Gene Watson Recreates His Classics Note-for-Note on The Best of the Best

By Robert K. Oermann

© 2012 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Honky-tonk legend Gene Watson is celebrating his 50th anniversary as a recording artist with a flurry of activity that has made him gladly busy.

“He’s extremely happy right now,” reported his manager, John Lytle, President, Lytle Management Group. “He is so dedicated to what he’s doing. This seemed like the perfect time to remind the industry what this guy has accomplished and all the great songs he’s sung. We’d been talking about re-recording his greatest hits for several years. And it occurred to us that doing that and celebrating the 50th anniversary at the same time would be a good idea.”

Two hurdles on the path toward this goal stood right at the start. One of the curiosities of the record business is that artists who record for a major label pay for their own recording sessions, yet the label owns the finished recordings. In addition, Watson’s big hits of 1975 through 1990 were recorded for several different corporations.

To address both situations, Watson re-recorded his classics for his own label on a 25-song collection called The Best of the Best. Session players recreated the original arrangements, almost note for note. Watson’s voice has not aged. As a result, these performances sound precisely like the originals — and Watson finally “owns” his hits himself.

“I wanted these to sound as close to the originals as could be done,” he said. “I just thank the good Lord above that he’s let me keep my voice intact. In fact, I probably hit the notes better now than I could back then.”

The album’s producer, Dirk Johnson, went out of his way to hire players who had participated in the original sessions or, if they weren’t available, those who understood and loved those recordings. Their familiarity with the music made everyone’s job easier, especially since Johnson had isolated key parts on the older recordings on Avid Pro Tools, so they could be immediately cued and played back for quick reference.

He also worked to update sound quality while retaining the feel of each tune. “Everyone played through amps in the studio back then,” Johnson said. “Because more people record direct now, I’d take those parts and run them back into amps that were used in that period of time. There was an entire week where it sounded like there was one player in my room, doing the same part over and over again, but those were the new parts for this album, blowing through that amp into a mic.”

Among the more than 50 charted singles and 21 Top 10 blockbusters on the new collection are “Farewell Party” (written by Lawton Williams), “Got No Reason Now for Goin’ Home” (Johnny Russell), “Fourteen Carat Mind” (Dallas Frazier and Larry Lee), “Love in the Hot Afternoon” (Vince Matthews and Kent Westberry), “Memories to Burn” (Dave Kirby and Warren Robb), “Paper Rosie” (Dallas Harms), “Sometimes I Get Lucky and Forget” (Bobby Lee House and Ernie Rowell) and “Speak Softly (You’re Talking to My Heart)" (Jessie Mendenhall and Steve Spurgin).

In April, Watson celebrated his new album with a concert at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and performed twice on the Grand Ole Opry, where he presented each member of the show’s cast with a copy of The Best of the Best. RFD-TV dedicated an edition of “Larry’s Country Diner” to Watson. Just prior to the album’s release in February, Sirius/XM satellite radio recorded a concert and three-hour interview with him. And he performed several times live at the CMA Music Festival in early June.

“It was so great listening to him,” said Lytle. “Gene doesn’t even know how interesting his stories are or how fascinating his life has been. It’s fascinating to work with somebody who has his kind of history.”

Watson accepts his remarkable vocal talent as a matter of course. All seven Watson children sang, as did his parents. “I can remember singing before I can remember talking,” he said. “Even when I was a kid, if I heard a song twice, I knew it.”

Born in Palestine, Texas, in 1943, Gary Gene Watson was singing in holiness churches with his family at an early age. His father played blues harmonica and guitar alongside African-American field laborers. Both parents were church singers and guitarists. Watson grew up loving blues, classic gospel and the Country stars of the 1950s.

Even amid the toughest hard-luck stories of Country Music, Watson’s stood out. His family drifted from shack to shack as his itinerant father took logging and crop-picking jobs. He worked with his parents and siblings in the fields. There was no place to call “home” until his father customized an old school bus for living quarters and transportation.

“Yeah, we were poor,” the singer remembered. “Today, people live in motor homes. Ours was yellow. We traveled to Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas until one day my dad decided we were going to Phoenix, Ariz. We didn’t have any money to go to Phoenix, so we worked our way out there. We would cut spinach. We would pull radishes. We would pick potatoes. We would pick cotton. Whatever it took, we did it. That’s the only life I knew.”

His earliest public performance came when he was 12 years old. It was a duet with one of his sisters in a Pentecostal church. His Country career began when he formed a duo with his brother Jessie, when he was 15 and Jessie was 12.

