DALE WATSON

Born in Alabama, raised outside Houston, based in Austin, Watson came to country music early and naturally. His truck driving father moonlighted as a country singer, and his older brothers had bands as well. Dale remembers receiving his first guitar at age 7 and starting to write songs shortly after—“the same stuff I’m writing about now,” he says with a laugh.
 During his formative years in Pasadena, Texas (the town on the Houston outskirts that Gilley’s would put on the musical map), he began playing the local honky-tonks while still in high school. “I was definitely an outsider,” he says of those days. “All my friends were pretty much an older crowd.  The people my age were listening to the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. I didn’t necessarily think it was bad—it just wasn’t what connected with me. I grew up with the music my dad listened to. I inherited his record collection, and I’m as big a Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams and Buck Owens fan as he is.”