Willie Watson

This is a brief entry, where I cross over into the land of teenage -- never mind my being 22 --infatuation over a musician. But I assure you that this gentleman qualifies. I aim to write about strangers or acquaintances, people I do not know well, nor can I call up for a chat, but who still mean things to me. If we're talking about strangers who mean something, who better than a musician? I say music breaks my heart and saves my life, I even speak of its effect on my soul, and I don’t feel like I’m using hyperbole in the least. Musicians are the most important strangers in the world, even if their importance is a little easier to explain than the smile of a Guatemalan merchant boy. Yet there is still something inexplicable about my reaction to my most well loved makers of music.

Rob F and I saw Old Crow Medicine Show in a packed, beautiful theater in Homestead, PA. I was in the very front row, and near the end of the show, I lost any remaining reservations, and danced madly in front of hundreds of people. I danced with a tall, brunette stranger and her balding maybe-boyfriend. (They certainly qualify as Not Friends, as do any strangers who have ever grabbed my hand and made me dance with them. Girls especially sometimes do this, and I will love them forever for it.) I knew I wasn’t important to the band, who had a whole audience to see and engage with. But I was in their line of sight, which gave me a cheap and wonderful satisfaction. Mostly, I just wanted to get my point across through awkward stumbling, tapping boots. You people mean the world to me, and you’re making me purely happy right now. That’s what I tried to communicate as I stopped giving a shit about 800 people knowing I couldn’t dance or about the fact that life is hard and we’ll all die someday.

After the show, Rob and I joined the dozen or so people standing by the tape that separated all of us from the band’s tour bus. We were rewarded by Willie Watson, desperately skinny, cigarette tucked in his mouth, clad in a Neil Young shirt, and in need of a good haircut, walking towards us. Gill Landry, the more reserved and laconic guitar and banjo player followed. As I looked at Willie Watson, he looked right at me and gave me a grin that could easily have stopped my heart, and might have for just a moment. (Now, here is the dilemma, the difficulty in describing honestly your utterly teenage infatuation with a musician, when you’re especially in the mood to write because you just finished reading a delicious Christopher Hitchens book. But the truth must be told, and hopefully I can keep my dignity, with a minimum of tedious, unoriginal self-deprecation.)

Ultra-cool, laid-back and lively, Willie Watson interacted with us all, signing ticket stubs and draping his arm around Rob’s lucky shoulder for a photograph. My mind was blank of much of anything to say, not even the obligatory, high-on-life fawning that I do after shows. ("I love you guys!") But all the same, I felt oddly relaxed and I said some already forgotten casual conversation things. Watson’s manner was so ordinary and relaxed, that I imagined it possible to converse with him as if he were a normal person, if only you had something to say. There is no way to describe the importance of this to me without sounding silly and juvenile. I have far too many heroes, musicians, journalists, life-savers, all people whose presence would send me into stammers, or worse and more likely, wordlessness and blankness of mind, as much as I would long to talk to them. This is a horrible attitude for a would-be journalist, who wants to be able to rub elbows with people who intrigue and fascinate. That’s half the point in being a journalist, you get the excuse to ask questions about the people that interest you most. I’ll do that, if only I can get over my fawning. But how can I not fawn, when people fascinate me so? And Willie Watson’s friendliness, and his dangerous grin, cannot undermine the power and the fact that he can sing so well it gives me shivers. That response is all primal, all feeling, and dangerously moving. No wonder I can’t look at anyone who has that ability as anything but far above me. Pure words can have power, but without rhythm and melody, it’s a whole hell of a lot harder to affect people -- And almost impossible to make them dance. I will strive to string words together to the best of my ability, but I don’t know if I’ll ever shake the feeling that musicians have some voodoo that I cannot imitate, but am powerless to resist.