Dale Watson – Call Me Insane

Over the course of a long and controversial career, Dale Watson has been called a lot of things. But nobody but him would dare to invite fans and critics to label him as he did for his latest release, Call Me Insane. But Watson is no nuttier here than he has been in the past. As usual, his work is suffused with a great, self–deprecating sense of humor.

“I‘m Gonna Bug You For Love” is a warning to single ladies who show up on Watson’s radar, portraying him as a skirt chaser promising to pursue anything without a ring on her finger.

Watson fires back at Waylon and Willie’s cowpoke anthem with Billy Joe Shaver’s “Mamas Don‘t Let Your Cowboys Grow Up To Be Babies.” Buoyed by a Bakersfield honky-tonk background, the singer advises moms to “let ‘em drink their Lone Star all night long,” along with some Tequila for variety. After ensuring that Mom’s raising them the right way on chicken fried steak and feeding them plenty of milk gravy, he promises she’ll be rewarded: “he ‘s gonna make you proud he’s your son.”

Professing his admiration for George Jones, Watson sounds so much like him that you almost believe that Jones is back from the dead doing a tribute to himself on “Jonesin’ For Jones.” Its not an impersonation. Watson has so many Jones-isms in his natural delivery that he sounds like a relative of the Possum.

Even his endorsements aren’t exempt from his humor:“Dale Watson plays only Fender Guitars through Fender Amps while drinking Lone Star Beer. Fact!” Its all true.

Watson reveals a more somber attitude when in delivering his sermon in a Johnny Cash persona on “Burden Of The Cross.” But most of the material is in a lighter tone including another Waylon and Willie flashback, “Everybody’s Somebody in Luchenbach Texas.” Watson invites visitors to “relax, kick back and have a beer, in a town he describes as “a special little Texas town bout as big as a minnit” that’s more special now that you’re in it.”

An outspoken opponent of what’s been passing as country music for most of the last half century, Watson renamed the genre to include what he believes is the real country music, dubbing it Ameripolitan, defining it as a “new music genre with prominent roots influence,” breaking it down into four subcategories: Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, Rockabilly and Outlaw.

But whatever you call it, you know as soon as you hear it that it’s the real thing, with Watson as the standard bearer. Listen up.