“Help me, Merle, I’m breakin’ out in a Nashville rash It’s a-looking like I’m fallin’ in the cracks, I’m too country now for country, just like Johnny Cash” — Dale Watson, “Nashville Rash”
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n March 1998, after winning the Grammy for Best Country Album — with little support from the Nashville music establishment, and even less airplay on mainstream country radio — Johnny Cash and his producer, Rick Rubin, took out a full-page ad in Billboard magazine “to acknowledge the Nashville music establishment and country radio” for their “support.” The infamous thank you advert was constructed around a picture of Cash from his 1970 concert at San Quentin State Prison. Cash’s snarling face was twisted up like the mean-eyed cat he’d sung about back in ’55, and his defiant middle finger dominated the foreground. Three years earlier, on his 1995 debut album, Cheatin’ Heart Attack, Dale Watson, an independent-minded Texas songwriter cut from the same fabric as Texas crooner Ray Price and West Coast songster Merle Haggard, predicted this precise moment in music history. And he provided a reasonably accurate summary of his own future career trajectory, in the opening line of a song titled “Nashville Rash.” “I’m too country now for country, just like Johnny Cash,” he wailed. For Watson, who’d been honing his skills in Texas bars and dancehalls since he was a teenager, “Nashville Rash” marked the start of a decades-long beef with Music City, U.S.A. and the beginning of a honky tonk hero’s journey that’s taken him around the world, and brought him, at last, to Memphis, where he’s putting down roots. “Yep, I’m about a mile away from Graceland,” Watson says, taking a lot of pride in his new Whitehaven neighborhood. “It’s great,” he says. Watson, whom the Austin Chronicle has described as one of the biggest artists in Texas country (let that sink in), coined the term “Ameripolitan” when the genre’s modern and traditional forms grew so far apart they no longer resembled one another, and older terms like “alt-country” stopped making sense as a descriptor. He wanted to rebrand and raise the profile of contemporary music with deep, identifiable roots in living forms — western swing, honky tonk, rockabilly, and outlaw country — that have no place in today’s Nashville pop. Watson created the Ameripolitan
Music Awards in 2013 to recognize working artists as sonically diverse as vampire outlaw Unknown Hinson, TexMex rocker Rosie Flores, and lonesome troubadour Wayne “the Train” Hancock, while paying tribute to living legends such as country rock pioneer Wanda Jackson and honky tonk hit machine, Charley Pride. When Watson moved to Memphis from his longtime home in Austin, he brought the Ameripolitan Music Awards with him. It’s a small movement compared to Nashville’s Country Industrial Complex, but the move to Tennessee’s musically significant second
“Where’s your conscience, what’s the problem Speak up and say what’s wrong … Mr. DJ, could you please play a real country song.” — Dale Watson, “Real Country Song” On Saturday, February 11th, at a music showcase for Ameripolitan 2018, Watson strolled onto stage at Graceland’s new theater at The Guest House wearing clothes from Lansky Bros. and holding a can of Wiseacre Beer. If Charlie Rich was the Silver Fox, Watson’s a White Wolf, with his snowy, exploded pompadour and bushy sideburns that dip well below
Dale Watson (above) plays the Blues City Cafe; skirts swirl and dancers dance. city might still be viewed as a big middle finger to the country capital. Maybe the biggest since Cash won his Grammy. “It’s true,” Watson says with a belly laugh. “The reason Ameripolitan fits so good here is because, since the beginning, Memphis has always been the rebel kid of music. From Elvis and Jerry Lee and the honky tonk side of Johnny Cash, the music that grew here grew the same way the outlaw music in Austin grew there. Because it was fertile ground, and it wasn’t repressed. I’m not bad-mouthing Nashville; that’s just a fact.”
the jawline. Before introducing Western Swing revivalists the Farmer & Adele, he launches into a familiar routine about his abiding love for Lone Star Beer, a Texas staple Watson and his band the Lone Stars have described in their shows as “the best beer in the world.” “But we’re in Memphis,” Watson drawls, pointing to his colorful can and grinning for a crowd of grown men dressed up like cowboys and tattooed ladies in vintage dresses. “Wiseacre.” Watson’s love affair with Memphis isn’t new. He’s been a regular visitor for
30 years, booking shows at the Hi-Tone, Murphy’s, and Blues City Cafe, and recording at Sun Studio, whenever he got the chance. He recorded a complete Christmas record at Sun in 2000, in addition to a pair of LPs called Sun Sessions and Dalevis. “Something about that room is so magical,” Watson told the Flyer in a 2013 interview. “A lot of it’s because of Elvis being there, of course. But even more so, it’s because the sound you get in that room is like nowhere else. It’s just amazing.” Whenever a new band member joined the Lone Stars, Watson — who nearly graduated from truck driving school, has put out three records full of classic trucking songs, and very often pilots his own tour bus — would drive miles out of the way to take the newbie on a tour of Graceland. In fact, what began as a quest to find an Airbnb on a road trip to Nashville evolved into a hunt for an investment property in Memphis. “I thought maybe if I had a place here, I could come more often,” Watson explains, while hanging leopard-print fabric on the ceiling of his personal jungle room, complete with a tiki bar and a jukebox full of Sun records. “So I looked around for houses in the area, and I thought, ‘I want to move.’ Everything about Memphis was electrifying to me. I’ve always loved the city and its history. But having a place was never sustainable for me. Now I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’m at a point in my career where I can live anywhere I want to live. And once I came down here and looked at the houses and the scene, I said, ‘I’m going to put down roots here.’” Putting down roots anywhere is difficult for musicians who make their living on the road playing up to 300 dates a year. “That’s true,” Watson says. “And it’s why having this place is so important to me. When I come home, like anybody, I need to get energized. Austin, which has been my home for over 25 years, has grown so much, and a lot of the personality of the town has changed. There are condos built over the old beer joints where I used to play.” “Our loss is definitely your gain,” says Whitney Rose, a Canadian-born singer/songwriter who grew up in her grandparents tavern, where she fell in love with American country music. She visited Austin to play a two-month residency at the Continental Club in 2015 and never left. Rose, who came to Memphis to perform after being nominated for an Ameripolitan Award in the Best Honky Tonk Female category, says Watson embraced her music right away, helped her discover Austin and find more opportunities for work. “He’s so generous,” she says. continued on page 12
COVER STORY m e m p h i s f l y e r. c o m
COUNTRY OUTLAW DALE WATSON’S LOVE AFFAIR WITH MEMPHIS COMES FULL CIRCLE.
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