On the horizon of a bleak country music landscape comes some great news. After six months of rejuvenation, refocusing and taking a much needed rest Dale Watson is back! TCB writer Janice Hauswirth recently caught up with him for us after a show at the Oneida Casino in Green Bay, Wisconsin. After reading what he's shared you'll agree he's in rare form and ready to take up the battle by doing what he does best. Telling it like he sees it and singing it like its supposed to sung. Welcome back Dale! It just wasn't the same without you.

Q:  You mentioned a you were working on something.  When will it be released?

A:  It is not a release, it is not through any record company.  It is my way of just getting back with my band and hanging out with them and reconnecting with the band.  Johnny Knoxville bought Johnny Cash’s cabin 5 days before he died, you know, and I was hanging out with him. Me and Johnny Knoxville are friends and he said  “Why don’t you go up to the cabin and record something”. I  thought that was a good idea so I asked the guys if they wanted to hang out, kind of just get reacquainted before we hit the road because  June 22^nd would be the  first day that we play together as a band , you know, the first day of the tour in ‘06.  They said sure we’ll come out so they met me out there and right before that met another mutual acquaintance , Charlie Boswell of AMD.  AMD is into processing, they are in direct competition with Intel, and they’ve outfitted the Grand Ole Opry, they’ve outfitted a lot of live recording places  Their thing is to record music to the most natural sound you can possible get and      to get away from a digital sound.  Intel is more into data and storage and AMD is more into music and arts and when you talk about the difference between data and music, the only difference is audible.  And it’s taken processing to the next step where you can record digitally but it sounds like it was a tape recording or it sounds like it did when it was in the room.  They are pretty brazen to go that next step because usually no one would care.

Q:  And this is how you recorded?

A: AMD, Charlie Boswell, came up to Cash’s cabin with a remote recording and they recorded it on  AMD processors.  Everything we did there we recorded . I didn’t have any songs when I went up there.  I ended up doing 2 songs that I had written before but the other 10 songs I wrote while I was there.

Q: And those 2 songs have never been recorded before?

A: No, no.  One had got recorded on a live DVD  that is coming out in August, “Yellow Mama” but they’ve not been recorded before.  But I wrote 10 songs in 3 days, we recorded them 2 days after that, for the next 2 days after that.

Q:  How long did it take you to record?

A: Two days.

Q: That’s it?

A: That’s it.  Because  we pretty much did it live.  It was such an inspirational  time to be in that cabin.  Between Johnny Knoxville’s moonshine and Johnny Cash’s cabin, it was a creative experience, you know.

Q. And when is it coming out?

A: I don’t know. I hadn’t planned having something come out. It was just something I wanted to do because it was an experiment because there was a lot of pressure.  I mean, to go into a place and say ‘all right, I am gonna write an album’s worth of material and record it within 5 days. But it happened, it worked.  It was a success and I was telling a record company which I won’t name now because we haven’t  talked about it much further then a record company that really wants to get ahold of the project and work and push it very hard.  Which is unusual for  a record company, I mean they are really really into it because they heard a couple of songs that are on it.  Which, I gotta say , for 10 songs I’ve written in 3 days, there’s a couple of  them that were a lot more then I hoped they would be.  Reason being is because you always think, well, any song, good song, is gonna take a long time to write but that’s just….

Q: Inspiration?

A: Yeah, well the big difference of it is I tried.  When I first went into it, I thought I don’t want to do anything Johnny Cash sounding because I didn’t wanna be accused of “ah, he’s just trying to copy Johnny Cash thing and do that“.  But I wanted to go to that cabin and write songs  thinking I’ll be inspired by the spirit, you know?  But when I got there I couldn’t help it.  But 8 central songs have that Johnny Cash bar.  The others have a Roger Miller vibe and a Waylon Jennings vibe which is OK because Roger and Waylon were good friends of Johnny Cash.  So I thought, OK, I’ll go with that.  I tried, when I first started writing, and it all came out Johnny Cash type, I said “man I gotta stop“, I put it to the side, I started on another one and started on another one and it would be that way and I‘d push it aside.  Then I’d come up with a Roger Miller vibe so I said “OK I’ll go with that“.  And then I started writing more and it was more Johnny Cash so I thought, I just gotta go with it, I gotta quit fighting it, just go with what creative process is doing.  You couldn’t escape his spirit of his writing there, you just couldn’t do it.  And the songs I ended up writing in that  vibe, I am really, really proud of.  Some of the best songs I have ever written.  And when you think about it, after all the songs were written, I thought…you know, what else would you write up there? I mean what if I came down from that cabin and all the songs I wrote were more the style of my writing, the shuffles, the swings, the regular honky tonk stuff.  I come down from the cabin, having written that stuff, it really had no special tinge to it, you know?  It wasn’t colored with anything.  If that’s what I came down with.  But having come down from there with these songs that are so very Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Waylon Jennings like, it just makes more sense to me.

Q:  Did the fact that you were on this 6 month sabbatical, did that inspire you for these songs at all?

