Dale Watson and His Lonestars

Dale Watson plays staunchly traditional country, complete with twangy sonic backdrops and lyrics about the joys of driving big rigs and drinking your sorrows away (not necessarily in that order). Somehow it seems only fitting that the Austin, Texas, musician’s career has been pockmarked by bad fortune and misery. At the crest of his rise to midlevel fame and critical acclaim in the late ’90s, Watson’s fiancée died in a car accident. Like any hard-driving country musician worth his salt, Watson set out on a path of self-destruction that included booze, drug overdoses and a stint in the mental ward. Of course, his music only improved as a result; Watson’s 2001 comeback effort, Every Song I Write Is for You, remains a tear-stained classic that contains more gut-wrenching feeling than ten emo bands put together. In April, a reinvigorated but still haunted Watson returned with Dreamland, a confident effort that yielded some of his finest vocal performances yet.