AmericanaMusic.com
Interviews with Americana "Artists You Should Know" hosted by Sarah Popejoy.
AmericanaMusic.com
The Willie Watson Interview: Real Love, Creative Outlets, and Meeting One of The Beatles
Willie Watson's debut self-titled album was released this past Friday. Since leaving Old Crow Medicine Show, founding member Willie Watson, has been forging together an album that really reflects himself as an artist. After two solo albums, the self titled third album finally feels like the solo expression he’s been seeking. To Willie, it’s epic poetry, the journey from stereotypical excess to being sober, from the traumas of childhood to the hard learned habits that lead to destruction and/or an awakening. These stories have blended into the storytelling he’s learned from Old Crow and collaborating with David Rawlings and Gillian Welch, now find themselves on a nine song album named after the man whose journey they are about. With an unmistakable voice that lingers long after you’ve heard it, and melodic earworms in songs like “Real Love”.
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Sarah Popejoy (00:16):
Welcome to AmericanaMusic.com. Today we are delighted to have Willie Watson. He has a beautiful vibrato voice. If you've never heard Willie before, he was a founding member of the Old Crow Medicine Show. Since then, he struck out solo. He's here to talk about his third album, self-titled Willie Watson. Willie, thank you so much for joining us today.
Willie Watson (00:37):
Thanks for having me, Sarah. Glad to be here to talk to you.
Sarah Popejoy (00:39):
Willie, when you grew up, you grew in upstate New York, around the Finger Lakes region, and tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up there in upstate New York.
Willie Watson (00:50):
Well, the Finger Lakes are a beautiful place. There's lakes and a lot of waterfalls, gorges that are cut out by waterfalls. They're in people's backyards along the lakes, and there's a national forest in between Watkins Glen and Trumansburg, Senal Lake and Cayuga Lake. There's national forests all over the place. There's farms. It's a lot of dairy that's sort of outside of town, but growing up in the system there, I don't know if it was just New York state or what the rest of this country was like, but it was pretty harsh. People yell at each other a lot around there. The winters are really long. It is like eight months of winter, and by the end of it, everyone's so mad at each other and year after year it just piles up and everybody just ends up really angry and cold.
Sarah Popejoy (01:35):
So that harshness, do you think it's from the winters or just
Willie Watson (01:39):
It might spill over from the city and just the culture that's around the northeast, new England and New York state and also Pennsylvania. People are just a little more worked up. I live on the West Coast right now, and it's that typical stereotype like, Hey, dude, hang loose, bro. And that's true. People are really relaxed and hanging loose out here, back there in the east, especially in the north. People aren't hanging loose.
Sarah Popejoy (02:07):
Definitely a completely different culture from where you were and where you are now, which is in Los Angeles, correct?
Willie Watson (02:14):
Yeah, I've lived out here for 20 years now.
Sarah Popejoy (02:17):
Wow. There's a story on your website of a chance encounter with a man named Ruby Love. Can you tell us a little bit about that story?
Willie Watson (02:26):
I was in high school and I'd been dabbling in old country music, old fiddle music, and also the local music scene around Ithaca was full of fiddles and banjos, and I was interested in it, but it wasn't really readily available. I was excited about Ruby coming. I tell the story in depth on the record.
Sarah Popejoy (02:44):
Oh, okay.
Willie Watson (02:44):
And so once this record comes out, people are going to hear it, every detail of that story.
Sarah Popejoy (02:49):
Oh, that's great to know.
Willie Watson (02:51):
But it's an important story to me because it was a real turning point that I didn't realize was happening. I was a teenager and my life is just happening around me, and here's this huge moment. Wow, I'm trying to explain it, but you have to hear it. You have to hear the song before I can give this little explanation or summary of it, but it's a huge turning point where all this stuff is coming together. My first feelings of pain that were recognized as pain, that I knew hurt were coming together with a solution that I didn't know was the solution. There was hope being offered to me right in front of me in the most blatant and obvious way, and that I took that offering from what I believe is a godsend. But that story just, if it doesn't necessarily spell it out so clearly like I just described, but if you listen and if you know anything about me already, I think it comes into focus for the listener.
Sarah Popejoy (03:43):
That's really neat. In our interview on the website, AmericanaMusic.com, you talk about singing being a direct line with God. Can you tell me a little bit about your theories on that?
