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Wow, gosh golly.
First of all, he was a great guy. They were a terrific couple, except, you know, they weren’t a couple any longer. So much so that I'm afraid to recount my evening online, lest I betray any confidences and it gets googled and turned into gossip among his fans. (Worldwide following, yo.) Lester Bangs told William Miller to be unmerciful, but it's a cheap shot to be unmerciful when you were with the guy socially and not as a critic. So I called Cha and told her to read for any violations.
Turns out what he liked to talk about was South Park. A lot. They spend countless hours in transit, and, like ballplayers, they kill the time with DVDs. He had a taste for the stupid. Airplane, Dumb and Dumber, South Park. He was really taciturn and all, fumbling with his blackberry to coordinate with his bandmates who were traveling under separate cover. Until the subject of dumb entertainment and June Cleaver jive-talkin’ came up.
It also turns out, in certain circles, this guy was royalty. He has won Artist of the Year at the European version of the Country Music Awards. (The coins on the guitar are from every country he’s played.) Years ago, at a Hollywood tribute to great songwriters like Johnny Cash and Roy Acuff and Roger Miller, a bunch of stars like Ray Charles and Trisha Yearwood were asked to sing the honorees' songs, and he, as the designated “Artist on the Verge,” was asked to sing Roger Miller’s songs, and Johnny Cash took the time out to tell him he was the best part of the evening. Years and years later, he’s still frustratingly an artist on the verge. It was surreal that we take this guy out to dinner on U Street and he’s an ordinary feller, and then we head down to the club in northern Virginia and everyone immediately wants to touch him and tell him their life stories. Teenagers and Korean War types also. F’real. This guy had a batch of 60-year-old round women looking for hugs.
It’s clichéd to say it, but his music was gen-u-ine. It was almost post-modernly genuine music about being genuine. Texas boogie. Western swing. Shuffle. Two step. Hank Freakin’ Williams lonely heartbreakin’ music also. Honky tonk. (And that Hank Williams association seemingly has a lot to do with his trans-generational following. More on that below.) His baritone was like a young Waylon but he also had an occasional nasal quiver like Willie, but never sounded to be imitating anybody. Good stuff, and I was surprised that I had heard and enjoyed some of it previously — including the hard-to-forget “Hey Deejay (Won’t You Play Me a Real Country Song).”
At least I think that’s what it was called. There was another tune called “Country, My Ass.” And that’s the theme of an evening with Dale Watson and his band. In between songs, he essayed wryly and cleverly on the bullshit commercial cesspool that Nashville had become. It’s true, of course, and has been true for as long as anyone can remember. (What year did that Altman movie come out?) But it was sad how the audience needed the guy to say all this rebellious stuff for them to hoot ‘n’ holler to. Despite his understated delivery, he had to be the rebel outlaw dude, so they could all flex their rebel muscles by association.
Just watch out for the quest for authenticity, folks. They needed him to be this thing, that was only a small part of what he was, and it was kind of strange to watch him play it. One guy there who was celebrating his birthday and had bought out half the room, when Dale would essay, would shout rebellious lines to the stage like “That’s why you live in Texas!” and Dale would oblige and feed him back that line.
I watched this one guy with most of his upper body tattooed and exposed and piercings in his face, head shaved, and a walking stick for a final affectation grab DW and say, “You’re the real thing, man! You’re roots! You’re the f*** y** that country needs!” and I'm watching this and thinking, “Heck, man, what did you do to yourself?”
And to see him be so sweet and decent and obliging to everyone, knowing his ex-missus was saying earlier that he really doesn’t seem like music anymore (I'm not fully buying that), was sad. And I really liked his music.
I had a roommate back when I was about 32 and living in a group house. She was about 19. And she hated, hated Foo Fighters. They seemed more or less good to me, not worthy of inspiring hatred. So I asked her and her problem was that they were more or less good, almost fun to listen to, and that was her problem — that it’s unworthy of the Nirvana legacy to associate it with music that isn’t about torture and pain and ruptured childhood and what have you.
And I’m thinking, “Curt Cobain killed himself to be what you needed him to be. Isn’t that quite legitimate enough? Haven’t you had enough legitimacy out of this band?”
I thought about this in the microcosm when I saw Dale being what these hootin’ and hollerin’ folks needed him to be. Dale recently has gotten the endorsement of Hank Williams III as an example of “real country” and it’s been a mixed blessing. Yeah, it widens his audience, but it brings in all these more-alternative-than-you folks who need him to be that SOB. His wife (sorry, ex-wife) described him doing a bill with Hank III. Hank was doing half a set of country-tonk and half a set of punk, and would bring in a crowd of mixed rednecks and punks. The punks would be borrowing redneck authenticity from the ‘necks and the ‘necks would be borrowing the authenticity of the punks and by the end of the evening it’s one terrifying drunken orgy of borrowed authenticity.
Carrying on the legacy of Bob Wills and Hank Williams and Johnny Cash and Roger Miller and Ray Price and Bill Haley is good. Hell, it’s great and I’m glad peeps are doing it like Dale Watson is. But carrying it on as an f* you to those who aren’t — which I know wasn’t his original intention, but something he has to keep falling into — so your audience can revel in the fight by association, must be exhausting.
In all, my Monday was a lot like my previous Monday — a nice dinner with good people who are little different from me, and more interesting because of that. After dinner, well, I really liked the music, but the hootin’ was more fun than the hollerin’.
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Alt-country-outlaw music from the Austin school. He's got like a dozen albums out. Cha just called to let me know he's a-comin' over to dinner tonight. She made friends with his ex-wife a few weeks ago, and I thought, "I don't know who he is, but he's at Iota (a club in Alexandria) in a few weeks, let's go see him."