Watson dropped out of school in the ninth grade to help support his family. He learned to do auto body repair — so by day he worked on cars and at night he worked in bars. To this day, he relaxes by repairing cars at his “Toy Shop” garage at home in Houston, Texas. Through local gigs Watson built a strong area following, leading to his first single release in 1962.

“My first recording ever was on a little old independent label, Sun Valley Records,” he said. “Maybe I thought I could sell them at my shows or something. It was ‘If It Was That Easy’ and ‘If You Can’t Come, Just Call.’ It was not any good, but, boy, I thought that was something. I had my own record.

“But doing music professionally was never a goal of mine,” Watson noted. “I always wanted to work on cars. I always say I never did go looking for music. Music found me. I played music for enjoyment. I liked the ice-cold beer and the passing of the hat and the $15 a night. I didn’t expect that much to come out of it.”

That changed after The Wilburn Brothers came to town one night in 1964 and heard Watson at one of his nightclub shows. “They said they’d like for me to go with them and do a couple of shows,” he said. “So I came up to Nashville and traveled to North Carolina with them. They got me on the Grand Ole Opry, and I got a standing ovation and an encore singing ‘It Is No Secret What God Can Do’ and the Hank Williams song, ‘I Can’t Help It If I’m Still in Love with You.’ After that, they carried me down to the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, and I got onstage and broadcast on ‘The Midnite Jamboree.’ That was my first experience with the big time. I was 21.”

Still, Watson wasn’t quite ready to move up to Music City. Back home in Houston, his singing attracted local financial backers for several recordings. Singles for little labels such as Resco and Wide World, and a self-titled album for Stoneway Records in 1972, gradually built his reputation. Watson first made the national charts with his Resco hit “Bad Water” in 1975. Its follow-up was the sultry, provocative “Love in the Hot Afternoon.” Capitol Records picked it up for national distribution, launching Watson as a hitmaker.

“It all happened so fast that I really didn’t have anything planned,” he admitted. “It’s really been a step-by-step process with me. I’m talking from the ground level up. I had no knowledge of what I was doing.”

After five years and 13 hits with Capitol, Watson spent three years at MCA Records. Following a dozen hits with that company, he stopped briefly at Curb Records before signing with the Epic label in 1985. His next stop was Warner Bros. Records, where he landed in the 1990s.

By this time, an entire generation of Country vocalists was enthralled with this “singer’s singer.” Clint Black, Tracy Byrd, Tracy Lawrence, Doug Stone and George Strait all proclaimed themselves fans. Tim Mensy once wrote to him, “Gene, thanks for teaching us how to sing.”

Watson became notable for preferring to record live with the studio musicians. He often sings a song perfectly on the first take. When he performs on the Opry, other stars gather in the wings to watch his artistry in action.

He is also known as a “man of the people.” Humility and personal dignity are his hallmarks: Gene Watson is exactly the same person whether in the spotlight or at home. Despite the acclaim, admiration and widespread respect, he remains a plain-spoken soul.

Since 1993, Watson has been recording prolifically for independent labels. He issued new CDs in 1993 (Uncharted Mind), 1996 (The Good Ole Days) and 1997 (Jesus Is All I Need and A Way to Survive).

Diagnosed with cancer, Watson underwent surgery and endured successful chemotherapy in 2000 and 2001. Remarkably, he kept singing through it all, issuing new collections in 2001 (From the Heart), 2005 (Then & Now), 2007 (In a Perfect World, featuring guest vocalists Mark Chesnutt, Vince Gill, Joe Nichols, Connie Smith, Rhonda Vincent and Lee Ann Womack) and 2009 (A Taste of the Truth). In 2011, he and Vincent collaborated on the all-duet collection Your Money and My Good Looks.

“Gene is a timeless artist,” observed Rowan. “He sings from a deep well, a spiritual place. Most of the icons of our business are no longer at the top of their game, musically. But he is.”

“All I can say is I try to do my job to the best of my ability,” Watson summed up. “I think a whole lot of my success has to do with honesty and truthfulness. I don’t blow no smoke. I tell it like it is.”