Willie Watson (03:57):
Sometimes I'm just so awestruck by the power of music and the power that just one note can carry. And it's like that thing where you don't really think about the stars or the sky or the moon every day, but sometimes you look at the moon and you're just like, man, that's crazy. I can't believe that thing's up there in space. And it's like that with music. There's times where I don't fully realize it's power and you take it for granted just like you would this eye above. And there's those times where it dawns on me again, how powerful songs and notes are and what they mean to people. And I think about music in early man making the first music however that was made, and not just beating on a drum but notes. It's so primitive, and if I think about it in that way, two cavemen sitting there, one makes a flute and what that other caveman must have thought and how powerful a feeling that is. It is magical and mystical and I feel like it's a thing that binds people together like nothing else that we know of regarding the telephone line to heaven. I know that when I sing, that's the closest spiritual connection I've ever felt to anything. I don't even know what it is. It overtakes me. It overtakes my body, it overtakes my chest, it overtakes my throat, my feet. I'm possessed, and it's a good possession. It doesn't feel like a demon's in there sometimes, maybe, but for the most part it's a real beautiful, beautiful thing that brings me together with everyone else in the room.
Sarah Popejoy (05:35):
That's beautiful. I love that.
Willie Watson (05:37):
Cool.
Sarah Popejoy (05:38):
Your first two solo albums after Leaving Old Crow Medicine show, were called Folk Singer. How does your new album differ? Can you talk about how it's different from your last two?
Willie Watson (05:49):
Those first two records were real safe for me to be able to sing those songs that I knew were good. I didn't write them. I didn't have to, their quality or their validity of them. So I knew the material was strong. I just had to perform them well. It was real safe, and I was able to lean on those old songs and get by. I had high hopes that it was going to be bigger, that I was going to really be the new folk singer to bring it all back and show the people that I didn't have to write songs to be good, and I didn't have to write the songs for you guys to like me as much as I wanted you all to like me. It didn't work out that way. It fizzled out, it fell off, got off track. People just didn't care anymore.
(06:27):
Did I care? Yeah, but not as much as I could or not as much as I wanted to. And I just wasn't ever really doing what I've wanted to be doing. When I was 16, writing my first song, it came to me really easy and I tried to write a few more and they were hard, and that threw me off track because I was already hard enough on myself. And so I sort of stopped. And then I met some people that I could write songs with Catch and Critter and all the guys in Old Crow Medicine Show. I wrote songs with them and felt great about it and felt like I was fulfilling all my artistic desires and anything I needed to say was getting said. And I was fully realized as me. And so the folk singer thing was backtracking, but it was safe and I was going to pay the bills.
(07:08):
And so now at 44 years old, finally I can shake off all that fear, not worry about what anyone else is going to think of it. In fact, people think it's good and not compare myself and what it is to anything else on the radio. But in fact, when I do, I actually like it. And the big difference about this one is that this record made me like the artist Willie Watson. I've never really been a big fan of Willie Watson. I watch footage of myself on YouTube and I think someone needs to tell that guy to chill out. And I hear my voice on the records, and I think, man, if I could have just heard myself when I recorded that song, I could have sung it better and it wouldn't have been so scratchy. So now's the time for me to do all those things and not let anyone else tell me how to do it or what to do. And I listened to this record and I look at the picture on the cover, and I think I like that guy. I like his face and I want to hear the songs he's got to sing. And it makes me not like Bob Dylan as much as I used to. It makes me not like all this stuff, all my heroes anymore. I'm a bigger Willie Watson fan than I am a Bob Dylan fan now.
Sarah Popejoy (08:05):
When I heard your song, real Love, you have a voice unlike anybody else. It reaches to your core quickly, is how I would describe it through your vibrato and just it's really special.
Willie Watson (08:18):
Thanks, Sarah. I appreciate that. It's good to hear.
Sarah Popejoy (08:20):
So tell me a little bit about Real Love, what it was about, maybe what inspired it.
