Lake County >> While some bands rotate in a musician or two, Billy Watson is a little more inclusive. He shuffles through upwards of 30 guitarists, drummers, bassists and others roles to fill spots in the International Silver String Submarine Band. The free form nature allows for a hectic pace. The group performs at Kelsey Creek Brewing Company Friday, the Lion’s Club in Finley Saturday and the Boathouse Bar and Grill in Nice on Sunday.
Watson, the band’s front man and harmonica player, began the group 22 years ago. He decided against forming a band with set members to help his fellow musicians book gigs, as well as create a camaraderie between performers. “It keeps musicians working … They’re sitting around with nothing to do and that’s where I come in, I hire them,” he explained. “It’s a frustrating business. Sometimes when it rains, it pours. Not everybody’s working all the time. Instead of just having another band to take up all the gigs, it makes it more fun and more communal.”
The band name, taken from an episode of “The Little Rascals,” represents the struggles working musicians often face. During the episode, the ragtag team of kids picked up their homemade instruments and headed to a radio station to perform for the station manager. The kids called themselves the International Silver String Submarine Band. No one was impressed until they began playing. This episode “describes the problems that musicians have,” Watson explained. “It was written back in the ‘30s and applies today. [It describes] the frustration of being a musician and making a living doing that.”
When Watson books a gig, he calls up various musicians on his extensive list to find performers who aren’t on the road. The front man is the only performer at every show. This constant flux is as much of a benefit for the audience as it is for the musicians. “There’s nothing worse than a saturated market,” Watson said. “If you have a different band every night there’s something fresh that you watch.”
Watson often books shows without knowing who he’ll be playing with. He hires the musicians afterward. Though it sounds stressful, he claims after so many years, finding musicians once he’s committed to a show is easy at this point. “And sometimes I’ve had musicians that couldn’t make it pretty close to the gig,” Watson said. “I’ve had guys get stuck in traffic jams that couldn’t make it to the gig and I call another guy and they make it .”
Many of the musicians on Watson’s roster perform with another band (or two) and have succeeded in their own music careers. “The guys I hire, they’re not just local musicians,” Watson said. “These guys get out of town a lot. They’re really what you would call national and international acts.”
Musicians are eager for Watson to fill their spare time because he handles all of the little details. “I’ve got everything taken care of and all [a musician] has to do is show up and put an amp on the ground and play,” he said. “So a lot of these guys, I think over the years they’ve respected me for that.”
Watson doesn’t take things too seriously. “It’s totally about having fun and there’s a lot of people that want to do that,” he said. “If it’s not fun there’s no reason to do it.”
Watson has been fronting the International Silver String Submarine Band nearly as long as he’s been playing music. While he was in a few other bands when he first starting performing, he quickly realized that calling the shots made him happiest. “Being in a band is no fun. It’s like having a dysfunctional family,” he said. “And there’s too much pressure on musicians for what it is. I would just rather have my own band and run it like I like it.”
With other blues bands, Watson felt they were straying too much from tradition and attempting to modernize the blues. Adding in rock guitar solos and amping up the music felt wrong. “It kinda takes the genre and turns it into something else,” he explained. “The blues road map is already laid out for you so you just gotta travel down the road. You don’t need to make a big deal about it.” At 15-years-old, Watson’s cousin bestowed upon him a harmonica. He kept practicing at it, until eventually the instrument became more than a hobby. The harmonica’s deceivingly simple facade drew Watson in. “It’s a unique instrument, it takes a lifetime to master it,” he explained. “But it’s easy. You hand it to a small child and they can play it.”
Blues holds the same appeal. “It’s the easiest music to play poorly,” Watson laughed. “It’s the easiest music to play but it takes a lifetime to master it. When you first hear it you don’t realize the depth of it.”
Rock and roll, on the other hand, doesn’t have as much soul, at least from Watson’s perspective. He can’t get behind that. “It’s not like the rock and roll world where it’s all about glamor and drugs and fame and fortune,” he said. “That has such a small lifespan. As soon as you can’t fit into your spandex anymore, you’re done. I just always saw that as kind of silly.”
As a blues musician grows older, their music only gets better, Watson explained. When a rock musician ages, they’re usually out of a job. “Blues men, they were working on their craft … well into their 80s,” he said. “They were just playing music because it’s true to life. It’s about life, it’s not about things, it’s about living … That’s what I liked about it.”
Though, interestingly, classic rock bands like the Who, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin were a big influence on Watson when he was younger. “All of the bands that I listened to, they all listened to ‘60s soul and blues artists,” he said. “They all played blues before they became rock bands … I don’t think many people realize that, but that’s why a lot of people tend to go with these guitar-heavy blues rock shows.”
When someone told Watson Fleetwood Mac began as a blues group, he thought they were joking. Then he looked into it. “They actually were a great blues band, they actually studied it,” Watson said. “No one knew that the rock band would resurrect the blues music into the 60s.”
With an aversion to the modernization of the genre, the International Silver String Submarine Band avoids the rock style of blues. “That’s what’s saturating the genre in our opinion,” Watson said. “[There’s] too much guitar, there’s not much style to that. It makes it confusing to people about what blues rock is. We’re trying to get people to have fun with us, not idolize us.”
With ten albums of original music to draw from, the group plays a variety of traditional styles. “Lately I’ve been just calling it a madcap harmonica blues show,” Watson said. “It’s not just Chicago blues, it’s not just Latin blues, it’s not just country blues. We do it all. We study blues music, we play it all, we listen to it all.”
The group is influenced by Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and Magic Sam, but they shy away from performing too many covers. “We listen to old music from the 20s and through the 60s then we try and come up with our own stylized music,” Watson said. “We do a couple of covers to keep blues enthusiasts happy, [but covers are] just like painting by numbers. It just makes it like a day job. It’s not why we play music. We play music to have our own sound.”
The band’s sound changes as much as their musicians. “There’s a formula and we just wing it,” Watson explained. “There’s no set list, we just kind of go with it. We start and finish songs and get people dancing.”
And just because their music is improvisational doesn’t mean it’s easy, which Watson said is a common misconception. “Not all the guys fit in with our unit. They have to be really good at improvising,” he said. “It’s different every night. That’s what’s unique about our sound.”
Watson is coming to the county with the International Silver String Submarine Band for a change of pace from the Southern California scene. He generally makes the trip to the area twice a year. “Every now and then you have to get out of town because people get tired of you,” he said. “The Lake County folks are all so very warm and welcoming and it’s a nice place to play and the people are much more down to earth than where I live. Everyone comes out and sees music regularly and they like music. There’s really no distractions.”
Nathan James, Marty Dodson and Kedar Roy will join Watson for the weekend’s shows. People who head out to see them should be prepared for a good time. “I think they’re going to enjoy themselves,” said Watson. “Even if they don’t like blues, there will be something they’re gonna like.”
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
Cutline: Billy Watson, right, will perform with The International Silver String Submarine Band throughout Lake County this weekend.