NEW ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Tyrone Vaughan

By Bob Doerschuk
© 2012 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.
There’s a ton of Country and lots of rockin’ blues throughout Downtime, released in January on the Kickitup indie imprint. And all of it is unmistakably Texan, which of course is to be expected, given Tyrone Vaughan’s Lone Star pedigree. His father is Jimmie Vaughan, whose steely guitar tone and funk phrasing surfaces in the rhythm that drives “Ladies Man,” with the spirit of his uncle — the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, summoned through wah-wah guitar fills. But though his playing evokes his illustrious relations, the younger Vaughan doesn’t hesitate to also drop a banjo in the middle of that track.
Through The Fabulous Thunderbirds, with whom his dad played lead guitar, Vaughan became intimately familiar with the blues as a child. His fiery six-string chops and strong, assertive vocals propelled him full-speed into the Austin club circuit right after high school.
As lead guitarist and songwriter with Breedlove, a road-toughened band that packed rooms throughout the state, Vaughn rediscovered his family's Country roots. He also sharpened his game through gigs with Stevie Ray’s Double Trouble, blues piano legend Pinetop Perkins and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, among others. Now, with Downtime, Vaughan takes the reins. He co-wrote all 10 of its songs, many of them musical cocktails with multiple influences stirred in. But from the wryly humorous, steel-glistened lament “She Could've Had Anything,” to the single and title track, we are neck-deep in Country, not just in the feel and arrangements but in the blue-collar imagery of saloons, trucks, fishing and “working that line.”
What’s in a name? If that name is Vaughan, plenty.
IN HIS OWN WORDS
DREAM DUET PARTNER“Miranda Lambert.”
ITEMS IN YOUR PERSONAL TIME CAPSULE“Patsy Cline’s voice, Jimi Hendrix’s music and Johnny Cash’s biography.
LUCKY CHARM“A juju bag blessed by a high priest in New Orleans.”
WHAT YOU SING IN THE SHOWER“Soul songs by Donny Hathaway.”
FAVORITE FOOD ON THE ROAD“Anything light — sushi, salads …”
GREATEST PERFORMANCE TO DATE“I performed with Billy Gibbons one night at one of my dad's shows in New Orleans.  I think it’s what I didn’t play that was so impressive. ‘Less is more, son!’”
SOMETHING WE’D NEVER GUESS ABOUT YOU“I like chess, golf, cooking and vocal meditations.”
On the Web: www.TyroneVaughan.com

Ronnie Dunn:

