Dale Watson: Music as the reckoning of a man
Does Dale Watson realize how important he and his music are?
The man upholds and advances traditional Country Music -- the hand-tooled kind that reflects the aspirations, heartaches, and end-of-work-week, shout-and-stomp barroom release that a million corporate Nashville types twiddling computerized studio knobs for a million years couldn't replicate.
From his easy smile and laconic drawl to his silver, mile-high pomp and classy, Grand Ole Opry-redolent, populist troubadour clothes, Dale couldn't be anything but the authentic Country music last call luminary his loyal fan base lauds. And, issued earlier in the year by 40 Below Records, fresh platter Unwanted offers the many splendored barroom serenading for which Dale has long been known.
Steel-guitared romps bounce affably, with winks and cosmopolitan assurance. ("Gotta Try Harder," "Never Mend the Broken Spoke.") Sporadic punctuation arrives, in the person of movingly introspective material whose subdued manner is of wholly Country bearing. ("If You Truly Love Me," "If I Can.")
Located here and again are even strapping numbers that might could drive a fella to try his hand at that mustang nobody could break. ("What the Hell Happened To the Cadillac," "Don't Let the Honky Tonks Go," and the five-star title cut.)
Dale's Telecaster rhythms pulse and shimmer, his inventive leads sing out, and his ingratiating vocal warmth encourages all to pull up bar stools. Whether the clever material is dynamically uptempo, infectious and witty, articulating profound emotions, or charging gleefully into melodic mischief, adjoining players negotiate every backroad and neon-lighted avenue in sterling manner, as their leader maintains good-hearted command.
His objective importance lies in his priceless role as devoted counter to insipid Pop-Country. (A sterile contraption that can neither speak for plain home-folks, nor goad them to don whirlyspurs.) That needed function, and simply because the music itself is so damned good, is why Dale Watson is of significance to every listener who knows Real Country when he is lucky enough to hear it.
In fact, Dale Watson and Wayne 'The Train' Hancock are of the same rank: crucial, contemporary interpreters of bona fide classic Country styles who have every right to be hailed and featured by industry award-bestowers and powers-that-be, but who are too real and uncompromising to ever turn painstakingly manicured 'show me the money' heads.
As long as music this wood-grained and leather-worked is accessible, does it really matter that industry-calculated honors generally salute dreckish artificiality? After all, such foolish, televised corporate pageantry doesn't impede appreciators of the real deal from enjoying it.
Historians recall Thomas Jefferson remarking, when asked how he could abide the free exercise of religions other than his own: "They neither break my arm, nor pick my pocket." With similar indifference, we will let the clothes-horses prance.
Dale Watson must realize how important he and his music are. If he doesn't, he's the only one.
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