A: No not really because my time off was filled with being with my kids.  I was building fences and doing a lot of remodeling of the house and home schooling.  It was mainly being a dad which was great and fantastic.  Being up in the cabin it was definitely more of a vibe of what, in hindsight I can say this….it seemed to me, that I had a big urge just to write songs that  mattered.  And while the Roger Miller song may not be that type of song, it may be kind of fluffy, it still is about, I guess, a fun way of saying I learned everything the hard way, I stuck my hand in a fire, I got married maybe when I shouldn’t have gotten married, you know, that type of thing.  Expected things I shouldn’t expect, yeah, that’s Roger Miller song but it’s still in a fun fun type of way of recording it.  But the other songs are a lot deeper than just that.  I can say though , there’s a song on there, ‘Justice for All’ which is probably one of my favorite songs that was tinged by my time with my kids because of so much going on about these people that hurt kids, you know, criminals that hurt kids, whether sexual predators or killers or whatever.  And I’m thinking, I can’t imagine if someone did anything to my kids. God better help them.  And they better get locked up because if they don’t…….I can not fathom not just tearing the hell out of somebody that hurt one of my kids.  And that is what ‘Justice For All’ is about.  It’s a song about  a guy, he sees this killer that killed his child and there he is, Lady Justice has got her arms wrapped around  him and in the song it says “you can’t blame her, she’s blind, she’s just saying you can’t hurt him just because he hurt someone else” and “I don’t care about that, all I care about  is the fact that I want my revenge for my kids” you know?  There is a saying a friend of mine turned me onto, I think it is Confucius  actually ‘On a journey of revenge be sure to dig two graves’ and I thought…I need to put that in a song so I did.  And it’s fitting for the subject matter  but even knowing that someone tells you “hey, when you gonna get revenge” you’ll just hurt yourself too.  But when you are talking about your kids, it‘s like I don‘t give a shit, I wanna make sure that son of a bitch don’t breath another air, another breath of air knowing what he did to my kids.  So that is one of the songs that came out.  It wasn’t something that I was really thinking about but it probably  was colored from the fact of being with my kids for the last 6 months that I thought it was worth writing about, you know.  And I am sure everyone feels that way especially so many criminals are getting off, you know, with life and even worst, parole after 2 years.

Q:  Does Maryland have a Country Music Scene?

A:  It might I don’t know.  I never even ventured to go out and find out.  Actually at the very end there, I did make a couple phone calls to see what was going on but there wasn’t much going on to speak of especially in the way of original music.

Q: Did you even pick up a guitar while you were out there?

A: I did one private party in Washington but that was something that was booked, you know,  a year before, before I made the decision to take a hiatus.  But other then that, I never played out there.

Q: Did you miss anything while you were in Maryland?

A: Of course.  I missed Austin and I missed all my friends and I missed playing.  But luckily the documentary that had it’s premier in Austin in March, I got at least to play then a couple days. I went back for a week and played 3 shows and boy my fingers were killing me.  I didn’t have the calluses that I normally have.  It was painful, the 3 dates that I did, I mean, it really hurt.  It’s amazing how quick you lose your calluses.

Q: What was the key motivational factor in deciding to return?

A: Well, right before I left these five people kind of had a meeting.  It was the director of the movie that I am involved with, Zalman King, his partner, Ron Harris, and Pam Blanton who is a publicist who is doing some stuff for the documentary and Egan Vanderberg, he’s a financial consultant and Nina Diamond who is a ghost writer on the book I am doing and Chris Kozler who is now my manager but at the time was just  someone who was affiliated with publishing.  They got together and worked out a way where instead of making this a retirement, to make it more of a hiatus and let me go ahead and spend time with my kids and get them settled in to their life and then after that to hit the road running.  Chris has taken over management and she is working deals and movie deals and stuff like that.  If it wasn’t for these 5 people I would have probably  just went ahead and stayed in Maryland. I was originally gonna get a UPS job.  I didn’t know this at the time, but they said ‘oh yeah , yeah, yeah, come on’.  They accepted my application but then when I got there, they accepted my application in September. and then when I got there it was January they said “oh, we were just hiring for the holidays“.

Q: So did you work while you were out there?

A: No, I couldn’t find a job.  Also another thing that changed, my ex-wife started home schooling my youngest so that derailed my idea of getting a job during the day while the kids were in school.

Q:   What was the factor in that?  A lot of parents do home school their kids

A: Our oldest daughter was home schooled until she was in 4^th or 5^th grade.  It gives them an edge up on everyone else.    Well, I  think any child starting out is better.  Well ours anyway.  It just gives  them that heads up in the grading system.  My oldest was reading at a college level when she was in 6^th grade.  That’s because she was reading when she was practically 4 years old.

Q: So what were you teaching?

A:  Oh, I wasn’t.  Cause my ex is studying to be a teacher, she knows the type of curriculum to teach so I was just pulling out  workbooks and saying “OK, here is your Math, your English, your Social Studies“.  It was easy enough stuff that I would know.  But my oldest, she comes home with homework and it’s beyond Algebra but it’s something that I have no clue.  Pretty much all of her homework I couldn’t do. I mean I graduated but it’s not like I’m not a graduate.

Q: Things have changed?

