Willie Watson came out on 13 September 2024 on Little Operation Records, marketed and distributed by Thirty Tigers. Watson billed it as his debut album “after 30 years of playing music professionally,” and it is his first solo record of his own songs. His two earlier solo albums, both titled Folksinger and produced by David Rawlings for Acony in 2014 and 2017, were given over to traditional material.
Gabe Witcher and Kenneth Pattengale produced it in Los Angeles. Watson sings lead and plays guitar, banjo and harmonica, with Dylan Day on guitar, Paul Kowert on bass, Sami Braman on fiddle, Jason Boesel on drums and Benmont Tench on organ and piano. Witcher adds piano and violin, and Pattengale harmonium and drums. Sebastian Steinberg plays bass on “One to Fall.”
Six of the nine songs are originals, most of them co-written with Morgan Nagler. They include “Real Love,” the lead single, which Watson wrote for his wife, Mindy, and “Reap ’Em in the Valley,” an eight-and-a-half-minute closing piece about finding music as a boy that ends on a chorus of “Sow ’Em on the Mountain.” The other three are older material: “Slim and the Devil,” adapted from Sterling A. Brown’s poem “Slim Greer in Hell,” and the traditional “Harris and the Mare” and “Mole in the Ground.”
Tracklist
- 1 Slim and The Devil 5:11
- 2 Real Love 5:44
- 3 Already Gone 4:13
- 4 Sad Song 3:32
- 5 One To Fall 4:03
- 6 Harris and The Mare 6:10
- 7 Mole in the Ground alt version 2:30
- 8 Play It One More Time 4:09
- 9 Reap 'em in the Valley 8:35
