BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Find Local//findlocal.community//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:19700308T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:19701101T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:f8d83b14-23f0-407a-b54d-e7e06ed6cd2d@findlocal.community DTSTAMP:20261026T072112Z DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20261204T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20261204T210000 SUMMARY:Willie Watson DESCRIPTION:Founding member of Old Crow Medicine Show\, Willie Watson hea ds to the Orchard Chapel for a special and intimate Home for the Holiday s evening featuring his solo work. Soon before Willie Watson turned 18\, he met God in an apple orchard. Or at the very least\, he met there a m an named Ruby Love\, the older friend of a high-school buddy who had an enormous Martin guitar and a seemingly bigger understanding of the Ameri can folk songbook. Watson was existentially thirsty: A high-school dropo ut from upstate New York’s Finger Lakes\, he was fast on his way to his first heartbreak and in a first band that didn’t take itself seriously e nough. But that night in an apple orchard that had always seemed magical \, at a graduation party for one of his bandmates and best friends\, Wat son and Love sang a few of those old songs together—“Worried Man Blues” and “Tennessee Waltz.” It was the first time Watson had cried while sing ing\, the first time he had made the connection between making music and making sense of his life. He never saw Ruby Love again\, but within mon ths of that foundational 1997 rendezvous\, he met the musicians with who m he’d soon start Old Crow Medicine Show. Call it revelation\, fate\, re surrection\, whatever you will\; for Watson\, more than a quarter-centur y later\, it was a duet with the divine. As told in the talking-gospel m asterpiece “Reap ’em in the Valley\,” that scene is the transfixing fina le of Watson’s self-titled debut as a songwriter and as a human at last making music to make sense of his life. Yes\, Watson has released two al bums since he left Old Crow Medicine Show a dozen years ago and since hi s long-term collaborations with David Rawlings and Gillian Welch. But th ose records\, both titled Folk Singer\, were sets of tunes he knew\, int erpretations of the songbook he has diligently mined since even before t hat night in the apple orchard. At 44\, however\, he feels that Willie W atson is his first-ever true album\, having finally lived and lost and s imply witnessed enough to know he has something to sing with his exquisi te rural tenor. Watson has not abandoned those old songs entirely. He da zzles during a robust take on the forever-curious “Mole in the Ground” a nd treats “Harris and the Mare\,” the standard of tragic Canadian singer Stan Rogers\, with total tenderness. But by and large\, these are his s tories of heartbreak and hurt\, backlit by the corona of hope that only growth can provide. Every memory\, Watson likes to say\, is surrounded b y a shroud of sadness\, whether it’s good or bad. And there are lots of memories in a life\, all mixed: Though the band he started soon after th at night with Ruby Love long gave him a purpose and career\, it conscrip ted him into a role as an old-fashioned folkie\, forever stuck playing a part that got tiring. Marriage and fatherhood became boons in their own time\, but they kept him bound to Los Angeles\, its sprawl and selfishn ess causing a country boy like Watson to lose himself again. And there w as the stereotypical excess of it all\, too\, the habits of hard living nearly breaking Watson in his 30s. But after he lost those relationships \, he slowly got sober and faced himself head on\, working to be honest about the traumas of his childhood that had helped create the troubles o f adulthood. Sobriety\, though\, was never enough for Watson. He wanted that shift to prompt change and growth\, to force him into situations th at were beneficial because they were uncomfortable and challenging. That \, in many ways\, is the motivation of these nine songs and the only alb um he’s ever felt deserved to bear his name. In 2020\, Watson began conv ening with Morgan Nagler\, an actress and songwriter he’d met years earl ier through Rawlings. They’d discuss