Americana singer lets songs emerge naturally
He’s only 38, but Willie Watson often sounds like a man from an earlier time.
On his new album, “Folksinger Vol. 2,” the Americana singer, guitarist and banjo player covers the work of a string of roots-music legends, including Lead Belly and Furry Lewis.
As sensitive as Watson is to the source material, he remains his own man — one uninterested in playing note-for-note copies.
“At the end of the day, all I can do is sing these songs in the only way I know how, in whatever way that is comfortable to me,” Watson said by phone from a tour stop in San Luis Obispo, California. “Whatever is going to come out will come out.”
Watson, a founding member of the rootsy and rustic band Old Crow Medicine Show, left the group in 2011 to strike out on his own. He released his solo debut, “Folksinger Vol. 1,” in 2014. His new follow-up, like its predecessor, was released on Acony Records, an indie label founded in 2001 by alt-country stars Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
Welch and Rawlings have heavily influenced Watson’s career — Welch as a thoughtful sounding board on musical projects through the years, Rawlings as a producer on Old Crow Medicine Show’s early work and both of Watson’s “Folksinger” albums.
“Dave and I have very similar tastes,” Watson said. “We love all the same music. We like good, honest, quality work. That’s why it works so well in the studio.”
Watson also plays in Rawlings’ band the Dave Rawlings Machine — a seamless fit built on a familiarity that stems from years of playing and working together.
Their comfortable relationship shows on “Folksinger Vol. 2,” a mix of gritty Delta blues, raw mountain tunes, haunting folk and forlorn ballads. The dark and spare “Gallows Pole” features an air of lamentation, and “When My Baby Left Me” is filled with metallic slashes of slide guitar.
One of the covers is “Dry Bones,” a gospel number by Appalachian folk icon Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Packed with biblical imagery torn from the Old Testament, the song springs to new life under Watson’s piercing cry of a voice and ecstatic banjo playing.
“I call it a badass gospel song,” Watson said. “It’s so gritty. Then you get to the chorus, where the light from heaven is shining all around. Purity and redemption wash over you. I’m not a Christian, and I don’t think I would ever identify with any organized religion. But it’s very intriguing and tempting. They do have a good thing going on, having that kind of faith and fellowship. A huge part of me wishes I could surrender to that.”
The album’s cameos come from Welch, Paul Kowert of the experimental roots band Punch Brothers and Old Crow member Morgan Jahnig. The gospel group the Fairfield Four accompanies Watson on “Samson and Delilah,” a traditional song about the biblical characters. Watson was inspired by the version recorded by the esteemed blues and gospel singer Rev. Gary Davis.
Watson has long been a fan of America’s heritage artists in country, blues and folk. He grew up in Watkins Glen, New York, and honed his rootsy chops playing with other musicians in the old-time music scene that revolved around Ithaca, New York. In 1998, he formed Old Crow Medicine Show with original members Ketch Secor and Chris “Critter” Fuqua.
The band made an impression wherever it played — from coffeehouses and street corners to Doc Watson’s annual MerleFest music festival. The members wore a mix of vintage clothes and scruffy punk duds as they combined oldtime string-band music with a scrappy, upbeat energy.
“There were definitely a few mohawks floating around back then,” Watson said with a laugh. “We had a bit of a rough edge.”
These days, Watson has evolved into a singular performer. He also has expanded his career into the world of movies: He will make his acting debut in the Coen brothers’ Western anthology, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” expected to air on Netflix in 2018.
“It was an inadvertent, almost accidental thing,” Watson said with a laugh. “I became friends with Ethan and Joel Coen a number of years ago. When I’m in New York, they come out to my shows.”
The Coens initially asked Watson to audition for their 2016 film “Hail, Caesar!” Watson didn’t get that role, but the sibling filmmakers said they wanted to cast him in their next film.
In “Buster Scruggs,” Watson plays a cowboy.
“They dressed me up in some cool cowboy duds. I learned how to twirl a six-shooter, and I got good at riding a horse.”