Q:  I think the last time we talked, you mentioned you were trying to convince Nikki to come back to Austin

A: I am still trying to get them to move back to Austin which would be great.  But Continental Airlines came onboard because they have a charity, their favorite charity that they give to is called Blue Harbor and it is for mental health.  So in exchange for me doing fund raisers for their charity, which I love doing stuff for Blue Harbor, I mean, having gone through what I went through I can totally identify with them, so if I do fund raisers for them,  they’ll fly me to Baltimore to see my kids.

Q: So you are still going to make trips out there?

A:  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.  That’s why I changed up my schedule when I get back.  I’ll only do Chicken Shit Sundays  and Continental on Mondays and leave my schedule open Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and just play Friday and Saturday wherever.

Q: So your schedule will be scaled down from what it was?

A: It’s scaled down only by one night.  I am not going to do Thursdays at Ginnys .  I say that now…that’s not to say I wouldn’t substitute. ‘Heybale’s got it now, they cover for me now.

Q: And you will be hitting the road occasionally? 

A: Yeah, we’ll play it by ear.  We go to Europe in November for a couple of weeks to promote the DVD that is coming out there.  Actually we are taking James Hand with us on that tour. He’s a good friend of mine.  He’s on the same record label in Europe so they asked my band to back him up so he could tour with us.

Q: For the next 6 months it’s going to be basically back to normal?

A: Well, that’s the thing.  Being off for 6 months I still had to pay child support and still had to pay all my bills and all that stuff is still going on and I wasn’t working.  So I spent all my savings I ever had and so I’ve got  to hit the road hard and build that back up in some fashion because  people like me, we don’t have health insurance or anything.  So I gotta build some sort of nest egg up in case I need it or the kids need it.

Q:  A lot of people think of your music as traditional and classic.

A:  Not as much as I’d like it to be.  I don’t think that.  If you could hear the stuff that was the Little Darlin’ players, we recorded a song that Koch Nashville recorded, the sound of it…not so much the songs, because the songs were all picked by Aubrey Mayhew and 50% of them sucked, you know.  There was stuff that he owned but that’s the way they did it back then so I said OK, I’ll go with it, so we recorded it.  The songs weren’t that great but the sound is awesome.  That’s what I’d like to do.

Q:  Let’s talk about Country Music today.  It can be a  broad range from classic,  traditional, all the way to what you call what Tim McGraw and Faith Hill does.  Do you call that Country Music?

A:  Country Music is not a broad range.  I want to say it was George Jones who said this, I could be misquoting here but  I think he is the one who said or they asked him ‘what makes a country song country?’.  He says “You know, I can’t tell you that but I know it when I hear it“.  And that is the best way to put it because you listen to Tim McGraw or listen to Faith Hill or listen to  Garth Brooks, and even some of the most traditional sounding people they say are out there like the Brad Paisleys or the Alan Jackson's, it’s still the production, the subject matter.  It’s all, uh, trite and focused on just a happy, snappy type of thing.  If they do got a song that is suppose to be deep, it’s usually about…I don’t know….it just sounds fake.  The production adds to the fakeness of it.  It’s got the booming bass, the screaming solos or if it’s trying to be on the other end of it, it’s real milky and it’s got all this symphony behind it.  It bothers me that that is even considered Country.  I don’t know why, well I do know why.  Cause it’s all that money.

Q:  Where do you think County Music is headed?

A: Traditional country music will die and flounder.  It will be just like……have you heard of Irish folk songs that go like ‘Diddaly diddaly’, you know.  It’s usually your old Uncle, oh yeah, Uncle Mc-something  “this was when I was a boy, diddaly diddaly" That’s where you are gonna hear it, you are not going to hear it anywhere else but some family gathering somewhere and they‘ll have it there.  In the future, that’s where it’s going to be.

Q: Where would you love to see it go?

A: What I would like to see…..things are changing with the satellite and there’s room for it to change. But, sadly, the people who are going to read this in this magazine, I’m preaching to the choir here.  They all ready know what I am saying.  If this came out in Time Magazine, then it may make a difference.  Not to disrespect what I am giving here, I am just saying, if we can get this in Time Magazine then it might make a difference and they might go “huh, let me look up this other type of music he is talking about“, you know?  Most people perceive this type of music as the redneck music, they make it such a dumb down slur, racial slurring type of music, which it ain't, you know?  No more then Johnny Cash’s music was  in his day when he sang about Ira Hayes. What I am getting at is I would like to see mainstream radio make room for the new material that’s traditional sounding.  Make room for the Wayne Hancock, for Hank III, for BR5-49, for myself.  There is room for people who record in the traditional vein and keep the traditional integrity of what Country Music’s identity is but the problem is, it will never happen, it will never happen,  because to keep the roots of country music it can not sound what they’re sounding like today.  It’s too different.  You put a song like that in the middle of those other songs, the volume drops, there’s a thing called dynamics in music which is totally ignored in Country Music today.  Dynamics.  You see a blue grass band, a real blue grass band, they go up to the microphone, they use one microphone, whoever comes in, they go closer  to the microphone and then gets back away…it’s dynamics.  Even drums wise, you don’t hear dynamics anymore because they don’t have to  have it because they have the sound guy who has everything up on 10, all the channels are all up on the same place.  Just get it as loud as you can get it, you know.