Writing The Next Chapter

By Deborah Evans Price
© 2011 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.
With the release of his self-titled solo debut album, Ronnie Dunn just might be the best-known newcomer in Country Music history. For 20 years he was half of the phenomenally successful duo Brooks & Dunn, which won 19 CMA Awards and dominated the Country duo scene. Now the veteran singer/songwriter is starting over as a solo act, though he admits this transition hasn’t exactly been easy.
“I just panicked,” he said. “I just pushed the panic button and took off running in circles and recorded 34 songs before it was all over. I finally had to bring it down to 11 and went back in and negotiated to get it up to 12. But I was all over the map.”
At the same time, lots of well-meaning folks were offering advice. For example, in suggesting a way to establish an individual identity after his long partnership with Kix Brooks, “I had one guy at the label tell me, ‘Whatever you do, don’t say “honky-tonk”’,” Dunn said. “There were people in my own camp who said, ‘Hey, you just left a really good paying job, dude. What was that about? Did you think about this before you said “I’m going off on my own”?’
“I was certainly helped by a lot of good people, but I’d never felt so alone in my life,” he remembered. “All of a sudden, everyone just went, ‘OK, well, go do what you’ve got to do and I hope it works out for you.’”
In the process of defining himself as a solo artist, Dunn acknowledges that he began to overthink and overanalyze. He credits his wife Janine with helping him regain his focus by encouraging him to take some time alone and evaluate who he had become as an artist. “She said, ‘You came home off your tour, you got ‘COWBOY’ tatted from your elbow to your wrist. Are you off to be David Allan Coe? Or are you on a quest to become Willie? You need to figure that out and put it down on a record.’”
That process of making a solo statement proved very different from how Brooks & Dunn had worked together. “The song selection was different,” Dunn pointed out. “I didn’t have to keep in mind as I was picking songs that, ‘Hey, there are two guys here, two guys onstage, two guys performing’ and deal with that. This is much more personal and subjective; it gave an entirely different slant, obviously. I’d cut three or four demos sometimes and the players were great about working with me. They said, ‘We’ll do a demo first, and then if it makes the record, we’ll come in and bump it up.’ They were really, really good. I’ve got to hand it to them. It allowed me to find myself.”
And what exactly did he find in the process of writing or co-writing nine of the album’s 12 tracks, producing the sessions himself and working on his own? “A great epiphany: I found out that I’m totally confused and I’m good with that,” he responded, with a laugh. “I’m consistently inconsistent. I’m all of the above. I’m OK. I’m a work in progress. That’s my next tattoo somewhere.”
He also found that, for all the freedom he enjoyed on this project, echoes of Brooks & Dunn linger in the final results. “That’s not going away,” he said. “It’s on this record. It’s there. That’s a part of my DNA that I can’t wash off.”
“Ronnie Dunn’s voice is Ronnie Dunn’s voice,” said his manager Clarence Spalding, President, Spalding Entertainment. “You’re not going to be able to hide that, whether he’s the lead singer of Brooks & Dunn or whether he’s moving forward in his solo career. From a song standpoint, there are some that are going to remind people of things Brooks & Dunn have done in the past. But there are others that Kix and Ronnie wouldn’t have done, ‘Bleed Red’ (written by Andrew Dorff and Tommy Lee James) being one of them and ‘Cost of Livin’’ (Phillip Coleman and Dunn). Ronnie worked really hard on this record and it shows.”
“Clarence and I were committed to allowing Ronnie the freedom to craft a truly extraordinary album,” added Gary Overton, Chairman and CEO, Sony Music Nashville. “And whether you trust your own ears, those of the fans or those of the critics who have raved about this record, Ronnie accomplished that goal. I would put this album up against the greatest records in Country Music.”
Dunn’s first solo performance was a promotional set in Las Vegas, but he considers his first “official” show to have been April 16 at the Belterra Casino Resort in Florence, Ind. “The show in Indiana was the real telltale thing because I’m thinking, ‘You know what? They are either doing one of two things: They’re coming in to watch it explode or they are here to get onboard,’” he recalled. “After the first two songs into it, they were dancing in the aisles and we were having a good time.”
Dunn says that he invested more time in rehearsal with his new band than he’d ever done before. One question presented itself immediately: What should the balance be between new songs and Brooks & Dunn classics in the live show? “It’s that same old quandary that a lot of people face: ‘Hey, do I do Eagles songs too or do I do Creedence songs?’” he said, alluding to the situation faced by Don Henley of the Eagles and John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival when they stepped out solo.
In the end, Dunn decided to feature six or seven tracks from his solo disc, mingled with Brooks & Dunn hits. His set now includes “Let the Cowboy Rock” (Dunn and Dallas Davidson), “Singer in a Cowboy Band” (Dunn and Craig Wiseman) and “Your Kind of Love” (Maile Misajon and Jeremy Stover), along with the album’s first single, “Bleed Red,” and “Cost of Livin’.”
“It’s crazy,” Dunn said, describing the response especially to “Cost of Livin’,” the album’s second single. “People are standing up and throwing their fists in the air on that one. And during the Country Radio Seminar (CRS), we had 30 or 40 radio people in a Sony suite at the hotel, and they were going at it, wanting that record as soon as they heard it. They were like, ‘We can’t get it fast enough,’ so it’s going to be interesting to see how that does.”
The poignant lyric paints a portrait of a proud man desperately seeking a job in this tough economic climate. “I had one guy tell me that I was too rich to do that,” Dunn said. “I said, ‘Let me send you the picture of me standing in front of that trailer house in New Mexico when my dad was working on the Navajo Dam.’ I didn’t grow up middle class. I grew up poor. That song hits home. I get it. I feel every note.”
Dunn describes this time in his life as both “exciting and frightening,” with more reason for excitement than fright. On its release in June, Ronnie Dunn sold more than 45,000 copies and debuted at No. 1 on the Country charts and No. 5 on the Billboard Top 200. Still, as he plunges ahead as a solo act, he has renewed his appreciation for what new artists have to do as they lay groundwork for their debuts.
“The label took me around and we’d bring in around 30 or 40 people in each of the different regions,” he said. “We started in San Francisco and invited representatives from iTunes and radio PDs and DJs out there. Then I went to Dallas for two days and met with Clear Channel. In Florida, we had a house on the beach and a listening party. And then I went to South Carolina. I made the rounds. It’s been from the ground up. I remember doing this years and years ago and working it hard.”
“We went out to radio with Ronnie Dunn as a new act,” confirmed Spalding. “He visited radio and we held events for radio. We wanted them to touch and feel Ronnie Dunn. Being part of the duo, they knew who Ronnie was. But they didn’t really know Ronnie, so we made sure program directors spent time with him and he got to talk about his record.”
From a record label perspective, Overton remarks that while there are challenges in re-launching an established star, Dunn’s passion goes a long way. “Ronnie still has the fire to make new great music,” he noted. “So we consider his past successes a tremendous starting point for this next chapter in his career. I can’t imagine what Country Music would be without Ronnie Dunn’s voice.”
On the road this summer, Dunn confronts a different scenario than he experienced with Brooks & Dunn. “There are some festivals that are booked that I heard we are going on at 4 in the afternoon,” he said. “I’m used to headlining, but that’s fine. We’ll play at 4 and do what we have to do. It’s time to back up and instead of having eight buses out there, I’m pushing to get just two — one little truck and horse trailer to pull our amps and stuff behind us. It’s just a growing experience.”
Will he miss having his old partner on the road? “Hell, no! And that’s exactly how he would answer that question,” Dunn said, with a laugh. “Do I miss him? We’re still good friends. I hear from him every few weeks or so. Kix and I were able to work it smoothly as I think it can be done in a partnership, and I’m proud of that. I’ll be forever proud of that. That is something that I can look back on and go, ‘Man, what a feat for two ne’er-do-wells to accomplish!’ And I’m happy that both of us can walk away in great shape and good spirits and tackle things that we like and look forward to doing.”
Dunn’s goals at this point are simple yet ambitious: “To keep moving forward in a business that is tremendously hard to do that in and derive satisfaction from the music I make — that’s it,” he said. “I didn’t do this to get rich or make money. I didn’t do it to become famous. I did it because I was a shy kid and it was about the only thing that I could do. I gravitated early on in life to something that I love and chose as a way of life. I don’t think I could change that if I wanted to.”
On the Web: www.RonnieDunn.com

