WKW is a brand new musical project, officially announced less than a day ago as I write this, and this is definitely one to watch!
The project is made up of three members: Bruce Watson, who is known as a founding member of Scottish rockers Big Country. His son, Jamie Watson, who has played alongside his father in numerous projects (Big Country, Skids, etc) since 2007 and has become a force to be reckoned with in his own right. The trio is completed by Thomas Kercheval, who has been releasing his own music for over 20 years. Tom is also incidentally my podcast partner as we have co-hosted a Big Country podcast since 2012, with a friendship going back way longer than that.
“Doing the podcast allowed me to get to know Bruce and the others guys a little better,” Tom says, “and I would occasionally share my songs with him. He was always encouraging and complimentary. One day I casually suggested that I’d love to write a song with him if he was ever interested. I didn’t think he’d take me up on it, but a couple of weeks later, he sent me some unfinished acoustic demos and asked me to see what I could do with them. He gave me free rein to do whatever I wanted, so I just went with what I thought felt right. Fortunately, Bruce seemed really excited by the way things sounded, and from there, he and Jamie began recording parts of their own in Scotland. We would exchange parts back and forth across the ocean”.
Contributing musical and lyrical ideas with members of a band that he has always been a rabid fan of is definitely a unique situation. “As you might imagine, it’s been an amazing – and at times surreal – experience working, writing and recording with these guys,” Tom says. “No other band has meant more to me in my life than Big Country. To now be writing what I think are some great songs with Bruce and Jamie … I can’t express how fulfilling that feels.”
The EP contains three quite diverse songs, yet they all somehow fit well together. We have a fast, catchy rocker with a punky edge (Seven Swords – video below). We have a melodic yet powerful mid-tempo song with lots of guitars, an interesting arrangement, and a lot of things going on (The River Stays the Same). Then there’s the hauntingly beautiful ballad (Rose Red Sunset). All of them have plenty of interesting guitar parts, several layers of instrumentation, and a good mixture of power, melody, the odd e-bow, and that classic Big Country sensibility with Celtic rock overtones.
“People always told me my own music sounded like Big Country, but it was never contrived. It’s what naturally comes out of me when I put something together,” Tom says. “Being on a similar wavelength made it very easy to write with the guys, and maybe I even helped put some of those Big Country sensibilities back into the music in some way.”
WKW’s Hands Across the Ocean EP is available now, and can be previewed and downloaded from their Bandcamp page.
In episode 78 of the Great Divide podcast, Bruce and Jamie joins Tom to talk about their WKW project. All of the songs are also featured in full in the episode.
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