Browse Artists
Watson, Wayne
1999 was a trying year for Wayne Watson.
A freak skiing accident in January of that year resulted in broken ribs that led to an excruciating bout of pneumonia. Coughing induced by the pneumonia broke more ribs, and the painkillers administered by the hospital left Wayne emotionally incapacitated. "I don't want to over-dramatize, but I thought it was over," he confesses. "I would sit on the edge of my bed, rocking, looking at the door, unable to walk through it. I didn't think I would ever leave that room again."
The follow-up to his critically acclaimed CD, The Way Home, was scheduled for a July '99 release, but Wayne says he couldn't buy an ounce of creativity. He felt blocked, intimidated, afraid perhaps that he had nothing left to say, and lacked the desire to even attempt it. "I just couldn't get started," he muses. "I asked myself - is it over? Am I through? I felt like I had things I wanted to say, but I was afraid of the effort it was going to take to get them into a form that would be palatable to enough people."
"I'll be very candid. This is the sixteenth album I have done, and they have all been greeted with varying degrees of success, however you may define that word. To me it just means being obedient. But you still have in your mind this level that you want to achieve, and it was just a big mountain to climb. I didn't know if I had the energy. And for the first six months of '99, I literally did not have the energy. Just walking to the mailbox was a chore."
And if the physical challenges weren't enough, Wayne was struggling under the weight of some emotionally-charged life changes - his father's recent death to lung cancer; his youngest son's departure for college; the devastating trials in the life of a close friend. "I don't know the answers right now," he says flatly. "I don't know if I will ever know the answers. But I have never believed that God is offended by our questions. I just remember going through some painful things, and feeling free with my heavenly Father to say, I don't know what you are up to, but it sure doesn't feel good right now. I don't think that offends God. I think He likes it when we are honest with Him."
While Wayne was wrestling with his personal dilemmas, TV exec Martha Williamson was busy wrestling a very different kind of angel. As the Executive Producer for the hit series Touched By An Angel, she was struggling to finish the script for the 1999-2000 Season premiere. Scanning across the dial on her car radio, she came across a tiny Christian station that was playing For Such A Time As This. Inspiration hit. Wayne's song not only helped Ms. Williamson finish the plot, she decided to use the song during the climax of the episode, which focused on the issue of slavery in the Sudan.
High school student Josh Weidmann found both comfort and inspiration when he chanced to hear Wayne's classic, Home Free on his local Christian radio station. Pain has little mercy, and suffering's no respector of age, of race or position...Home free, eventually, at the ultimate healing we will be home free... comforting words to a teenager who had just survived the massacre at Columbine High School. Josh and his mother invited Wayne to perform that song for students of the ravaged high school at a private, un-televised worship service.
"That was hard," Wayne muses. "So much of that situation has been sensationalized. As a songwriter, I try to be careful to not commercialize or capitalize on other people's pain. I don't pretend to know what was going on, but it was just not fair. When you've known the Lord for a long time you tend to assume that you understand what He is all about. And that is a very dangerous thing for us mortals to do. I think when we take away the mystery of who God is, we take away some of the beauty of who He is, and I sure don't want to do that."
But new songs still wouldn't come. Then, as the year wound to a close, he found sudden inspiration in an unexpected place - a concert hall. "My wife and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary last November by going to see James Taylor with the Houston Symphony. It was the most amazing concert. There I was struggling to write something, anything. And as I listened to James, I thought, He is amazing, but he is not recreating the wheel. He's just writing out of his guts; about the pain of being a single father; or the fun he had on a trip. Nothing fancy. Just simple chords and great lyrics. It reinforced to me that maybe I should simplify a little bit; to try to find that place that is simple and understandable without being elementary."
Wayne went home and started writing. In the next ten weeks he wrote the eleven songs that comprise his latest project, Wayne Watson. The block was broken. He throws back his head and laughs. "I had never enjoyed writing this much before," he explains.
The man who gave the world such classics as "Touch of the Master's Hand, Watercolor Ponies, Home Free," and the worship anthem "Almighty" poured all the emotions, questions, pains and triumphs of the past year into those eleven songs. He pounded his questions into a song called "Pray"; came to grips with his father's death in his poignant tribute, "Turning Into Dad"; mourned with the nation over the senseless carnage at Columbine High School in the heart-wrenching "Ones Left Standing"; and ultimately reached the conclusion that while life is not fair, thank God we don't get what we deserve in "Merciful Heaven".
Ripping away past conventions, Wayne wrote on both the piano and the guitar. He enlisted the aid of long-time friend and Nashville guitar legend, Jerry McPherson to produce the guitar-driven songs, and drew on the experience of multi-Grammy award winner Michael Omartian for the keyboard-oriented tunes. The result, he says, is like nothing he has ever done before.
"It's swampy," Wayne laughs. "It's not quite as cleaned up, a little more relaxed, a little more earthy than my earlier records. The combination of those two producers has resulted in a project that is really interesting. Yeah, swampy."
As 1999 melts into the new millennium, Wayne Watson is once again busy doing what he does best - delivering songs that chronicle the vagaries and victories of everyday life; songs that ponder the problem of pain; songs that marvel at the mystery of grace.
2000. It might not be such a bad year after all.
Visit Official Website.
