Things are looking up for Dale Watson. The Austin, Texas-based honky-tonk country singer and songwriter has departed the cult status territory of minor labels for the rather more high-profile arena of Sire records, a division of Time-Warners. Label boss Seymour Stein liked what he heard at Watson's gigs, and on his low-budget album releases, and signed him on the spot.
Watson, talking to The Irish Times from a truck stop somewhere in the middle of Sweden (you can always trust a honky-tonk singer to find a truck stop; "They're just everywhere, pardner," says Watson, laconically), reckons that signing to a bigger label is about the only way he and his band will be able to cut down on their heavy workload.
"I'm a realist," he says, "and I know I'm not going to tell the record company I want a new bus and a huge amount of money for touring. That comes from my future earnings, anyway! Also, I don't want to get used to that and then have to go back if my music doesn't catch on with the public at large. I'd rather keep touring like I'm touring. We're totally fan-supported, so living above our means is not my thing. That said, we stay in decent hotels and get a good night's sleep. At the moment, we're travelling Europe by rail, which hardly any touring bands do these days, at least not from Nashville. So signing to Sire will achieve certain things.
"Artistically, I'd like the songs to receive a higher profile, for the records to be more readily available in stores, and to have wider media coverage as far as acceptance goes. I'd like to appear on some of the major TV shows, because they tend not to touch acts that aren't on major labels.
"So to have the kind of machinery that a major label has is no bad thing. I'd also like to be able for me and the guys to cut our workload down to include more quality time and to ensure we don't have to play every night just to make the numbers add up at the end of the tour. Major labels can help in that regard, too."
Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1962, Watson was introduced to country music by his father, a Marine, who himself had the best intentions of attaining country music stardom. When the family moved to Pasadena, Texas, Watson was introduced to the string-plucking delights of the ukulele and guitar. When he was old enough, a family outfit, the Classic Country Band, was formed, featuring Watson's brothers Jim and Donny. The result was more The Clash-goes-country than The Osmonds - the band playing mostly cover versions, a selection of songs that the brothers nevertheless connected with.
"They were the type of songs that weren't just fluff, like they are today," recalls Watson, ever ready to swipe at the current Nashville trend of cheesy country pop. Indeed, it's a major bone of contention for Watson that - just because he plays under the generic umbrella title of country music - he tends to get lumped in with the likes of Martina McBride and Shania Twain, two recent examples of how Nashville can suck the marrow out of intrinsically interesting prospects. While the genre of country music has undergone as much a facelift as liposuction in the past 10 years, it leaves the likes of Dale Watson occasionally floundering. Where does he fit in? Not sweet enough by half, Watson has more in common with alt.country bands such as Son Volt and Wilco than his chart counterparts.
"One's country music and one isn't," he states baldly. "That's not to sound smart arse, but it's really the truth. I'm not saying mine is any better, it's just the real difference is that one is country music and the other is product. It's something they manufacture for the sole intent of making money. The music I make? I never think of it as a money-making thing. It's just songs I write and record. At its very roots, country music is about storytelling, which, as I'm sure your readers are aware, is a Celtic thing."
Watson's emergence as a songwriter of note (check out his hot-to-trot 1999 album, PeopleI've Known, Places I've Been, for fine examples of first-person narrative travelogue songs) started when he first moved to LA in 1988. He says the atmosphere there was writer-friendly, a time when original music was more accepted. Stints writing commercial songs for various publishing companies eventually sucked his creative juices dry and in 1993 he began to write exclusively for himself. The result was 1995's Cheatin' Heart Attack, a truthful record of simple but effective material that reached far beyond the boundaries of saccharine country.
"I realised my writing style, and the soul of it, reflected the influences of not only the people I listened to, singing and song-writing-wise, but also the things that meant a lot to me personally. For instance, although his songs were able to generalise - despite being our songs, everybody-in-the-world songs - Hank Williams never seemed to say that the songs were actually about himself. Yet his material is probably the epitome of personal song writing. To write a song that everyone can relate to is magical. I can only write a song that I relate to. In other words, I write what I know about. They're what I've experienced or what somebody has told me about, or someone I know went through the experience.
"You can pretty much tell what I'm going through relationship-wise, life-wise and whatever-wise, because any song that is first person is definitely about myself. People I write about might not be exactly Paul Bunyans - they're not people who have done extraordinary things, just regular guys like myself."
Signing to Sire might just take Watson out of the naturally creative milieu that has so far influenced and inspired him. An aspiring actor (he appeared alongside River Phoenix in 1993's The Thing Called Love, a drama set in Nashville, and Phoenix's last completed film), there are distinct parallels between Dale Watson and fellow singer/sometime actor Dwight Yoakam: both show barely-hidden contempt for Nashville's country-pop. Both have outspoken views about the general state of country music; and both write accessible honky-tonk material that is firmly rooted in tradition. Oh, and they both drive trucks.
"I constantly strive to be a normal person, taking care of responsibilities and my family," says Watson in a more reflective moment, clearly fighting a battle between present cult notoriety and prospective widespread fame, as Scandinavian trucks whizz by. "Being a husband and a father are top priorities for me, which is tough when you're on the road. Quite frankly, it's almost impossible sometimes to do it right and to be out on the road."
A final word on Nashville, though, and the CMA (Country Music Association) Awards Watson will inevitably win within a few years.
"I love Nashville, but I just wish it would straighten up. It discourages originality and encourages conformity. Where I live, Austin, is the opposite. Conformity as far as the Top 40 and mainstream music just isn't cared about. Music recorded in Nashville has no dynamic. Too loud and too much bashing from the same players playing the same notes. As for CMA - hey pardner, that's `Country My Ass'."
Dale Watson plays HQ Hall of Fame on Wednesday