WKW is a collaboration between three musicians, the project name made up of the last name initials of Bruce Watson, Thomas Kercheval, and Jamie Watson. The Watsons are known as members of Scottish-based bands Skids and Big Country, whereas Kercheval is an independent musician based in America.
The project’s genesis as well as a deep-dive on their first album Men of Steel have been covered on these pages previously. This time, we’ll look closer at one of the songs on their EP and album.
In early 2014 Bruce shared a number of videos on his Facebook page that he referred to as the “attic sessions,” where he would perform various pieces of music on guitar. Some would be old favourites, others were new bits that could potentially end up in future songs.
On 4 February 2014, he posted a video called ‘Jamie visits the attic’ where the two of them played a new instrumental piece. It was lovely, ambient, and very expansive. It instantly struck a deep chord with Big Country fans, who felt it similar in spirit to some of the instrumental passages in the Restless Natives soundtrack. People were instantly clamouring for this to be developed into a complete, finished song.
“That music really had nothing to do with me,” said Bruce in conversation on the Great Divide podcast in 2018. “That was Jamie’s. He had written it as a piece of instrumental music. I remember when he showed up in the attic – a place we can’t go much these days because it’s filled with Christmas trees and crap. And he brought this idea that we ended up demoing. Jamie put on a lot of those guitars. I added a bit of e-bow to it and engineered it, but it’s really Jamie’s song.”
Jamie has written several bits and pieces in the past, but perhaps never got the credit for it that he was due. Certainly with this piece, that was about to change. People were rallying behind this new music quickly.
“Me and my dad had been writing together,” said Jamie on The Great Divide podcast. “We weren’t thinking of recording to go out as a touring band or an outfit, this was music that was written for soundtracks, really. Later, we took it into the studio and tried to use it in a song with Big Country. It got some lyrics and a full arrangement.”
The new Big Country song would materialise half a year or so later (August 2014). It was called All Lay Down and was shared in the form of a music video on YouTube. The song was likeable, but I could not shake the feeling that the initial piece of music hadn’t been used to its full potential. It had been so strong and promised to be something really special, and while All Lay Down was a good song, it should have been even better based on how strong that original piece of music is.
As it turned out, the Watsons felt similarly. “We tried to record it with the guys in the band,” said Bruce, “and I just thought… it was OK. I think because it was originally written as an instrumental or a soundtrack idea – almost like the music for an imaginary movie – when we went into the studio to make it into a band song, it kind of didn’t work. Sometimes they do, other times not, but you try to explore things.”
Jamie concurs. “The song was kind of put to the side, we did not even end up getting around to releasing it. So the song kind of sat on the shelf for a while, to be honest.”
The approach forward for the song was to first go back to square one – to that initial piece of music, which was brought out again when the WKW collaboration got underway. Bruce asked Tom to turn it into a new song, completely stripping out everything from All Lay Down. They wanted to go back to the basic melody and start the process from scratch.
Bruce: “It got to the point when it needed someone to come in with fresh ears. We were working with Tom then, and he got totally free rein and was able to do that. He really made the song come alive, and rescued it from being an obscure soundtrack piece into something new. It doesn’t sound anything like what we did with Big Country.”
“For me,” says Tom, “Jamie’s melody made the song easy to work with. What I basically did for this one was write lyrics for the song, and a little tiny bridge part, but the rest was all there. The first thing that struck me about the original instrumental is that the guitar solo Bruce played served perfectly as a vocal melody, so I began to write lyrics around that melody. I then arranged the song and contributed the ‘somebody out there’ part to the music, recorded a version with just me and my guitar and sent it to Bruce and Jamie. They really liked it, and Bruce was very complimentary about the lyrics, so that felt great. With that vote of confidence, I started building the foundation of the song as I’d done with the others, then sent that to Bruce and Jamie, who added their own parts and sent them back to me, and then we mixed it all together.”
There is no doubt that the resulting song, Rose Red Sunset, manages to use the original starting point to much better effect than All Lay Down did. The melody line of the original piece of music is front and centre, and especially letting the vocal line follow the basic melody of the piece makes all the difference. That is the melody we all fell for back in 2014, and we are falling for it all over again now in this song.
The intro of the song is beautiful, with a lovely ambient backdrop hanging behind a haunting e-bow part and some beautiful guitar. I was surprised when Tom told me it was a guitar, and that the song had no keyboards.
Tom: “I really am personally proud of the intro. Most think that is a keyboard, but it’s really a guitar. There are in fact zero keyboards on this song. It’s an effect I stumbled on where I play a note on the guitar into some reverb, and only the reverb is audible, so it has a real ghostly, ethereal effect. I used it a lot on my EP Rail, especially the song Sugarplum Fairy, so I was keen to use it again, as I love the way it sounds. But what really did it for me was the day Bruce sent over an email with an attachment that said ‘E-bow.’ I plugged that into the mix, and that took it to a whole new level. That was another one of those surreal moments, adding an e-bow played by Bruce to a song we all co-wrote together. Amazing moment. This seems to be a favourite among listeners based on a recent poll. We’re all really proud of the scope of this one.”
I really think Tom did a magnificent job on the lyrics of this song. There is something so inherently and utterly sad about the feelings of despair and loss that are contained in the first verse, but also something beautiful about finding a path that could lead to comfort again later in the song.
All alone, I waited for the stars to fall
The earth to swallow me up whole
Left my spirit far behind among your tears
That no false promise could console
In a sea of mud, I drowned my dreams
And cursed the power of their lies
And I walk the barren path of yesterdays
With memories of contented sighs
The lyrics end up matching the emotions of the piece wonderfully. The melody is very beautiful, yet with an inherent melancholic quality in it, making it a very emotional piece. It was very important for the lyrics to match that, and they really do. Huge kudos!
Tom: “The lyrics are meant to paint a picture of someone who’s been through the proverbial wringer in life, and they’re looking back longingly on a time when they didn’t need much at all to find peace and comfort. Even something as simple yet beautiful as a rose red sunset would suffice.”
The song has several sections that stand out. Any sections containing that magical e-bow sound will be goosebump-inducing to any BC fan, and the middle section where other instruments take a step back to let the e-bow melody shine is especially lovely. The e-bow has the same role here as a classic guitar solo part, which was often the case on classic Big Country songs as well, and it is an exquisite touch.
As the song progresses, there is a lot more going on here than one would assume for a ballad. It is full of dynamics and continual small touches. While the lads are good at stripping back the layers at exactly the right moments, the song contains quite a few instrumental tracks, and by the end the song has grown to include a cacophony of instruments. It works really well, as it builds up the song to reach a higher plateau which is really satisfying emotionally.
Nothing feels out of place – even the touch of the “militaristic” drum rolls that appear near the end of the song feel good, and almost becomes another Big Country Easter egg that fans of that band will knowingly smile at.
“This song has so much going on in it,” says Tom, “and it was a real challenge to find a good mix. We wanted to add a lot of textures to this, so there are acoustic guitars, clean guitars, even a big distorted guitar explosion toward the end. From that perspective, the structure (not comparing the songs in quality) is probably similar in places to Chance, in that it begins quietly, then builds, then more or less explodes toward the end.”
Red Rose Sunset was an early favourite, and is still my favourite song on the album. I am delighted that the original piece of music finally found a song that fully lives up to its potential and that it has lyrics that fit it so perfectly. This is a triumph of evocative, expansive, and romantic song writing and performances. I hope the lads are willing to explore this side of their songwriting more on future releases.
WKW music can be purchased directly from the band in physical and digital formats here.
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