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Robert Watts - Album Interview |
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Austin, Texas based singer and songwriter
Robert Watts, sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine recently, over a
zoom call and talked about his current album, BloodWork.
It is a collection of songs that he describes as, “Indie Pop. The album
BloodWork was named, because of the copious amounts of liquid
that have exited and entered my body in the last year. Also, BloodWork
is the composing and the writing and all of that. For me it is like my
blood and something that I am very attached to. On the inside of the CD
cover there is a picture of one of my heart graphs.”
Robert there is obviously more to this story.
“The making of the record was brought to a halt when I had emergency
heart surgery last year. I am one hundred percent now. When I got out of
the hospital and I started feeling better is when “On & On,” (the song)
hit me. I had five or six songs ready and some of them I ended up using
and some of them I didn’t. “On & On,” just is one of those songs that
came out really easily.
“On & On,” although lyrically is not a hopeful song lyrically, has a
musical vibe that is more upbeat running counterpoint to the lyrics.
The song “Otis,” is a nod to Otis Redding, “It is just a mashup of his
(Otis Redding) titles. I had that idea and I had the guitar riff going
and I thought it would be cool to do almost a tribute song to him.
Almost every (line) in there is from an Otis Redding song title or line.
It just came together and I was very happy with it. A lot of that is in
there (“Sitting On the Dock of the Bay”) (He quotes some lines), “The
tide rolled away and never came back in. The loneliness lingered with no
sign of the end…”
There is a sadness and a longing (in Otis Redding’s songs) that appeals
to me emotionally, “he explains.
“After These Fine Moments (a previous album) we (and Hilary Kaufmann)
went on hiatus and we retired from playing live. Then I had all of the
health issues. I thought man I have to do something. I had always
tinkered with writing on the side here in my studio. I had some friends
who knew what they were doing, came over and they said you need to do
this and that. This needs to be setup a certain way. It was a big
learning curve. I felt pretty confident by the time I was done,” says
Robert Watts.
As to whom he thinks the album will appeal, he ponders the question for
a moment, before answering, “Music affects people in different ways (he
smiles) and the way it affects me is right here (he puts his hand over
his heart) in an emotional state. Some people like depressing songs and
I kind of lean that way. (It will appeal) to people who have similar
tastes to me. It is probably not for kids in the club or the plastic
rockers, but somewhere in between there.”
Well, who else played on this album? Nobody.
Robert Watts as he says, “sang every note, played every lick and
recorded it.”
Then he adds, “I took it to a studio here (Austin) owned by Dan
Dubinsky. Dan had worked on a record of someone I really l like a lot,
Jess Williamson. I went and saw her (in concert) last night. I saw his
name on the back of her record and I thought this is the guy that I
want. He added some parts here and there, but for the most part
everything you hear is me.”
Continuing he talks about his songwriting, “For this record I did a lot
of writing on the piano. I am not a piano player, but I can put the
parts in the right place and with modern technology I can make it sound
okay. It was neat. Some chords you just can’t play them on the guitar or
at least I can’t. I was able to get some new sounds and some new ideas
from that.
I take it (my songwriting) all different ways. Sometimes I pick up the
guitar and I just start playing some chords and I think okay I can work
with this. Sometimes an idea comes to me immediately or a title.
Sometimes I have to work with it for a while.
“I am all about imagery and metaphors. Instead of trying to tell a story
from A to B, I try to make it more like a painting. It is colors of
sound. I focus more on that than I do A to B lyrics,” says Robert Watts.
His song, “I Thought You Knew,” has a cinematic feel to it as you watch
the story unfold in real time. You watch the decline of a relationship,
as it comes to an end. One
of the people in the song appears to be thinking of how to end the
relationship, while the other is either not aware of what is coming next
or perhaps just does not care anymore. “The house was on fire / And you
had no clue.” The tone of voice lends itself to a forceful narration.
There is an air of despair, as the protagonist in the song says a
familiar refrain, “You’ll never know how much I loved you,” and then,
“because you left the party too soon.”
Expanding upon that he says, “Yes, and probably a lot of it is drawn
from my past life. I was married before and a lot of it was getting out
of that relationship through no fault of my former partner. A lot of
what I write is to work out the guilt and sadness that I have had over
the years.
“Yes, “The house is on fire, I thought you knew / You walked through the
ashes, I followed you / …” so that kind of runs through there. I think
eventually the narrator figures out; hey you don’t have any idea what
you are doing. I was all in with you and you are not,” he says citing
some lines from the song and the image of a burned down home, left in
ashes is poignant.
We wondered what Robert Watts has personally taken away from writing and
recording his collection of songs.
“It has given me a sense that I can do this. I do not have to prove
anything to anyone.
The response that I have gotten from most people (about the record) has
been beyond the courteous oh yeah nice record. They would really go into
a lot of detail about how they really liked this that and the other. It
gave me the confidence that I have done my job. I can keep on doing
this. I have got five or six songs ready to go out next year,” he says
acknowledging that it demonstrates that people are invested in the
lyrics and listening attentively.
Talking about the song “Ghost Town,” he says, “It is a metaphor. One
theme I use is the broken girl theme. I wouldn’t want my daughter to
think it is specifically about her, but it is about someone who (he
quotes some lines). At the time I wrote that there was a lot going on in
Israel. The video for that shows a Muslim lady walking through the
desert and through some ruins and stuff. It has a little political
sidebar to it. It is about a young lady growing up, not under the
greatest of circumstances,” he says.
The song leaves the listener asking, what happened that now there is
just a shell of this woman left? What is her backstory? How did she get
to this stage of her life? Was it just that her luck run out or was it
poor choices made that left her in this condition?
The foreboding song “Front Row Seat,” is reminiscent of protest songs of
the 1960s and early 1970s.
“It is kind of an anti-gun, anti-American kind of a song. I actually
wrote it a couple of years ago, more than that, during the first Trump
administration. It had a lot of anti-Trump things and I pared it down
and tried to make it less whatever you know, more accessible, I guess.
I felt it was important for me to say something. I don’t want to be one
of those people who constantly posts negative things on social media,
but I also felt that I couldn’t just be quiet about what all was going
on,” says Robert Watts.
You can listen to BloodWork by
Robert Watts
here.
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Most
of the songs for BloodWork were written two years earlier than
when the album was recorded.