NEW ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Rosehill
By Bob Doerschuk
© 2011 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.
Rosehill’s chiming guitars, sweet steel fills and wide-open duo vocals add up to a sonic panorama that suggests long roads leading far away. But there’s also something homey in this sound, as inviting as a seat at a table filled with friends. 
There are two good reasons why Rosehill creates this impression throughout their debut album, White Lines and Stars. The first has a lot to do with geography. It was in Cypress, just off the Northwest Freeway near Houston, that Mitch McBain and Blake Myers started a band back in 2003. The group, Texas High Life, spent five years working the club circuit throughout Texas, honing their alt-Country style and stage presentation.
More importantly, it provided a vehicle for McBain and Myers to develop their synchronicity as singers and writers. They’d been juggling THL gigs with college classes; on finishing their academic obligations, they hunkered down to a biweekly schedule of hatching new material. The more they wrote, the clearer it was that they were headed toward something centered more on their partnership.
That’s the second reason White Lines and Stars is what it is. Produced by Radney Foster and Jay Clementi and released by Cypress Creek Records, these 11 tracks range from spacious to infectiously upbeat, yet all of them feature lyrics that speak directly to each listener’s experience. The title cut and first single, which Myers wrote with Clementi and George Ducas, unfolds like a highway under prairie skies; references to Opry fiddles and preachers on the radio mingle in a stream of sensory images with the rhythm of a sleeping lover’s breath. “It ain’t the destination, babe, it’s the ride,” they sing, bringing us back to images we've dreamed before.
As co-writers on all but three of these tracks, McBain and Myers meet this standard of craftsmanship consistently. And they harmonize intuitively, sing solo parts expressively and, best of all, know how to turn a strong lyric into an even stronger listening experience. Already, the view from Rosehill is something to behold.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS Q&A
MUSICAL HERO McBAIN: “Ryan Adams.”
MYERS: “John Lennon.”
FAVORITE FOOD ON THE ROAD BOTH: “Whataburger hamburgers.”
WORD YOU SAY OVER AND OVER AGAIN BOTH: “Booyah.”
SONG YOU SING IN THE SHOWER
McBAIN: “Anything and everything.”
MYERS: “Nothing.”
SONG YOU WISH YOU’D WRITTEN
McBAIN: “The entire Dark Side of the Moon album, by Pink Floyd.”
MYERS: “‘Hallelujah,’ by Leonard Cohen.”
DREAM DUET PARTNERBOTH: “Emmylou Harris”
WHAT YOU WOULD BE IF NOT AN ARTISTMcBAIN: “Pro wakeboarder.”
MYERS: “Football coach.”
On the Web: www.Rosehill-Live.com