For die-hard honky-tonk fans, few things make life worth living more than Dale Watson crooning about how life isn’t worth living. On The Little Darlin’ Sessions, Watson re-creates vintage tears-’n’-beers numbers from Nashville’s Little Darlin’ label, with label founder Aubrey Mayhew on board as producer. Also in tow are session sidemen from the day, including [...]

After years of tilting at windmills, Dale Watson has rechristened his brand of country as “Ameripolitan” — but it’s not a musical change, just a doubling-down on the directness, intimacy, fiddle, steel, guitar and shuffle beats for which he’s known. Watson’s short-lived relocation to Baltimore and his hungry return to Austin provided a timely hiatus [...]

The word “crazy” and the idea of a person being driven insane by love has been used frequently in country music songs, but Dale Watson’s powerful “I Wish I Was Crazy Again” has a special resonance. “They say I went crazy/And by crazy, I mean mentally insane,” Watson sings, and he really means it. Watson [...]

It takes three things to make a strong live record: great songs, good sound and a clever frontman to fill in the blank spaces with jokes and stories. All of those qualities are present in abundance here. Recorded over two nights in August 2000, the album is a long (20 tracks, 69 minutes) and rollicking [...]

Since 1990, Dale Watson has been laying down a series of harder-than-hard, more-country than-country originals that have made him an alternative country star, on the verge of recognition even by the elements in the country establishment his songs have so often decried. His albums have been filled with songs widely admired as professional, but you [...]

On People I’ve Known, Places I’ve Been, Dale Watson writes a song about the crease in somebody’s cowboy hat, for gosh sakes, and not only gets away with it, but turns in a memorable honky-tonker with a heartfelt twist at the end. On this disc, his fifth, Watson wrote all the songs, plays all the [...]

A decade ago the major labels decreed the death of vinyl, somehow setting off a flood of 7-inch singles that, at one point, arrived at the rate of 200 a month. It’s a slow trickle now, but there’s still reason to move the fax machine off the turntable and pay attention. “Riding The Range”/”Dirty Old [...]

If I correctly recall the sticker that was adhered to the shrink-wrap of this cassette-only release when it showed up in my postbox late last year, it advised music reviewers to pull over at the next exit, as this release was strictly for the fans. Of course, I mail-ordered the thing solely out of self-interest, [...]