DALE WATSON & THE TEXAS TWO (USA), EightBomb

Originally from Alabama, currently living in Texas, the tattooed 49-year-old Dale Watson personifies the country music that has almost disappeared. Watson's masterly performed and sung "ameripolitan" tracks draw from the tradition of the father of country, Hank Williams, the honky tonk of Lefty Frizzell, the orthodoxy of Johnny Cash, the rebelliousness of Waylon Jennings and the ballads by Merle Haggard, but unfortunately they have currently been labelled by Nashville pop-country industry as alternative and pretty eccentric.

Watson began composing country music at 20. Having completed high school, he spent 7 years playing in clubs and honky tonk bars. He spent a number of years in Los Angeles and Nashville, which in early 1990s he left for Austin. Like Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson who ended up there in early 1970s, he fell for the country industry immediately.

He recorded a dozen albums, of which “I Hate These Songs”, “Cheatin' Heart Attack”, “Blessed Or Damned”, “The Truckin Sessions Vol. 1 & 2”, “Dreamland”, “Whiskey Or God” and this year's “The Sun Sessions” are regularly featured among the best country albums of the past 20 years.
Influenced by his worldly wisdom “too country for country”, he nowadays mainly performs for fans of rockabilly and country-punk, in front of audiences sporting coloured hair and nose-piercings, rather than cowboys in expensive clothes.
Aleksandar Dragaš, Zagreb