Artist: Geraint Watkins
Album: Rush of Blood
Label: Last Records
Release Date: 9.13.2019
Geraint Watkins is probably a name largely unknown to many US music lovers. But the likelihood is they will have heard him play somewhere down the road as one of the business’s most in-demand international session men. With a career that now stretches back over 40 years, UK roots musician Watkins has played with such names as Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Paul McCartney, Nick Lowe, Mark Knopfler, Tom Jones and Carl Perkins. Add to this the fact that Bob Dylan has said he’s his personal favorite UK keys man more than once, and you begin to get an idea of how significant he really is.
A regular feature in recent years with ex-Stone bassist Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, Watkins comes from the unexpected blues and Cajun end of the music where he kicked off as a guitarist-turned-squeeze-box player before turning to the rockier end with piano. Watkins began as a kid with guitar but was soon overtaken, he says, by his brother. Having also always played some piano, he elected to concentrate on that instrument and often played squeeze-box with a variety of blues and Cajun bands because of familiarity with the keyboard. In the past few years he has put out a couple of albums that hint at his ability but have been overwhelmed by the support musicians included in the journey. Here, with Rush of Blood, Watkins has gone for a decidedly more stripped-back style, a feature that allows his own writing, vocals and keyboard skills to amply excel.
If there’s a true surprise here it might come with the way the eleven-track release starts with a stagecoach-y, classic Western sound and vibe, a musical theme that remains central to the album ’till around the halfway mark, when it veers off into a positively more rock and R&B feeling, with more than a touch of soul at its heart. As you might guess, this is not an album that can be readily categorized. It romps along through genres, crossing from country & western, through soul to rock and blues with a deft, light touch that in many ways belie the sheer ability on offer. When speaking to Watkins recently, he told me his brother had laughed and told him it was a country album, a suggestion that he himself had never had in mind. In reality, that might be partly true, but in effect, Rush of Blood covers far more ground than that, to deliver an enjoyable album that steadily grows in stature track-on-track.
—Iain Patience
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