Alt-country crusader Dale Watson is stoked: His dream-team CD comes out in August, and it's sounding like the real McCoy.
Up to bat: legendary Lloyd Green (Johnny Cash, George Jones) on steel guitar. Alison Krauss' Dennis Crouch on acoustic bass. Hargus "Pig" Robbins (Jones, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn) on keyboards. Glen Duncan on fiddle (his 2001 recording of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" with Earl Scruggs earned a Grammy). Nashville session icon Pete Wade (Cash, Marty Robbins, dozens more) on guitar.
It's especially sweet for a rebel famed for championing authentic roots music at the expense of the creeping disease he once diagnosed as the "Nashville rash."
In fact, he wrote a lament by that very title.
In it, Watson reaches out to Merle (Haggard) for a lifeline: "Help me Merle, I'm breakin' out in a Nashville rash; it's a-looking like I'm fallin' in the cracks; I'm too country now for country, just like Johnny Cash; help me Merle, I'm breakin' out in a Nashville rash."
The chorus pleads: "Ain't it funny how things can really change; rock and roll back in the '70s are country hits today; breaks my heart to see my heroes fadin' away; the victims of Nashville rash, it's Nashville's ways."
When Watson takes to the outdoor summer stage of the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts Saturday (6:30 p.m., with an opening set by local band The Hillbilly Jones), he'll be offering up his special cure.
"That was back in 1994 when I wrote that song," confesses the Austin-based Texan. "Unfortunately, it still applies to today. I can't tell the difference between pop and country songs on the radio anymore."
At the same time, Watson says "I've learned to live and let live. You can't fight what country music is today."
In fact, he says, "Carryin' On" was recorded in the heart of rash country, Nashville, where he first ventured nearly 30 years ago to start his career.
He says, yes, it's still possible to inoculate yourself against the disease as long as long as you hang at the source with the authentic likes of Lloyd Green, Pete Wade and "Pig" Robbins.
He also says you need to come up with a different term than "country singer."
"I don't call myself that anymore,' says the non-country singer, 47. "If you do call yourself that, people expect to hear a certain sound, like Tim McGraw or one of those guys. We don't sound like that."
As a result, "they come out and hear us and get mad because we're not country by today's standards."
Indeed, "We're kind of like a man without a country." Pun, alas, intended.
Hence, all the fancy variants: alt-country ... Americana ... Ameripolitan ... etc.
Though Watson was born in Alabama, he spent his formative years in Houston, adopting Texas as his native land.
The songwriting kicked in at the tender age of 12, followed by his first recording at 14, and hard stints on the honky-tonk circuit post-high school -- keeping it roots-based all the way.
After a 1988 move to L.A., Watson made his name, ironically, in Hollywood, of all places. But he did it as a member of the house band at the Palomino Club, a legend among alt-country venues and proponent of the essential Bakersfield sound.
That prominent showcase landed him a recording deal with Curb Records, but he eventually was lured home to Texas and the far more receptive music scene in Austin. There, he forged his backing band, the Lone Stars.
Watson's debut album there, 1995's "Cheatin' Heart Attack," contained his aforementioned itchy dig at the New Nashville.
Watson's career as the angry young rebel vs. the mainstream was stopped called in 2000 by the central tragedy of his life: the death of his fiancée in car crash, which sent him tumbing into an alcohol-and drug-soaked abyss.
After nearly succumbing to an overdose, he spent time crawling from dark back to light in a mental institution.
The experience led to a feature-length documentary, 2006's "Crazy Again," directed by Zalman King, of "Red Shoe Diaries" fame.
Since then, Watson has been inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame, and stands steadfast against "the rash," albeit in ways a bit more mellow than in his "angry young maverick" days of the late '80s and '90s.
"When you try to fight something, it's more of a struggle," he says. "So I've just learned to do what I do ... spending less time attacking what I don't like and more embracing what I love."
At a glance
What: Dale Watson with The Hillbilly Jones
When: 6:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: CEFCU Summer Stage at Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, 600 N. East St.
Tickets: $10
Box office: 866-686-9541