Willie Watson (08:25):
That was one of those songs that the chorus popped into my head in the car. I was driving home and the chorus was just there in my head in place, and the chords to the song were there. The whole song were already in place. I just had to get home and fill in the blanks. So I got home and recorded the little bit that I was sure about the chords, and that chorus scratched out a few notes on my phone. And then I think in the next few days, got together with my songwriting partner, Morgan nr, and we wrote it pretty quick. We wrote it in about maybe four hours, which is pretty fast. And it just started out as a love song. But the verses started taking on timelines, and the first verse was kind of my early life and the second verse, my middle section, and then the last verse is kind of more about now. And it ended up being about all my relationships with everybody, old girlfriends and old wives and old friends and family. And it just started exploring that and examining it and being able to put it into trying to summarize a life in three
Sarah Popejoy (09:22):
Verses.
Willie Watson (09:25):
I don't think I summarized a whole life in three verses, but I look at it and it really does say a lot about the love. I've tried to look for my whole life. It could take a lifetime to find. Once we found each other, it sort of erased all of that past and all of those resentments, any darkness was just gone and we were ready to move forward in the most beautiful way.
Sarah Popejoy (09:44):
I love that. It's a great song. That's actually how I was introduced to you or hearing that song.
Willie Watson (09:49):
Oh, cool.
Sarah Popejoy (09:49):
Tell us about your either funniest or most memorable moments while touring.
Willie Watson (09:54):
Oh, well, not even touring, but I got to play at Ringo Star's birthday party. I got to sing three Ringo Star songs, four Ringo Star at Ringo Star's birthday. I know, but I couldn't believe I was first of all just going to get to meet a Beatle. I never thought I'd even come into close contact with
Sarah Popejoy (10:10):
A beat.
Willie Watson (10:10):
And so that was cool. But then at the end, he was on his way out. He was getting whisked away, and I managed to get in there and just wanted to thank him for having me and giving me the opportunity to be there. And he turned around and he was so gracious, and he said, oh, thank. He said, thank you. And he said to me, you've got some pipes on you, don't you? And he grabbed, I wish you could see the video. He grabbed my throat, he grabbed gently. He sort of touched my neck and wiggled my vocal cords around and said, you've really got some pipes on you, don't you? And gave me a big smile and a hug, and then we took a picture. So that was my most recent mind blowing sort of musical touring gigging experience. I hope that's a good enough story.
Sarah Popejoy (10:54):
Yeah, that's a great story. Wow. Well, I can't even imagine meeting one of the Beatles.
Willie Watson (11:00):
He handles himself so well. He turned 84 or 83 and was full of energy. He was bouncing around, greeting everybody, very gracious. Just a gentleman through and through.
Sarah Popejoy (11:10):
That's good to know. And it's always good when you meet one of your heroes and they don't disappoint you. It's a good
Willie Watson (11:19):
Experience. Absolutely. It can go the other way sometimes.
Sarah Popejoy (11:22):
Oh yeah. So in the bio that I read on your site, you say that every memory, maybe not the one with Ringo Star, but every memory is surrounded by a shroud of sadness, whether it's good or bad. And can you expand on that for me a little or that's a heavy statement, but I also see a little bit of where you're going with it.
Willie Watson (11:43):
Yeah, it's heavy. It's about as heavy as it can get, and I think it's me looking back at the past in the most realistic way possible and being completely honest looking at anything that I did or someone did or anything that happened and not having any denial at all. It's hard to have a realistic picture of the past when you take full ownership of some of the things that you've been, and you look at that time, ways that you might've been at the time might've been a lie, and that's a hard thing to look at later on. And whether or not that shroud and darkness or that veil of sadness is real or not, it's hard to see through it because there's so much around it that there's so much weight on my shoulders, and that's hard to differentiate how much blame to take for something, how much responsibility.
(12:33):
And years later you look at that and it's really hard to sort through. And I think, I guess I'm just saying that I suppose I'd maybe like to make a disclaimer about anything I say, and that is that I'm not sure how true it all is, and these are just my perceptions. And what I really want to say is that I'm at a point of being so stripped down that I'm absolutely willing to be wrong about anything I'm saying right now, and I'm saying it to put it out there in hopes that someone might come and say, Hey, hey, maybe it's not so bad. Maybe I'm putting that out there as a, maybe I'm fishing when I say that in my bio. Maybe I'm hoping someone will call me up hoping someone's going to call me and say, no, no, it wasn't that bad.
Sarah Popejoy (13:17):
Maybe it's both right too.
Willie Watson (13:19):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Of course.
Sarah Popejoy (13:21):
Yeah. If you were to flip it around and say every bit of sadness had some sort of joy in it somewhere.
