Dale Watson’s Scraping Sugar Off of Pop Country Music

If a palace coup ever topples the current royalty of country music--if the Stetson-clad heads of guys like Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw ever start rolling--there’s a good chance that Dale Watson will be working the guillotine. A 37-year-old Texan with a handful of honky-tonk albums to his name, he is peeved enough about the state of pop country to volunteer for the job.

“All these guys singing ‘Oh, my girlfriend is in love with my tractor,’ ” Watson muttered before his recent show in suburban Arlington, Va., skewering a recent song by hit-maker Kenny Chesney. “Let me tell you something. No woman loves a tractor. That’s just idiotic. I sing about things that are real.”

Watson, it’s safe to say, is obsessed with authenticity and deeply in the thrall of country music’s low-on-artifice beginnings, in particular the outlaw stylings of guys like Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash. For the past decade, that brand of country has fallen out of favor in Nashville as Music Row swooned for black-hatted pop acts that sing brightly packaged, upbeat tunes about love, country and . . . farm equipment.

Meanwhile, a guerrilla war by purists, led by Watson and Hank Williams III--grandson of country’s greatest star--has been quietly tilling country’s roots and resuscitating its gritty, sawdusty spirit. And if revolution does indeed ever wipe the candy coating off country, Watson deserves a leading role in the new regime.

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He’s got all the basics: charisma to spare, a comedian’s timing and a look that echoes James Dean crossed with just a little bit of werewolf--angular features, thick eyebrows and a widow’s peak that yields a spigot of upturned hair.

One shoulder is tattooed with the notes to “Poor Baby,” a song that his father, an obscure country singer, wrote years ago. His butterscotch Telecaster guitar is festooned with foreign coins, a reminder that despite his no-profile status stateside, Watson draws huge crowds in Europe, where roots country is a popular force.

Watson packs a Waylon Jennings-size voice into his slight frame, a voice that recalls barroom come-ons and getaway cars and Elvis Presley in the ‘50s. As a songwriter he is both literate and literal, a gifted wordplayer who draws his finest inspiration from actual events and real people.

At the Iota club here, he sang about the road to a whorehouse (“Exit 109”) and about a transvestite truck driver from Oklahoma renowned for regularly announcing on his CB radio that “I’ve got my nightgown, I got my pretty red panties on, and I’m ready to go in a minute.”

“The FCC is looking for the guy, I hear,” Watson said, introducing the number.

Watson spent plenty of stage time ridiculing the likes of Shania Twain and Tim McGraw, performers he considers a plague on, and a perversion of, country music. The sheer horror of it all, he said, pummeled him last week when his third divorce came through and he moved into a cable-ready apartment, affording him the chance to watch stations, such as TNN, that feature pop country.

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“It’s one thing to listen to it, but it’s far worse when you have to look at it,” Watson growled right before launching into “That’s Country My Ass,” a withering ditty about an 18-year-old rising star who misses his karaoke machine.

These days, Watson is “between labels,” having bailed out of his deal with Sire/Warner Bros. when the company decided to delay the release of his latest record for nearly a year. But the country music establishment is hardly done with Watson.

He just made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry, the epitome of mainstream Nashville. Watson was baffled by the invitation, which he regards as something akin to Exxon inviting the head of Greenpeace over for a barbecue.

So is the revolution upon us?

“Nah,” Watson said. “I think what’s happening now is, the only people who watch the Opry are older, and they want to listen to someone who reminds them of the old days. They want to listen to people like Merle Haggard and Hank Williams. They want to listen to people like us.”