Q:  Do you think that if Traditional Music was featured in Time Magazine and other periodicals that radio would play it more?

A: Probably not.  No, I don’t think it would but the people that read that  would go to their computers or would check out Satellite radio or maybe even go to record stores .  I think that’s where it would pick up. I don’t think radio would change one iota. Radio playing it more is not gonna happen.  They are totally, 100%, money driven.  That’s not Satellite radio ‘cause satellite radio plays what it’s subscribers pay for.  So that’s a beautiful thing, you know?.  I like the fact that you can actually call them up and ask for one of our songs, as they are, in the way of a traditional country artist and they can play it.  But not so on radio.

Q:  At what point in time did Traditional Country Music start going down the wrong path?

A:  About ‘77, ‘78. 

Q: Why then?

A:  Kenny Rogers.  Right around there.  I am not blaming him.  I am using him as a benchmark because right around that time when it started, when techno came in and the rock and roll people at the time started to scrounge around, “Oh my God, we have no place to go”, “We’re losing our audience”, “Where are they going?”.  They were going to country because they were growing up. “Well, I grew up with Haggard & Jones” and they kind of liked that stuff and they kind of drifted over to country.  Then Exile and Kenny Rogers and a lot of what was Rock & Roll bands at the time became country and pretty much got  embraced, you know. 

Q: Tonight, for instance, the people that you draw to your music are young and old.  How do you bring more young people into that Traditional Music Scene.

A: That is trickier because I don’t think you do. I don’t think Country Music is a young people’s music.  This type of music should NOT appeal to a younger crowd.  I am not trying to impress a younger crowd .  My music, which is pertaining to me and to people like me and around me.  What would a 20 year old know about the hardships of paying the bills and trying to get your kids through school?  That don’t happen. I mean, you’re 20 years old, the most you’re going to have is, what….a 3 year old?  It’s not a younger person’s music.  Paying the bills and trying to work thru a relationship, it don’t happen when you’re that young.  It happens when you’re older, in your 30’s and on up.  That is the audience for this type of music.  It should be.  It’s not.  Oddly enough, the audience that is buying my records is 18 to 25 and then it starts again at 45 on up.  But the reason…and you said, “Well that’s your audience and how do you feel”, and I go but that’s my audience but my sales are so dismal.  That’s why they’re so dismal, because my age group because of my shows is 18-25 and then 45 on up.  That’s not a good place to be.  People that are buying records are not 18-25 so much.  Not country records.  They are buying rock records and all that but country records are all bought by the Dixie Chick generation, the Tim McGraw and all them guys.  The 30-45, they’re the ones that are buying, it’s the housewives and all that stuff and the housewives ain’t got nothing to do with me.  They know nothing about what I’ve worked my life about.  It’s their husbands.  We just went through this in Chicago.   A beautiful woman came up and said “I am here because my husband loves you” which is great. I’m glad.  And he brought her out here, but this country music  that I am doing is what country music is always been in the past as a male singer who appeals to the hard working normal guy.  Just a regular guy, just living his life trying to make ends meet.  But not a teenager.

Q:  As soon as someone dies, it seems like people flock towards their music.

A: Yeah, I hope that is the case when these new buggers die.  In that case, I hope these new assholes live forever.  It has nothing to do with me in my life.  My record sales are low enough  to where it’s not going to make any difference to me if every Tim McGraw fan in the world hated me.  It would make no difference.  I don’t care either, you know?

Q:  Do you think the selectiveness of who gets played on Country radio and who Nashville embraces and promotes has lowered the values of Country Music?

A: All corporate country radio plays is what is on the play list.  That’s it.  They have no originality.  A monkey could do the job.  It used to be that you could have a regional hit on Country Radio.  Willie Nelson said himself. I could show you videos or documentaries  I was in with Willie where he said “where it used to be where you could stop by a radio station and say ‘Hey, just in town, gonna play down the road tonight, ah, can you play a record‘?   And it‘s like ‘ah, no, no, we can talk a little bit but we can’t play that record, it’s not on our play list.’ “  That’s the way it is now.

Q: It used to be that the play list was generated by some bigwig in some skyscraper in New York City.

A:  Well, that’s the going cliché now, I mean, I even heard Willie say that.  That’s the way it was from the ‘70’s, mid ‘70’s, like I told you when Kenny Rogers came.  From the mid ‘70’s up til the mid ‘90’s.  Now, Clear Channel came around, they all pretty much all stuck to the main stream radio station. It’s all about the money and there’s no whipping this dog.  Clear Channel owns the ones that paid $20,000 to get the music consultants.  The ones that aren’t Clear Channel, all they do is look at the play list based on what the other ones have and they copy it .  This is true, I’m not making this shit up. They copy it ‘cause they know that they (Clear Channel) did pay for that, so they know what’s gonna be a hit.  They don’t have to pay for it to find out what’s gonna be a hit, they  know by looking at the play list.  They may be a week or two behind but at least they are still on the same page and people are not switching the channel.

Q: Remember the days when you could just take a record to a DJ and ask them to play it? 

