About
​Enjoying a run at Lake Lady Bird on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in March, then waking up in the eastbound lane of Cesar Chavez surrounded by EMS, AFD, and half a dozen onlookers.
Not at all how the Austin, Texas musician Robert Watts envisioned his day shaping up, much less the months to follow, during which he underwent emergency open heart surgery followed by cardiac rehab. Needless to say the operation and recovery put quite a dent in the production schedule for his first independently released solo record.
As half of the Austin-based duo These Fine Moments (TFM), his typical workflow was to make demos with his partner Hilary Kaufmann, and go into the studio with producer Mark Hallman (Carole King, Ani DiFranco) to make a record. But this time was different, with Watts handling 100% of the song writing, playing all the instruments, and doing all the vocals himself in his home studio.
After making a number of records with TFM, Watts says he was confident wearing the player/producer hat but decided to turn it over to engineer and producer Dan Duszynski (Loma, Shearwater, Jess Williamson) for a fresh coat of paint and the final mixing. He found Dan’s name in the credits on the back of one of his favorite records, Jess Williamson’s “Sorceress,” and was excited that Dan was available and willing to work on the project. The new album, entitled “BloodWork,” is scheduled to be released in February, 2025.
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“Paring down the song list was the hardest part,” says Watts. “Between the songs I had written recently and some previously written stuff that didn’t really fit with TFM, I had a lot to choose from. So, I tried to keep it different style-wise.”
And the songs do run the gamut, from the echoey/hypnotic vibe of the album opener “Ghost Town,” to the guitar-heavy “Killing Me," to the soul/blues feel of “Otis” (a mash-up of Otis Redding song titles), and closing with the stark piano/vocal track “Front Row Seat.”
When pressed to chose a genre, Watts says “I’m calling it non-denominational indie-pop until someone comes up with something better. And I hope listeners will appreciate that I'm not following a blueprint, or coloring within the lines of a specific genre."
Overall, the record includes more piano and keyboards than guitar and features mandolin on a few songs, a departure from his role in TFM. Watts says the use of piano and keys in the writing process opened the door for him to explore chord inversions and tones beyond his guitar-centric comfort zone. “The songs are not overtly linear, but the imagery, sound, and color are swirling in the same general direction, and Dan had a lot to do with that.”
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The title of “BloodWork” was chosen literally, because of the copious amounts of the red substance that had entered and exited his body over the past year, and figuratively, to verbalize the feeling of putting everything you have into the creative process, the hard work it takes to capture it, and harder yet, release it.
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