Talking today's country

Another bank holiday weekend, another shindig in a festival town. While Dublin rocks to the Heineken Green Energy Festival, and Galway reverberates to the inaugural Bud Thud, Kilkenny plays host to the first Carlsberg Country Roots Festival, a four-day celebration of some very decent American country acts and a motley collection of some of Ireland's most respected new and old singer/songwriters.

Irish roots fans might be familiar with the likes of The Saw Doctors, Mick Hanly, Juliet Turner, Karan Casey, and Neil Toner, but it's up to the visiting Americans to add that extra edge to proceedings. Guy Clark, The Amazing Rhythm Aces, and the highly influential Gail Davies will be in attendance, as will The Dead Reckoning and the excellent hardcore roots band, Dale Watson and His Lone Stars.

"I'm probably somewhere between the older style of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens and what's happening in the 1990s," says Dale Watson from his front porch in Austin, Texas, when asked about where precisely he fits into the Country scheme of things. "You can't just do music that you like and are influenced by, you have to throw whatever today puts into it. The subject matter of the songs I write is totally different from years ago, too. Yep, I guess I'm a classic country singer talking today's language."

Watson has been termed an `alternative' country artist, a description he mistrusts. "There are so many different interpretations of that word. Travelling so much I've noticed it has different meanings in different places. I consider myself to be a hardcore country artist, as opposed to a country-pop artist. Generally speaking, if people like Johnny Cash and Buck Owens are considered alternative, then maybe I'm in there with them."

If hardcore country is as hardcore country does, can we expect a stage performance of distinctly non-Garth Brooksian dimensions?

"It's not a show, that's for sure," claims Dale. "I consider a show as something that's formatted. I don't have a set list, although that would probably be better for the guys in the band - at least they'd know what to expect!

"The spontaneity factor is all about communication. You've got to listen to what the audience wants. You can't predict that. You can manipulate it, of course, which is what a lot of major acts do. Personally, I'd rather hear it first-hand from the audience."

The Carlsberg Country Roots Festival takes place in various venues in Kilkenny from May 1st-4th. Thereafter, Dale Watson and His Lone Stars tour Ireland: Banteer, Cork, May 4th; The Orchard Bar, Letterkenny, May 5th; Belfast (venue to be confirmed), May 6th; and Whelans, Dublin, on May 7th