A: Yeah, but you know, them days were never without payola.  Payola is not dead, it’s just changed forms. And it’s gone higher.  They’ve done away with the DJ that had any control.  If you meet a DJ these days from a major radio station, what you’re meeting is a monkey that doesn’t  know, doesn’t  have any control over anything.  You can’t hand him a record.  You can request a song as long as it’s on their play list.  If it ain’t on their play list…..you can hand him a record and ask him “will you play this record?”.  “Ah, ah, it’s not on the playlist, sorry." You know, it amazes me that the public never ever gets it.  You can drill that to them all day long.  The people that are reading this magazine, they all ready know this.  The people that pick up Take Country Back, they’re people that are in the know in the first place.  But it’s getting this to the layman people out there that are being hampered with this.  Merle Haggard said it the best - “Country Radio is homogenized to the point where all that is important is playing music that doesn’t provoke in any fashion“.  Provoke in a good way, provoke in a bad way. Provoke anything, any kind of emotion.  They don’t want any song that’s played, for people to stop what they are doing and go “huh?” and feel any sort of thing.  That is why they  just play the same…you know, you hear ‘I’m in love with the boy’ or whatever, you know.  That was probably the last time I ever listened to top 40. 

Q: Last night when you were talking about the legends that are still living, I believe you called them your heroes, you said you could name them all on one hand, George Jones, Ray Price, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Jerry Lee Lewis and then you made a comment about one more person.

A: I said that if there are any new legends that should be mentioned it should be Dwight Yoakam.  I think that he’s just got enough originality as anybody else that ever came along as a legend.

Q: But you don’t think he belongs in the Hall of Fame.

A:   I think he should. I don’t care who is in the Hall of Fame. They’re gonna put Shania Twain in Country Music Hall of Fame.  The Hall of Fame quit being any condolence to me when it took that long for Ray Price to be in there, you know.  The Country Music Hall of Fame is no gauge of  Country Music whatsoever.  They’ll have Brad Paisley in there before they have Dwight Yoakam.

Q: And you don’t think that there’s any chance Country Music will do a turn around and come back to a more traditional sound?

A:  No.  I don’t think there’s a chance of it.  They got that moniker of country music and they took it away and  we’re talking 10 years from now that Britney Spears type person will be the new Female Country Music vocalist of the year, whoever that is.  Ten years from now.  She’ll be doing ‘oh baby, baby’ and that will be the new country hit.  Trust me on that.  Trust me on that.  I am not even joking.  I would be joking if it was 10 years ago.  I wrote Nashville Rash 15 years ago, it was like it can’t get any worse then what it is right now and look what happened now.  I was SO wrong.  I was really wrong.  Britney Spear’s daughter will be the biggest Country Artist of 2015 or whenever.  But I don’t think traditional country will still be around but more then somebody’s Uncle going “I remember this song."  But I hope I’m wrong, I hope I’m real wrong about that.

Q: Why does everyone (Bon Jovi, Keith Urban etc) want to jump on the bandwagon  for Country  Music.

A: Because it’s more akin to 70’s and 80’s pop now then it has anything to do with Country.  That’s why everyone wants to jump on it, because same reason all the rock acts of the day were coming over from there because techno was coming and they to “we don’t know this stuff“.  Exile was another country band and Sawyer Brown and Pure Prairie League, with Vince Gill.  Dan Seals.  A lot of these people came in from rock and roll and all of a sudden  they’re country now.  Hell, even that guy from Paul Revere and the Raiders.  He was on all the country shows. 

Q:  So  who do you think is going to carry on the torch for Country Music besides yourself?  Who is there?

A:  It’s gonna be some guy, some Uncle, old Uncle that will remember this song and all the kids will go “oh shit, Uncle Mort’s at it again” and walk away.  I think it will be like the Folk/Irish sort of thing.  Bluegrass is probably the only thing that’s ever kept it’s integrity.  But honky-tonk music hasn’t  got the integrity and nobleness that Bluegrass does.  Bluegrass came from  a lot of gospel stuff too.  Honky-tonk came from raising hell.

Q: A lot of people think that you are carrying on the torch, following Buck Owens and Johnny Cash.

A: But see Keith Urban thinks he is carrying on a torch of all that stuff.  The mainstream is gonna say “Keith Urban, Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, they’re the Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard's.  They’re the ones keeping Country Music alive”.  In their minds, that’s Country Music.  People like me don’t exist. 

Q: How is Country Music different in Austin then in Nashville. 

A:  It’s  a live music town, it’s the Live Music Capital.  It should be called that..  It supports it’s live music, not just Country Music.  But the Country Music is different in Austin.  I am so proud to say this……the mainstream, the pop country and all that shit is not supported, not by people that play live.

If they play top 40 country, nobody would be there.  I LOVE that!  It’s all DJ and Karaoke if they do the top 40 stuff but the stuff that is being supported as live Country Music in Austin is always traditional roots sounding.

Q: What is going to make it continue?

A:  I don’t know. It’s falling off, I mean the karaoke, techno, and rap and hip-hop and that shit is flooding in just like in any city.  But I think in Austin will be the Alamo of Country Music, ain’t no doubt.

Q:  How did the song Country My Ass come about?