Willie Watson (13:27):
Sure.
Sarah Popejoy (13:27):
But it made me think, that's for sure. I remember I was sitting in this concert, Mary Chapin Carpenter, I got a phone call. It was so weird because I was so happy to be there and listening to the music and just taking it all in actually was a text and get this little bit of sad news, and it ended up being okay. The sad thing that had happened. Everything ended up being all right. But it was weird to have this moment of just complete joy and this sadness at the same time, and I had to tell myself to not feel bad for feeling the joy at the same time I was feeling the sadness.
Willie Watson (14:00):
Yeah, we do that we won't allow ourselves. We don't understand that. We can feel all that at the same time, and then we think we're being dishonest with ourselves. I should say. Me, I think I'm being dishonest with myself if my emotions change and then I question what kind of person I am, and that's all okay. If we could all just tell ourselves that it's not black and white and that there's nothing but gray area and we don't have to stay on one side of the other of anything ever.
Sarah Popejoy (14:26):
Right. Definitely. Amen to that.
Willie Watson (14:28):
Yeah.
Sarah Popejoy (14:28):
I was going to ask you a little bit about the Willie Watson Manufacturing Company.
Willie Watson (14:33):
Yeah.
Sarah Popejoy (14:33):
I noticed on your sight as well. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Willie Watson (14:36):
I've been sewing and making my own clothes since I was in my mid twenties, and I started just by altering clothes that I'd get at thrift stores. I was on stage and playing bigger stages, feeling pretty good and feeling pretty important and wanted to look better than I had. So I wanted some skinnier pants, and in the early two thousands, it was impossible to find some skinnier pants, so I was buying women's jeans and taking in those bell bottom bottoms they all had. And then I was buying thrift store trousers and making 'em slimmer. I wanted to look like sixties stovepipe pants like Bob Dylan and The Beatles were wearing mid sixties. So that's what started it by me just wanting skinnier pants. And I just ended up altering and altering and then making more alterations and more complicated alterations where I was taking stuff apart and seeing how they went back together.
(15:22):
And so then I just started from scratch and made tons of pants. It got to the point where Old Crow, we were getting ready to start pre-production on our second record and see what songs everybody had. And we were coming together in people's living rooms, sharing what songs we'd been working on. And everyone said, I got this song and this, and I wrote four last week, and I got this old song I think we should record. And I was like, well, I got a lot of pants and I had to stop. I was like, whoa, slow down, stop sew. And I had jackets and shirts, all kinds of stuff, but I was obsessed. I took over my life. And so I did stop and I didn't sew anything for maybe 10 years. And then I was on my own again, and I was a dad, and I was interested in making my daughter some dresses and made her some cute little dresses that she could wear, sparked some interest in making some clothes for myself again.
(16:09):
So I started making shirts, pants, and jackets again, and then made a dress for my daughter that I thought was unique and cool enough to offer to the world. People were always telling me, you made that shirt, you got to sell that stuff. And I'd say, no way. I don't have time for that. And that's like a whole other world of, it's like an industry that I don't know anything about, and I'm not going to get involved in that. But anyway, that dress was cool, and I decided to make an adult version, take some pictures of it, put it on a friend, put it on an Instagram page and see what happened. And people loved it and started ordering, and then they saw that I was making my own genes for myself, and they'd say, well, can't you make me jeans? And I'd say, absolutely not. That's an industry I'm not getting involved in. But eventually I just kind of came around to it. Also, it helped financially quite a lot. My solo career was, like I said, it was kind of falling off. People weren't coming to shows. I hope they start coming to shows, but they weren't coming to shows, and it helped me a lot financially and also through Covid. Once Covid came, I was like, whoa.
(17:09):
That's why I started sewing. It was another one of those things that makes you believe in God just a little bit more. Oh, yeah. It was real handy to have that business when I couldn't tour.
Sarah Popejoy (17:18):
Oh, I bet it was.
Willie Watson (17:19):
Yeah. But anyway, it is great. And I do love sewing still, and I make a lot of jeans and old vintage inspired heritage workwear among other things. We got some machines to make knits, and we've been making sweatshirts and sweatpants for ourselves. But as far as the business side of it goes, man, it was that industry that I was afraid to get into, and it wore me out. It kind of hurt my back. It kind of made sewing not as fun. I'm putting the brakes on it. If someone wants to come along and say, Hey, man, here's hundred thousand dollars, and I'll manufacture all this stuff and we'll make 300 jackets and 600 pairs of jeans, then I'd be into that. But I don't want to sew everything myself anymore.
