Dawn Tyler Watson is a multiple nominee at
Canada's Maple Blues Awards, and with good reason: She's a singer
capable of remarkable sultriness and nuance, and she's a risk-taking
songwriter who's equally at home with sensual, light-hearted
romps and more somber, socially aware numbers.
Her first album, Ten Dollar Dress,
was released in mid-2001 by Montreal's independent Preservation
Records, a label Watson calls "little, but with a big heart."
The disc finds her playing the role of a musical chameleon, flirting
with styles from jazz to funk to pop - but always with a foundation
grounded firmly in blues. She even turns in a version of Jimi
Hendrix's "Purple Haze" that contrasts blistering electric
guitar with smooth, jazzy vocals.
Watson has started writing material for her
next album, and she's eager to begin recording - especially following
the hectic pace of the sessions for Ten Dollar Dress,
which found Watson and her band putting in 24-hour studio days
in an effort to finish the album in time for the Montreal Jazz
Festival. "We had five weeks from the time the contract
was signed to the time the record was due," she tells Blues
Revue. "Final mixes were done in 22 hours straight,
and during that time there was a four-alarm fire next door. The
engineer is like, 'Are the window panes hot yet? No? All right,'
and he's still mixing."
How long have you been a musician,
and how did you become interested in blues?
I've been singing professionally for about
10 years. I moved to Montreal in 1987 to study music at Concordia
University, and that's when I started getting into it. By the
time I graduated in 1994 I was singing full-time. I was able
to quit my day job in 1992; I'd been waitressing in bars and
restaurants. Since then, I've been very happy to be able to make
a living through music.
I play guitar, too, although I'm pretty limited.
But also in 1992, a friend of mine was working with seniors and
he got me into coming in and entertaining them, doing that on
the side. I don't have as much time for that now, but I still
do a couple of gigs a month working with Alzheimer's patients.
In 1997, Preservation Records was doing a
compilation, and that's basically when I got into the blues.
Before that, I was doing jazz, funk, R&B, all styles ...
and they said, "We're doing this blues compilation,"
and I thought that rather than doing a couple of covers for it
I'd try to write some songs. I didn't think of myself as a songwriter,
but they liked what I came up with. This new album has been a
long time coming since then.
(continue
to part 2)
1 2
3
Send a comment
to Blues Revue.
|