A: I don’t remember if Waylon said to Haggard or Haggard said to Waylon backstage at the CMA awards show. “CMA. Should stand for Country My Ass“.  That’s when I wrote that song when I read that comment. We (Hank Williams III and I ) got mutual respect for each other. He says “Ah, Dale we’re about to start that raw stuff, you probably wanna leave here now."  I mean it’s not my cup of tea but when he does is country stuff , man, it just great, awesome.  It’s just hardcore. He’s just young and sowing his oats.  When he settles in he will be the new hope right there because when he gets older he’s not going to care about the shock value of a song, not that he cares now but he’s young enough that he don’t care what does what he does.  He is just living hard.  Being born with a silver spoon is sometimes harder then being born without one.  Who would want a  shadow of Hank Williams Jr. on your shoulders much less Hank Williams Sr. That’s a hell of a lot to bear.  He’s had his own demons that he’s dealt with, you know?  And he’s dealt with them his own way.  What I respect about Shelton is that the fact that he still does what his generation liked, what he liked as a kid , speed metal and all that stuff.  It’s because he is doing all this speed metal stuff, because he knows that whole mentality and ‘cause he’s been there, once he goes back to the country stuff, that is what’s gonna bring in the new audience of Country music.  Trust me.  When he is 50 years old he ain’t gonna be saying ‘mother*******’, he’s not gonna be doing that.  He’ll be doing stuff that  will matter in his time frame. If there is anybody that will save Country Music, it’s gonna be Shelton.

Q: Who inspires you musically?

A:  Now? I still look back for inspiration. I never look forward ‘cause there is nothing that original that is happening today that could give me any kind of inspiration.  I listen to old Johnny Cash and old Merle Haggard and old Elvis records and old blues records and old gospel records and old Conway Twitty because  they were musicians.  There are not musicians today on country records, not one. They play their instruments, they don’t play it with any kind of style that is innovative.  They’re not allowed to.   They are good musicians, it’s all that shit that they cover up on the records nowadays, you can’t even hear what they are doing.  So I look back to when people really played their instruments and musicians didn’t have any guidelines and vocalists sang the way they sang instead of the way the audio tuned or digital way made them sing.  There is no reason to look forward for inspiration anymore because there’s nothing being done.

Q: So there is no one is going to carry on the Bakersfield Sound?  The traditional sound?

A:  Nope, nope.  If you want to be influenced by that stuff, go straight to the source.  It’s like whiskey, or anything.  When people listen to me, I say  “You know what?  Thanks for listening to my records, thanks for buying but if you want to get the REAL shit go to Merle go to Johnny go to Ray Price, go to Bob Wills.  That’s where you’re gonna hear the real stuff."

Q: Is there anybody that fans can get excited about?

A:  The Hoyle Brothers are doing great, they remind me of the Little Darlin’ productions and Miss Leslie out of Houston, she is definitely influenced by the Johnny Paycheck stuff, Big Sandy and his Fly Rite Boys, they’ve got so much swing.  I love their stuff and always have.  Hank III is probably at the top of that list.  Wayne Hancock of course, as nuts as he is, I love the guy and I love what he does.  There’s so many people that I am missing here that have opened up for us that are really great.  That’s only because we have played so many shows and can‘t remember all of them.  I have tons of CDs that have been given to me every tour and there’s people out there that are doing great stuff but it takes getting off the main path, the mainstream, turning off the mainstream radio.  Turn it OFF.  Probably My Space would be the  best thing.  I have a page there that a fan made up for me and my road manager here, Hawk, he manages it for me.  He’s teaching me how to navigate it.  Original music is being spread more efficiently thru MySpace.

Q: And My Space is not to replace your own home Web page (www.dalewatson.com)

A: No, not to replace my own web page, no.  The fact is, people that like the same type of music, that’s one place where apparently they are able to connect.  It’s a young people’s place.  Playing at Ginny’s, I’ve had a 40 something year olds come up to me and say “why haven’t you added me” and I’ll say “what? added you what?”  I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. And they’ll say “my space” and I’m like “oh, oh…Hawk“.  It takes me a lot longer to get to My Space stuff because he (Hawk) shows it to me and won’t add anything until we’ve seen it.  It’s a pretty impressive thing.  It’s pretty much connecting everyday people with the music they like.  It’s not just for that I guess, it’s for a bunch of other stuff but I’ve got to say it’s one way for all this music to spread. 

Q:  To finish up, what was the best advice you ever received about your musical career that led you down the right path.