A freak skiing accident in January of that year resulted in broken ribs that led to an excruciating bout of pneumonia. Coughing induced by the pneumonia broke more ribs, and the painkillers administered by the hospital left Wayne emotionally incapacitated. "I don't want to over-dramatize, but I thought it was over," he confesses. "I would sit on the edge of my bed, rocking, looking at the door, unable to walk through it. I didn't think I would ever leave that room again."
The follow-up to his critically acclaimed CD, The Way Home, was scheduled for a July '99 release, but Wayne says he couldn't buy an ounce of creativity. He felt blocked, intimidated, afraid perhaps that he had nothing left to say, and lacked the desire to even attempt it. "I just couldn't get started," he muses. "I asked myself - is it over? Am I through? I felt like I had things I wanted to say, but I was afraid of the effort it was going to take to get them into a form that would be palatable to enough people."
"I'll be very candid. This is the sixteenth album I have done, and they have all been greeted with varying degrees of success, however you may define that word. To me it just means being obedient. But you still have in your mind this level that you want to achieve, and it was just a big mountain to climb. I didn't know if I had the energy. And for the first six months of '99, I literally did not have the energy. Just walking to the mailbox was a chore."
And if the physical challenges weren't enough, Wayne was struggling under the weight of some emotionally-charged life changes - his father's recent death to lung cancer; his youngest son's departure for college; the devastating trials in the life of a close friend. "I don't know the answers right now," he says flatly. "I don't know if I will ever know the answers. But I have never believed that God is offended by our questions. I just remember going through some painful things, and feeling free with my heavenly Father to say, I don't know what you are up to, but it sure doesn't feel good right now. I don't think that offends God. I think He likes it when we are honest with Him."
While Wayne was wrestling with his personal dilemmas, TV exec Martha Williamson was busy wrestling a very different kind of angel. As the Executive Producer for the hit series Touched By An Angel, she was struggling to finish the script for the 1999-2000 Season premiere. Scanning across the dial on her car radio, she came across a tiny Christian station that was playing For Such A Time As This. Inspiration hit. Wayne's song not only helped Ms. Williamson finish the plot, she decided to use the song during the climax of the episode, which focused on the issue of slavery in the Sudan.
High school student Josh Weidmann found both comfort and inspiration when he chanced to hear Wayne's classic, Home Free on his local Christian radio station. Pain has little mercy, and suffering's no respector of age, of race or position...Home free, eventually, at the ultimate healing we will be home free... comforting words to a teenager who had just survived the massacre at Columbine High School. Josh and his mother invited Wayne to perform that song for students of the ravaged high school at a private, un-televised worship service.
"That was hard," Wayne muses. "So much of that situation has been sensationalized. As a songwriter, I try to be careful to not commercialize or capitalize on other people's pain. I don't pretend to know what was going on, but it was just not fair. When you've known the Lord for a long time you tend to assume that you understand what He is all about. And that is a very dangerous thing for us mortals to do. I think when we take away the mystery of who God is, we take away some of the beauty of who He is, and I sure don't want to do that."
But new songs still wouldn't come. Then, as the year wound to a close, he found sudden inspiration in an unexpected place - a concert hall. "My wife and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary last November by going to see James Taylor with the Houston Symphony. It was the most amazing concert. There I was struggling to write something, anything. And as I listened to James, I thought, He is amazing, but he is not recreating the wheel. He's just writing out of his guts; about the pain of being a single father; or the fun he had on a trip. Nothing fancy. Just simple chords and great lyrics. It reinforced to me that maybe I should simplify a little bit; to try to find that place that is simple and understandable without being elementary."
Wayne went home and started writing. In the next ten weeks he wrote the eleven songs that comprise his latest project, Wayne Watson. The block was broken. He throws back his head and laughs. "I had never enjoyed writing this much before," he explains.
The man who gave the world such classics as "Touch of the Master's Hand, Watercolor Ponies, Home Free," and the worship anthem "Almighty" poured all the emotions, questions, pains and triumphs of the past year into those eleven songs. He pounded his questions into a song called "Pray"; came to grips with his father's death in his poignant tribute, "Turning Into Dad"; mourned with the nation over the senseless carnage at Columbine High School in the heart-wrenching "Ones Left Standing"; and ultimately reached the conclusion that while life is not fair, thank God we don't get what we deserve in "Merciful Heaven".
Ripping away past conventions, Wayne wrote on both the piano and the guitar. He enlisted the aid of long-time friend and Nashville guitar legend, Jerry McPherson to produce the guitar-driven songs, and drew on the experience of multi-Grammy award winner Michael Omartian for the keyboard-oriented tunes. The result, he says, is like nothing he has ever done before.
"It's swampy," Wayne laughs. "It's not quite as cleaned up, a little more relaxed, a little more earthy than my earlier records. The combination of those two producers has resulted in a project that is really interesting. Yeah, swampy."
As 1999 melts into the new millennium, Wayne Watson is once again busy doing what he does best - delivering songs that chronicle the vagaries and victories of everyday life; songs that ponder the problem of pain; songs that marvel at the mystery of grace.
2000. It might not be such a bad year after all.
Visit Official Website.
Albums
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Living Room
Wayne Watson
How Time Flies
Signatures