Willie Watson

Musician

Popular As Willie Watson (musician)

Birthday September 23, 1979

Birth Sign Libra

Birthplace Watkins Glen, New York

Age 44 years old

Nationality United States

#57522 Most Popular

1950

After being discovered busking in Boone, North Carolina by Doc Watson—while "playing on Doc's old corner" where he'd "started playing in the 1950s" on King Street —the famed folk-country legend said, "Boys, that was some of the most authentic old-time music I've heard in a long while. You almost got me crying."

1979

William Currie Watson (born September 23, 1979) is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, banjo player, actor and founding member of Old Crow Medicine Show.

1988

Doc invited the band to participate in his annual MerleFest music festival, founded in 1988 in memory of Doc's son Eddy Merle Watson, who died in a farm tractor accident in 1985, as a fundraiser for Wilkes Community College and to celebrate "traditional plus" music.

There they met Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings who introduced them to the Nashville music scene, where they promptly relocated.

Watson performed with the group, writing and singing many of their more notable songs.

1998

The group left Ithaca for their Trans:mission tour in October 1998, busking west across Canada.

1999

They circled back east in Spring of 1999 and moved into a farmhouse on Beech Mountain, near Boone, North Carolina.

They were embraced by the Appalachian community, and their repertoire of old-time songs grew as they played with local musicians."

2011

He left to embark on a solo career in the autumn of 2011, a couple months before Fuqua rejoined the group, citing time on the road, new parenthood, and direction the band was headed as reasons for the split.

Watson's transition to solo appearances began slowly with an invitation from siblings Sean and Sara Watkins to join them on a Cayamo cruise—a "singer-songwriter, folk, rootsy festival on a ship around the Bahamas."

Sean "took the liberty" of putting Watson on the performance schedule.

He subsequently would "go pretty often and ... sing a few songs" at "this little revue called the Watkins Family Hour at Largo" where the Watkins would encourage him to try appearing solo.

2012

In 2012–2013 Watson began appearing in venues in and around Venice Beach, California, making appearances with the John C. Reilly band and John Prine, and opening for acts such as Punch Brothers, Sarah Jarosz, and Dawes.

Initially he was performing original music, then realized he got more out of performing the old songs—and his audience seemed to enjoy them more.

As he explains:

"Once I was on my own, I wasn't sure what my next move was–if I was going to have another band, or try to write a bunch of songs. At first, I did start writing songs, but I don't think I was satisfied with what I was writing. I was starting to do some solo shows, and I had a few songs I'd written, and I would do a mix of those with old traditional songs, at those early shows. I was a lot happier doing those old folk songs, and I think the crowd was a lot happier, too. I thought those were great songs that people should be hearing, and that I wanted to be singing."

2014

In 2014, he performed at SXSW in Austin, Stagecoach Music Festival in Indio, California, Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, Pickathon Music Festival in Oregon, Fayetteville Roots Festival in Arkansas, and Steelfest in Missouri.

A tour of the United Kingdom and Ireland takes him to Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester, Sheffield, London, and Dublin.

He appears at the Americana Music Festival in Nashville during September.

Of his transition to a solo career, Watson says:

2017

His debut solo album Folk Singer, Vol. I, was released in May 2014; its follow-up Folksinger, Vol. 2 was released September 15, 2017 on Acony Records.

He has appeared at the Newport Folk Festival and other major music festivals.

He currently resides in the Woodland Hills district of Los Angeles.

2018

Watson appears as The Kid in Joel and Ethan Coen's 2018 film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, also performing on the soundtrack.

William Currie Watson was born in Watkins Glen, New York (Schuyler County), and raised there, in Upstate New York, around Ithaca.

Growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Watson listened to music on the radio – from Michael Jackson to Nirvana – but also his father's record albums, including The Rolling Stones and Neil Young.

He recalls:

"I was just exposed to all kinds of stuff and . . . it could have been anything, and I would still be playing music because I could sing like anybody or anything I wanted to. I guess I still can . . . That's why I feel so fortunate – a lot of people don't have that, and I never take it for granted. I found a direction in life at a very young age."

He first met Ben Gould in high school and they began playing music together.

Around Ithaca and next-door Tompkins County "a lot of old-time fiddle music" was being played, some of it by banjo player Richie Stearns and the group Donna The Buffalo.

Watson was exposed to old-time music firsthand at a weekly old-time jam.

Both Watson and Gould dropped out of school and formed the band The Funnest Game, which like Richie Stearns' group The Horse Flies had "clawhammer banjo, electric guitar, drums."

Their brand of electric/old-time was heavily influenced by the old-time scene prominent in Tompkins and Schuyler County, New York, including The Horse Flies and The Highwoods Stringband.

Performing locally, the young band earned the respect of local musicians and gained a following, appearing weekly at the Rongovian Embassy with Richie Stearns and annually at the Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance in Trumansburg, New York.

Future bandmate Ketch Secor described it as a "young folksy kind of jam element acoustic band that was really popular in the southern tier region of New York State."

Watson, he says, "was playing shows statewide by the time he was sixteen" with "this group that had some congas and some clawhammer banjo."

Watson met future co-founder of Old Crow Medicine Show Ketch Secor after the latter finished high school in New Hampshire, his band broke up in Virginia, and he enrolled in Ithaca College.

Secor brought friend and former bandmate Chris "Critter" Fuqua up to New York State from Virginia.

Watson dissolved The Funnest Game while the three assembled musicians around Ithaca, New York "where there is a very lively old-time music scene."

According to Mac Benford, Ithaca had for 40 years "been a center of old time music, nationally," including Kevin Hayes They recorded Trans:mission, a cassette of ten songs they could sell on the road.