Gene Watson has been singing professionally since the late 1950s and has been a country music album recording artist since the late 1960s.
Gene Watson’s contribution to the genre of country music is immeasurable.
It is here where you have an opportunity to read a review of Gene Watson’s ‘live’ show at Arlington Music Hall in Arlington, Texas on Friday 4 August 2012.
This Dallas Morning News ‘Live Show’ Review by Mario Tarradell, Music Critic at Dallas Morning News, which was published in the Saturday 4 August 2012 issue of The Dallas Morning News, is reproduced here with the kind permission of the publishers.
Arlington Music Hall
Arlington
Texas
United States of America
Friday 4 August 2012
‘Arlington, Texas – time has been mighty kind to Gene Watson’s voice.
The traditional country singer hasn’t lost an ounce of his smooth timbre.
His vocals remain a free-flowing combination of baritone with a smidgen of tenor and nasal twang. He can still croon his career hits in the same key they were written nearly four decades ago.
It sure helps that he quit drinking in 1980 and quit smoking in 1990.
Onstage Friday night (3 August 2012) at Arlington Music Hall, Watson and his five-man Farewell Party Band headlined a 90-minute show that put the native Texan’s pipes under the spotlight.
The gig, featuring an opening set by special guest Luke Robinson and his three-man band, served as a celebration of Watson’s 50 years in country music. It was also a sort-of homecoming since he told us he lived in Arlington during the 1960s.
Gene Watson’s ‘Best of the Best: 25 Greatest Hits‘ was released on Gene’s own record label, Fourteen Carat Music, on Tuesday 14 February 2012.
(photo credit: Solomon Ross)
‘Watson, now based in the Kingwood area of Houston, offered plenty of old-school country crooning. In between songs, he was personable, talkative and funny. But it was all about that voice and those songs.
Opening with ‘Should I Come Home (or Should I Go Crazy)’, Watson then slipped into his 1975 breakthrough smash, the sultry ‘Love In The Hot Afternoon’.
Pedal steel guitar mingled with keyboards, while electric guitar, bass and drums provided the seamless rhythms’.
(photo credit: Solomon Ross)
‘Everything about the 68-year-old Watson – from the voice to the stage presence – was testament to a bygone era.
He’s an entertainer as much as he’s a singer, the kind of artist who knows how to treat a crowd as if they were all guests in his living room. Best of all, he doesn’t need fiery props, intricate lighting or huge video screens.
He just sings. His best vocals of the evening were ‘You Gave Me A Mountain’, a powerful, inspirational ballad, and a couple of classics – ‘Fourteen Carat Mind’ and ‘Farewell Party’. The latter is his signature song, his most requested staple, while the former is his treasured No.1 from 1982.
Among a few other diamonds of the night: the sweet country ballad ‘I Don’t Need A Thing At All’ and the South-of-the-border excursion ‘Carmen’. He even exercised his raspy undertone when he treated us to ‘Bad Water’, his 1974 cover of a tune by The Raelettes, Ray Charles’ backing vocals girl group.
Watson could have easily kept singing for another hour. His voice was up for the challenge’.
This Live Show Review of Gene Watson’s appearance at Arlington Music Hall in Arlington, Texas USA, was written by Mario Tarradell and was published in the Saturday 4 August 2012 issue of The Dallas Morning News; it was reproduced with the kind permission of the publishers.
Photographs of Gene Watson were courtesy of Solomon Ross.
