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The Gazette
 
August 2006
 
ROAD STORIES:
Patrick Watson gets Lessons in Soul and Hard Work
Words and Pictures by Dylan Young 
In the pursuit of pop music mythology a lot of questions get asked. Who recorded youralbum? What does your band name mean? Are you friends with the other bands in yourscene? This is what rock journalism has come to, statistics and trivia rolled out in lieu of stories. And for most bands, that’s just as well. There’s usually not a lot to tell. But when itcomes to singer/songwriter Patrick Watson and his band, short answers just won’t do.How do you explain an outfit that has opened for headliners as incongruous as
eTalk
darlings The Stills and minimalist composer Philip Glass, yet still, somehow, bothcomplemented and upstaged them both? And how do you explain a local son fromHudson, Quebec, ending up on a whirlwind tour of Europe opening for soul legendJames Brown? You don’t. You grab your passport, take a deep breath and do like they used to do when rock ‘n’ roll was young. You join the mid-summer tour and tell the story.**The two-Euro bottle of wine passes from guitarist Simon Angell’s hand to mine and Itake a long healthy swig. Behind us on a park bench, Patrick Watson is humming
 
wordless harmonies with some Parisian musicians we met earlier on the steps of SacréCoeur. Drummer Robbie Kuster is finger-tapping soft rhythms into the bench’s woodenbackrest and bassist Mishka Stein is pulling pensively on a Benson & Hedges cigarette,listening to the impromptu a capella.“It’s kind of unbelievable,” Angell remarks, looking across the sloping landscape of Paris’ Montmartre district. He couldn’t be more right.To our left, across a cobblestone square that slants so steeply it seems as though oneend is sinking, is the Bateau-Lavoir, a block of ramshackle buildings that once housedApollinaire and Cocteau, and where Modigliani had more than a few tantrums. The glass-paned studio that opens onto the tiny park is the same one where a young Picassopioneered his way to the uncharted angles of cubism. This is hallowed ground and thedrunken revelry we’re enjoying is more than mere ritual, it’s sanctified in precedent. Thetree Angell is leaning against might be one Pablo himself stumbled towards in some giddy spell.The following night, these four Montreal lads will walk onto the stage of theprestigious Palais des Congrès and play the first of five dates opening for the hardestworking (and some would say, hardest living) man in show business, Mr. James Brown.The following night, things will go from unbelievable to incomprehensible.**What everyone wants to know is how did Patrick Watson get such a plum gig asopening for James Brown? It’s a question that is all too often accompanied by that otherone – who the hell is Patrick Watson anyway? Of course, neither of those questions haveeasy answers.Part of the problem is that Watson has more or less gone out of his way to avoidsimplification. Far from steering his career and music into the easily marketable trend-friendly genres that have attracted many of his peers, Watson has eschewed the obviousgestures, following an inborn sense of what it means to make timeless music and of what,in the end, constitutes rock stardom.“The truth is, I don’t really care about someone like Mick Jagger or Iggy Pop,” Watsontells me. “That kind of celebrity doesn’t really interest me. But take some of those classicalcomposers … Take someone like Bach, or Debussy, or Satie. Those guys were the realthing. Those guys were crazed geniuses. They didn’t just make good music. They changed
 
the way we think about music and they made music that changed the way we think aboutother things.”That kind of thinking has inclined Watson towards choices born of a desire forstrangeness rather than stability. He began his career at seven, playing in churches aroundthe Hudson area. He studied classical and jazz piano but ended up in the neo-ska outfitGangster Politics (along with guitarist Simon Angell) while attending Vanier College. Hecomposed soundtracks for films and made music to accompany an underwaterphotography show and book. He opened for The Dears and Steve Reich, played withLhasa De Sela and DJ Champion, and this winter he’ll tour Eastern Europe, playing withBritain’s celebrated Cinematic Orchestra.Watson describes his own music as “cinematic pop,” a term that serves better thanmost but fails to fully convey its unique balance of lyrical narrative, vocalese, orchestralweight, psychout and pop artistry. Watson’s songs do have the pensive intensity of storiestold in independent film but, here, his lyrics are the images and the instrumentation, theirsoundtrack. His 2003 debut,
 Just Another Ordinary Day
, was a critical darling and anunderground hit. His sophomore effort,
Close to Paradise
, due out this fall on Montreal’sSecret City Records, could well make him a household name.As to the James Brown gig, the simple answer would be that Brown and Watson sharethe same music publisher. But in true Patrick Watson style, the real story has a little moreto it. Enter Super Frank.Legend has it that James Brown, during one of the dryer periods of his career,challenged a radio station owner named, no kidding, Super Frank, to tell him why hisradio stations didn’t play the Godfather’s music. Super Frank answered simply, “It’s justnot the sort of music we play.” Brown was so taken with the man’s straight-talking style,he asked him to be his manager on the spot.More than a decade later, Super Frank, owner of Intrigue Music and still manager of the Godfather of Soul, would meet Patrick Watson after a show in New York City. Acouple of drinks and a few well-spun tales later, Watson knew he’d found a publishereccentric enough to make his life interesting. He wasn’t wrong. Super Frank, for a start,saw nothing unusual in putting Watson and Brown on the same stage.**
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