Sarah Popejoy (17:59):
Yeah, I imagine that's very labor intensive.
Willie Watson (18:01):
Oh, yeah. I became a factory worker.
Sarah Popejoy (18:04):
Yeah, definitely another creative outlet. I always think it's interesting to see musicians and singers and writers there, other creative outlets.
Willie Watson (18:11):
And I should mention, and it's been such an important part of the Sewing Side project for me, is that it helps me listen to music. And I would listen to music like that as a teenager. I'd be painting or sculpting things out of clay in my room, and that's how I learned to listen to music. So it had been a part of my life that had been missing for a long time, and it really helped inspire a lot of these new songs and source material that gives you ideas. So it was a huge creative outlet.
Sarah Popejoy (18:35):
That's cool. That's really neat. Well, Willie, I just want to thank you so much for joining us today, and I just want to encourage everybody out there to go to a Willie Watson show and go and listen to his music. Really amazing. Next Monday, be sure to check out our interview with Kim Richie, here's a little taste of that interview on your website as well.
(18:57):
That's another thing that you really strive for, is that connection with the audience. Are you thinking about that when you're writing or are you just in the moment?
Kim Richey (19:06):
Not when I'm writing. Not when I'm writing so much more so when I'm performing, I think, yeah, I think the connection more so when I'm recording. I think that if I'm just writing from a very honest place, which I do try to do all the time, is that that's the way of connecting with people, because then they can see themselves in the songs and the connection thing. There's that connection, and then there's also the performance connection. The best shows that I've ever played that come to mind were when I had a really great, enthusiastic audience, and there's just this energy thing that goes back and forth between the performers and the audience, and it just kind of keeps getting ramped up the more it goes back and forth, and it's just some of the most fun shows. It just depends on the audience.
Sarah Popejoy (19:52):
Right. Speaking of audiences, back in January, you were in Mexico with Brandy Carlisle, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Brandy Clark. Tell us a little bit about what that was like.
Kim Richey (20:02):
Well, that was her festival. The girls just won a weekend. It wasn't just the four of us. There was also Annie Lennox played Sarah McLaughlin, Wendy and Lisa, Alison Russell. It was a big festival, thousands of people there, full bands and everything. And then they decided that they were going to do this kind of songwriter, take turns playing songs, acoustically. I wasn't sure how that was going to work out because you had a big festival, kind of sort of atmosphere. And we set up on chairs up on stage, the four of us, and just took turns playing song solo acoustic. It was absolutely amazing. The whole vibe of that festival is fantastic. It's just really inclusive and positive, and it's just really, really great festival. But we set up there and played, and the crowd response when we were playing, you could just about hear a pin drop.
(20:52):
People were really quiet and respectful. The vast majority of those people out there had absolutely no idea who I was. It was so overwhelming. The response, Chapin and I, we just sat out there and cried, and then we'd have to stop crying when it was our turn to tick. But it was overwhelming. It was just one of my most fantastic performance memories ever. And I remember I was playing, I'm All right, and looked out at thousands of people, and they were doing the arm wave and singing along, and it was pretty darn amazing, I have to say.
Sarah Popejoy (21:26):
That's cool. Talk a little bit about the writers who have inspired you.
Kim Richey (21:30):
Oh, well, Joni Mitchell for sure. I grew up in that time and listening to that music, I think I come from the singer songwriter, country folk rock kind of scene. All the California people, Jackson Brown and that. I loved Carol King when I was little. I remember babysitting for some people one time and they had tapestry, and I would just play that over and over and over and over and over again. And I also loved Carla Bonoff. I listened to her a lot starting in college, but I think those women were definitely the most inspirational to me in songwriting. I also really love Steve Earl, and one of the reasons I came to Nashville because my friend Bill Lloyd, he was in a band called Fostering Lloyd that did really well in the country scene in the eighties, the late eighties I think it was. He sent me a tape. I was living in Bellingham, Washington at the time, and he sent me a tape of like, this is what's going on down here. Sent me Steve Ros first record Guitar Town, and I was like, whoa. Those kind of lyrics were just amazing to me. I just respect his songwriting so much.