you’ve been touring since you were in your teens. Maybe how is it to kind of finally put out this record that has your name on it, like it be called Willie Watson, considering you’ve been a touring musician for so long.
Willie Watson: It feels so good, and I didn’t understand how that could feel. I didn’t understand it. Putting out this record, it’s what everyone does. What everyone does as a kid, they’re like, I want to be a musician, play guitar, they play songs with their friends at parties, that they didn’t write. Now they’re doing renditions of Billie Eilish songs at parties. And then, they’re writing songs. They’re playing songs that they wrote at a party and all their friends liked it. And they’re like cool, I’m going to be a musician and make a record. And they, they do that. They do it from the start, and they put that record out, it gets them attention, and they experience that. And they experience it in that way, that it just came from nothing but them. They put out a record, and they go and do a bunch of interviews, and they don’t sit there and talk about  Dave Rawlings, they don’t talk about Gillian Welch, they don’t talk about Ketch Secor, they just talk about them and their songs. Then for the first time I’m in my life, I’m still talking about Ketch Secor, and Dave Rawlings. It’s kind of stupid, that I’ve been waiting my whole life to experience that. I hadn’t seen Gillian Welch in a long time, and I ran into her in this grocery store in Nashville. She gave me a ride back to the hotel, or wherever our bus was, and we started talking right away about all kinds of stuff. About sound on stage, about the fact that we both put records out. We had texted each other, being like, “Hey cool, your record’s out. Congratulations, love you.” But I hadn’t seen her in a long, long time. Hadn’t talked to her, and we started talking, and immediately we talked about this stuff. And she told me that she was finally able to hear them onstage, like the big picture. And at first, I was like, “Well, what do you mean”. And I got it real quick, on stage you don’t know what you sound like. And it took me a long time to realize that. And she’s been doing this forever, she’s so good, and she cares so much about the music that she plays. She thinks about it in the same way and we’re able to have these conversations about these details. And she said, for the first time, I’m finally able to hear our little band with her and Paul and Dave for the first time ever. Again, I forget what the question was.
NES: No, you answered it perfectly. It was about how it felt to finally have the self-titled record out, I know it’s been a few months, but to have it under your belt.
Willie Watson: Oh yeah, that’s right, that wasn’t even the point, okay sorry ADHD kicked in strong. That wasn’t even the point. I just started thinking about our chat. And when I sat down with her, I was telling her about the record and I was like, I can finally understand what it’s like to do that. It’s the first time, and that’s what I keep saying in doing this, is because I hadn’t experienced it. I was always around something else, and this is way different, so different. I’d be so scared to take those songs out and sing them to a crowd for the first time. And they’re on the record and everybody will hear the record in a week, but these people are going to hear them. And it was just so impactful, and it was so scary, but to still have people feel that that song was awesome. And I don’t know if people feel that it was awesome, I don’t know if it was awesome. It’s my stuff, I could tell you that an Bob Dylan song was awesome, because it’s not me but I cannot tell you if my songs are. I can think it is, I go into immediate self-mongering there, being like you’re not good. That’s all it is, is to experience it, I really do like my music now, I like my voice. Because I finally think I’m pretty darn good. And that’s just new.

 

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12/10: Willie Watson/Viv & Riley at The Sinclair in Cambridge, MA! Tickets can still be grabbed here!