Tony Watt
By Rebecca Frazier
Tony Watt’s agility on the fretboard has been a lifetime’s work in progress. With his smooth touch and warm, relaxed tone, Tony makes bluegrass guitar sound effortless. He expresses a warm familiarity with the roots of the genre, yet he stretches out to provide his own interpretation and even a sense of humor that comes from years of jamming, performing, and teaching bluegrass guitar. And while he’s lived and breathed bluegrass guitar for decades, he’s also earned degrees in science and worked in the technology field as well.
As a young boy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Tony grew up in the vibrant and prolific Northeast bluegrass community. His father, Steve Watts, a banjo picker and mandolin player, was a founder of the Boston Bluegrass Union (BBU). Tony remembers, “My dad used to run sound for the BBU concerts when I was a kid, and I used to run around in the back of the hall. I grew up listening to bluegrass and going to festivals, but I never really wanted to play bluegrass.” That position changed when Tony was thirteen. “For some reason—to this day, I don’t know why—I went up to my dad and said, ‘You know, why don’t you show me some of that bluegrass guitar stuff that you know.’ That got me headed down this lonesome road, as you will,” Tony laughs.
Tony spent years of his bluegrass career playing rhythm guitar. “My dad showed me what he knew, which was a great start—'Jimmy Brown the Newsboy,’ ‘You Are My Flower.’ But I really couldn’t play any solos, couldn’t improvise. I knew a few set pieces and that was it. I played just rhythm guitar for about seven years. I was about 20 before I got going with flatpicking, which for me at the time felt like I was old and decrepit. Now I realize starting flatpicking at 20 is pretty young for most people,” Tony says.
In his early years as a flatpicker, Tony was inspired by guitar legend Tony Rice. “To me the most important bluegrass guitar player that ever lived was Tony Rice, and that’s absolutely what grabbed me at every level: his rhythm, lead, singing, song selection, arrangements, just everything.” Tony studied Rice’s style, but he made a conscious decision to not become a Rice-style player.
Tony eventually developed a unique touch on the guitar, with a clean and fluid tone and melodic ideas that channel the bluegrass language, but do not mimic the sound of any one guitarist. “I’ve been lucky to focus my energies trying to sound like some people who aren’t as widely emulated, and that’s allowed me to create my own unique style –I don’t think of it as my own style, I think of it as a derivation of all of these players that I love,” Tony explains. “One of these people who has been most important in developing my own voice would be Lincoln Meyers, a fantastic guitar player who lives up in the Northeast.” Tony took lessons from Meyers and would travel to Meyers’ gigs to learn from him. “I was picking his brain after his shows to learn his licks and ideas, and I as learning his solos note-for-note off of records,” Tony remembers.
Another ‘enormous’ influence on Tony’s playing is Tim Stafford. “His playing moves me in a way nobody else’s does. His solos are so beautifully constructed and the tone is so perfect for my taste. I can’t imagine playing it better than that.” And while Lincoln Meyers and Tim Stafford are Tony’s biggest influences, he says there are “a bunch of people I’ve tried to steal stuff from: David Grier, Kenny Smith, Tony Rice, Scott Nygaard, Eric Uglum, Clarence White. It’s me following my ear to the folks that I loved.” Tony credits his unique style to the fact that he has studied so many different bluegrass guitarists’ styles.
Tony is known in bluegrass circles for his fluid, driving rhythm and keen sense of time, skills which eventually earned him a coveted spot as guitarist in one of bluegrass’ top acts, Alan Bibey & Grasstowne. Tony has performed throughout the U.S. and Europe with Grasstowne, Alecia Nugent, Leigh Gibson of the Gibson Brothers, among others. Tony also teaches at camps and workshops across the country and has a roster of private students.
In the guitar world, it’s common for a player to have multiple talents—they may play multiple instruments, or be a commanding singer or songwriter, for example. And guitarists often have professional degrees in fields outside of music. Yet it’s rare for a full-time bluegrass guitarist to have earned advanced degrees in science, and to eventually choose music as their sole profession. “I have two degrees in science,” Tony explains. “I studied material science, which is a very obscure, small field; in undergrad I specialized in metallurgy, which is the study of metals. In my grad school work, I was researching a new kind of solar panel based on semi-conductor quantum dots—nanotechnology.”
Tony spent many years keeping his options open by working in both music and science. “I kept both doors open as a young adult, switching back and forth. I worked a couple years with a technology company, and then did music for a while, and then went back to science. So even when I was doing a science job or school, I was still playing music on the side. After many years of bouncing back and forth, happily, keeping both doors open---it was the experience of living in Nashville and getting to play with amazing musicians and seeing all of my friends making a living with music. I was thinking ‘Oh, it’s not that hard, if you really want to do it. It’s not exactly the most lucrative job. But if you really want to do it, you can make it happen, and living there gave me a ton of confidence in how I could do it.”
Tony found that science uses a different part of his brain, which he appreciated. “When I was in grad school, I was trained to use the world’s most powerful microscope. It was really interesting stuff. I saw individual columns of atoms on the computer screen, a quarter of an inch tall. It was wild. But even that—working on the world’s most powerful microscope, which for a scientist would be as good as it gets—I was still like, ‘Oh, but I really like music, that’s what really makes me happy.’ So that was a great learning experience.” Tony’s science background translates into his work in bluegrass. “I bring a very scientific approach to my teaching of bluegrass, it’s a lot of that rigor,” he laughs.
When teaching guitar, Tony emphasizes three main elemental strategies. First, he asks his students to slow down. He believes that almost everyone practices at tempos that are too high for proper learning. Secondly, he believes that flatpickers should find a teacher in order to process and develop fundamental techniques. “Make sure you’re not developing bad habits and get a great teacher to help you identify an area that needs to be addressed, help you develop a regime to address that weakness, and then help you motivate to really go after it, to show you that if you put in some work you can have this positive growth.” Lastly, for students who are further along, Tony advises his students to jam once per week with others. He coaches his students in how to start their own weekly jam, in the instance that they cannot find a local jam that fits the students’ skill level. “It’s daunting at first but once you get used to it, it’s one of the biggest parts of this music and it’s the best way to get better, because you know you’re getting amazing practice while having amazing fun. It’s such a win-win,” Tony emphasizes.
Born and raised in the New England bluegrass scene, Tony is now an important fixture in the music community there. Coming full circle from his childhood days running around backstage, he now serves as Vice President of the BBU. He has also taken on the task of running bluegrass Tuesdays at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, which have been held for 27 years. Tony also foresees featuring his guitar skills with a potential studio project in the near future.
“Above everything else, I feel lucky to have been exposed to this community,” Tony muses. “I think we all learned in the pandemic not to take it for granted. But it’s more than just the time that we get to gather together; it’s these relationships we have that last for decades. We’re so lucky to have this world with each other, our own little section of the world that’s separate from all the noise. It’s just fantastic.”
Originally published in Americana Rhythm Music Magazine