A:  Rosie Flores, I went to see her in ‘87 in Los Angeles and I never took any kind of time off from playing music as I’ve been playing a long time in Pasadena, Texas.  And this girlfriend I was with at the time, she ended up being my 2^nd wife, was good friends with Rosie, and we took a week off around my birthday and went to LA. The best advice I got from her was “You need to move here, you need to start doing your own songs and quit doing covers”.  That was the best advice I ever got.  I’ve been writing my own songs but I wasn’t doing them as much, I was doing the top 40 at the time.  But the top 40 back then wasn’t as bad, you know.  Thankfully Ricky Skaggs was hot and so was Randy Travis, he was just starting out.  Dwight was all ready out,  so there was some hope out there.  But Sawyer Brown was out there and all this other crap.  That was the best advice I ever got, was to move to LA and be around some venues that would allow original music and musicians that could inspire your playing.  That was the best advice I ever got was to get out of my mainstream town that was just choking my creativity.  If I would have went to Austin….I always wonder what would have happened if I just ..’cause I wanted to go to Austin which was only 3 hrs away as opposed to 16 hrs away.  (I went to Austin via LA) because I met Tom Lewis who was with the Wagoneers.  He’d seen a video I did for Curb Records back in 1990 and he came out to LA and said “Hey I wanna meet you.” We met each other and started playing together, touring together and we stopped in Austin and I said "Man!" I came out here in ‘85 I guess, to see Rosie or something like that and loved the place.  I thought I was gonna move there but Rosie talked me into going to LA.  But you know, everything has a reason.  I signed with Curb, I  met John and a lot of musicians and players.  One of my best friends, James Intveld was in LA and he is still my best friend today.  I’m glad I did what I did but Austin turned out to be destined to be my home and that’s where I am sure I’ll stay forever.  But that was the best advice.  I couldn’t have gotten to Austin without going to LA first.

Q: What was the most difficult obstacle in our career.

A:  What it was and still is, is the lack of free thinking and the stifling of creativity.  That is probably the biggest obstacle. It surrounds not only record companies but also it also surrounds radio stations and anybody you deal with.  Curb Records did not want to release my first single because it had something to do with drinking and of course 3 years later everybody was doing a drinking song.  Same with every record company didn‘t want to do something.  Hightone didn’t want me to record Nashville Rash because “Hey you’re gonna piss off a lot people if you do this”.  That one song was a catalyst of all my career, you know.  People were like “Oh, I feel that way” and then there was a bunch of  Nashville bashing songs that came out after that.  That was in ‘94.  So that has been the biggest obstacle, the people that can’t let go of the marketing strategy and just go with the musical strategy.  I’ve always wanted to release a ballad on every one of my records and no record company would do it.  “Oh no, video’s gotta be up tempo, the single has got to be up tempo, blah blah blah”.  Truthfully I have yet to find a record company with the balls enough to release a ballad and really get behind it.  That’s sad.  With ‘Every Song That I Write Is For You‘, I told the record company, “there’s not one person in this world that hasn’t lost somebody they love, or going to lose someone they love.”  And ‘Every Song That I Write Is For You’ had ‘Your Love I’m Gonna Miss’ on it and I said that’s the song  that people will identify with.  If they don’t now, they will later. So that’s been the biggest obstacle, getting around  people in the music business that only know about business and not music.  It’s called Music Business.  They don’t know anything  about music and what that’s suppose to mean. Like Merle said, it (music) provokes, in a good way or a bad way.  That’s been the biggest obstacle in this business.  You are dealing with people that  usually came up from the mailroom and now they’re president of the record label instead of being a musician who played an instrument or someone who  loved music growing up.  Even I can identify with that.  Someone that was a music lover, someone that came up and worked his way to producing  records.  You don’t have to play on a record to produce a record. You gotta know what you love and what sounds good.  I’m sure there’s some examples. I don’t know what great producer would not be a musician first.  Matter of fact all the producers I know were great musicians.  That’s my point.  All the record labels and A&R people nowadays are ex-mail room people or something like that.

Q:  Do you think you had control over your career?

A: Everybody has control over their career.  Everybody does.  Anything I’ve done, I’m to blame for 100 percent.  The new artists today?  The ones that are in Nashville?  Well, they have control over whether they record the crap that they want them to or not.  Some are pretty happy doing it.  Some of them…that’s their thing.  They really enjoy it. That’s why we are in the predicament we are in right now. Truly, I recorded some awful songs with Aubrey Mayhew just because that was the rules, do it or you’re out. These days I’m out.

Q: When it comes to writing your songs, you mentioned to me once before that  you write from your heart and that very few people can write from their heads.

A: What I said was most of the writers in Nashville, because I’ve been in that position where you are writing for a publishing company and you write in groups of 2, 3 or 4, they always write from here (pointing to his head).  What if this girl got pregnant and it was this guy’s daughter and they, wait a minute, you’re 23 years old.  What do you know about a girl who is pregnant and it’s your daughter.  At the time I was 29 years old and I didn’t either, I didn’t have no clue as a guy, you know what I am saying?  So they are all thinking from here (pointing to his head) instead of from here (pointing to his heart).  It’s not even fair to say “Hey, you’re not thinking clearly” because they can’t, they have no ability to connect. And then you get a singer who goes “Oh yeah, I  did this    because my aunt’s brother’s uncle’s neighbor’s sister’s wife’s mother’s brother was really involved with…..” Like “What?” That’s why when I hear stuff like Johnny Cash’s ‘How High is the Water, Mama”, there you go.  Even when he sings about somebody else’s problems like Ira Hayes, it’s beautiful, you know, it’s beautiful.

Q: Do you think you’ll ever be immortalized in someone’s song in the future of being a legend?

