from Chicago Tribune (article collections) on chicagotribune.com

Dale Watson, the tattooed Texas singer who once declared himself "too country for country now, just like Johnny Cash" in a song called "Nashville Rash," found himself in the dreaded Music City USA to record his latest album.

He had no choice. For more than a decade, he has dreamed of recording with great country-music session men such as Lloyd Green, the steel guitarist who played with Charley Pride, Tammy Wynette and tons of others, and guitarist Pete Wade, whose first big sessions were with Ray Price in the early '60s. "Nashville is usually not my favorite place to go in the first place," Watson acknowledges, by phone from his home in Austin. "But the only reason I went there is, these people don't travel — you can't get Pete Wade and Lloyd Green in Austin, Texas."

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