an idea and then often sit in silen ce\, scratching away at it separately as Watson wriggled around on a cou ch\, as if wrestling with his past in the real time of the present. Some times playful and sometimes persecuted\, the songs that emerged looked b ackward to move ahead\, dealing with disappointments in phrases of crisp rhyme and sly wordplay. A post-pandemic solo tour had left Watson feeli ng drained by the idea of being some standalone entertainer\, onstage al one taming crowds who had forgotten how to listen amid extended isolatio n. He knew he wanted a band for these songs\, but he understood they onl y needed to be the framing beneath them\, supporting rather than distrac ting from these reckonings with self. Alongside producers Kenneth Patten gale and Gabe Witcher\, respectively of Milk Carton Kids and Punch Broth ers\, Watson assembled a modest ensemble of aces who were largely new to him but would respond to the songs intuitively and without intrusion—ba ssist Paul Kowert\, guitarist Dylan Day\, drummer Jason Boesel\, fiddler Sami Braman. (Careful listeners may note cameos from Benmont Tench and Sebastian Steinberg\, too.) Start to finish\, these songs sound like mom ents of mutual discovery\, the entire group arriving together to look at Watson’s life and realize something about and for themselves. “Real Lov e” harkens back to those days in rural New York\, with Watson opening hi mself to the wreckage that comes with falling for someone for the first time. He is fragile but resolute here\, pressing on in spite of vestigia l pain. “Sad Song” thrums like some muted and modern Jimmie Rodgers numb er\, as Watson tries to play-act happiness one more time for a society t hat’s just wanted him to grin and sing. Echoing the rippling and beautif ul despair of Gordon Lightfoot\, the gorgeous “Play It One More Time” ex amines the fleeting salve of music itself\, or how the help it gives us can fade when we’re not truly hearing. And then there’s the hotrod acous tic opener\, “Slim and the Devil\,” a wits-sharp adaptation of the Sterl ing A. Brown poem “Slim Greer in Hell.” The story of a Faustian bargain made with St. Peter at the pearly gates in exchange for one more earthly adventure\, it’s a sly contemplation of the meaningless deals we make t o endure when we all know what’s inevitable\, anyway. Watson does it\, t oo\, so he winks at himself alongside a band that’s having a blast havin g his back. Still\, there is no winking to “Already Gone\,” a devastatin g if elegant survey of the damage we leave behind as we make bad choices \, as we force people to leave our lives. “There’s no hearts to break he re\,” Watson offers before the knockout. “They’re already gone.” These d ays\, Watson looks askance at his old reputation and knows other people do\, too. “‘I thought you were just some nice little singer who sang in the little fucking cowboy hat\,’” he deadpans\, characterizing the perce ption he knows he has in many ways courted. And he recognizes that peopl e probably don’t think he can write his own songs of meaning and depth\, since he spent so long reworking those of others. For a long time\, he bought that\, too. But the hat is off\, as is the desire to be a mere en tertainer or interpreter. The nine songs on Willie Watson find a bona fi de songwriter dealing with the difficulties of his past to suggest a ren ewed future\; what’s more\, he uses his keen and expansive understanding of an old lexicon to add his own new entries to it. As with the best fo lk songs\, you will recognize your own burdens here. As with the best fo lk singers\, you will feel compelled to sound them out\, too. Who knows\ , maybe you’ll even meet God in an apple orchard. LIVE MUSIC POETRY & FI CTION WORKSHOPS WILDLIFE WELLNESS COMEDY FOOD THEATRE VISIT STAY SHOP AB OUT FAQs SUPPORT BRIGHT & LYON PRIVATE EVENTS © THE WORD BARN TERMS & CO NDITIONS PRIVACY POLICY WEBSITE BY MAINE FOX MARKETING\n\nTickets: https ://brightandlyon.ticketsauce.com/e/willie-watson-2/tickets\n\nhttps://fi ndlocal.community/event/f8d83b14-23f0-407a-b54d-e7e06ed6cd2d LOCATION:The Word Barn\, 66 Newfields Road\, Exeter\, NH 03833 URL:https://findlocal.community/event/f8d83b14-23f0-407a-b54d-e7e06ed6cd2 d STATUS:CONFIRMED SEQUENCE:0 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR