Dale Watson
Call Me Lucky (Red House)
Reviewed by Rick Weaver, Fri., May 3, 2019
Now that he's cashed in chicken shit bingo at Big T Roadhouse in San Antonio for Hernando's Hideaway in Memphis, longtime Austinite Dale Watson wants us to call him Lucky. So be it. For his latest fast-acting batch of straight-to-the-point pickings, the Ameripolitan extraordinaire and his tight-knit Lone Stars holed up in Sam Phillips Recording and fanned out a deck of Tennessee aces, including Johnny Cash's one and only drummer, W.S. "Fluke" Holland. From the brassy cruise and shuffle of "Tupelo Mississippi & a 57 Fairlane" to the sweet Music Man drive of "Restless" and tender evergreen glow of "Johnny & June" (a duet with Celine Lee), Watson echoes ghosts while turning phrases in his silver and gold baritone voice. Like a snowbound Harlan Howard, Watson knows how to get in and get out of a song, but with a West Coast grin and a tip of the pompadour.