A: No, no , no.  Because I am a diluted version of…. I’ll guarantee you,  Shel will tell you this too, he’s a diluted version of his granddad. You wanna go back to the source.  I am just a current version of whatever is.  But there’s no way…how would I sing about the TB Blues?  TB ain’t got nothing to do with me.  My Uncle died of Black Lung and TB, he had both.  That’s what he died of.  I was named after him, after Uncle Kenneth.  He died in ‘69.  But my point is, you can’t really step in that guy’s shoes and that’s why it gets watered down.  That’s why I say Britney Spear’s kid will probably be the next Country Diva.  I don’t mean to make it sound so gloomy and black but for shit to change it’s gonna  have to  get on the same track as the mainstream. In other words, Satellite Radio is a good avenue for that.  Every day that goes by when we do a gig, people don’t come up and say “Hey I heard you on XM or Sirius“.  And that’s a huge deal because they’re not gonna hear it on mainstream. They’re just not playing it.

Q: Tell me about the song ‘Truckin’ Queen’

A: That’s inspired by Redd  Volkaert (laughing).  The description of the guy sounds like Redd Volkaert. It was in ‘96, was touring on the road in the longhorn Suburban.  Back then in Oklahoma City, a guy on the CB radio every couple of seconds you could hear him say “Got my nightgown on, got my pretty red panties, ready to go in a minute”.  Just over and over and over.  We realized it was on a loop so we started asking people what’s the deal in between and  “yeah, he’s been doing that for a couple of years now.  FCC has been looking for him”. So we kept touring and touring and in 2001 or 2002, like 5 or 6 years later, he’s still doing it.  They were looking for him forever and the truckers, whenever they’d go thru Oklahoma City,  they would switch their channel over to 20 or 18 whenever they’d go thru OKC just because they’d know he was on there. It’s like an Urban legend, it’s like a Sasquatch or Loch Ness Monster thing that you hear about but no one ever sees it but you hear about it.  Still today, you can go down the road no matter what state you’re in and most over the road drivers, which is what they call any truck driver that travels out of state, you can get on a CB radio and say  “I got my nightgown on” and they go “Oh god”.  (Turning to Hawk) “Were you with me?” It goes “we thought you were dead” because what happened to that guy is the FCC did catch him and put him in jail, I think, about 2 years ago and he died in jail.  So they said.  Rumor has it anyway.    The FCC is stronger then the IRS, I guess.

Q:  Laurie wanted to congratulate you on the success of the Whiskey and God CD and she wanted to know about the song.

A:  That’s an old one.  I wrote that right after Terri died.  It was kind of one of those things, you know?  Looking for relief one way or the other.  I thought about putting it on the ‘Every Song I Write Is For You’ album but it wasn’t the right song. I wanted that song to be a tribute to Terri and Whiskey and God is more like a song about me so I didn’t put it on that album.

Q:  What is this I hear about a Gospel album coming out.

A:  I don’t know if it’s coming out.  If you know the story, it’s in the documentary I think, is it in the documentary about me doing an album?  I know it’s in there about me doing a book.  There’s a book coming out next year.  It’s in more detail then what the documentary is but the book explains everything.  But in the documentary, what I went thru, I promised that I would write a book about what I went thru and also record a gospel album so immediately after I got out of the hospital in 2002, I recorded an album, a gospel album. 

Q: So it not going to be available to the general public?

A:   No, I only sold it to the congregation that came to the show that day.  It will be released, I’m sure but I’m gonna try to shop a real gospel label to put it out  Because the songs in it are so…..they are not traditional.  I wrote them myself but a lot of the songs have to do with the parables of the gospels.  When you read the book, you’ll know more about it.  There’s a lot to do with the parables that Jesus told him, that’s what the songs are about.

Q:  So what is coming out first, the book or the documentary?

A:  The documentary, they are talking about airing it on CMT or Showtime.  I don’t know which one.  The reason I don’t know is because they’re in talks with both of them and I have no control over where it goes  The book, we’ve already finished writing it and now we’re finishing getting it printed up at the end of this tour so it won’t be coming out until next year.

Q: What about the movie ‘Austin Angel’?

A:  I’ve been waiting for that too.  That’s been going onto 3 years now.  It keeps getting pushed back because now Zalman King had an intestinal blockage so he has been on the ropes for 6 months so it keeps getting pushed back and pushed back.

Q:   Has it been filmed yet?

A: Only the incidentals,  in other words stuff we did when we went to the Grand Ole Opry, we went on tour and some other stuff here and there we filmed.  But the major stuff, the main footage that you’ll see, I mean, the stuff we’ve only filmed so far is stuff you’ll only see in glimpses, like when I die right in the beginning of it, like when people remember things, that’s what you’re gonna see.  Me going on the tour bus, on the Grand Ole Opry, and here and there.

Q: Do you still have filming to do?

A: We have a lot of it.  Actually, 90% of it. David Carradine is the devil and Deana Carter signed on as my wife in it.

Q: Other then your regular gig at Ginnys, what do you have planned?

A: Continental on Monday nights.  That will be it.  Friday and Saturday here and there wherever that’s gonna be.

Q: Where would you like to see yourself 5 years from now?

A:  That’s a tough one, I don’t know.    We’ll all have to see.  I have no idea.  I’m not giving any secrets away.    I see myself at Johnny Knoxville’s cabin  up in Tennessee again writing a 2^nd album.

Janice Hauswirth TakeCountryBack July 2006