{"id":198341,"date":"2026-03-10T15:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T15:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/198341\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T15:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T15:01:07","slug":"william-clark-greens-watterson-hall-is-texas-country-meets-l-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/198341\/","title":{"rendered":"William Clark Green’s ‘Watterson Hall’ Is Texas Country Meets L.A."},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWilliam Clark Green<\/a> has never shied away from soul-baring songwriting. The Texas native\u2019s catalog, and the fan base he has built over 18 years as an independent artist, is a veritable autobiography, capturing eras of Green\u2019s life that stretch from a hard-partying student at Texas Tech University to a father of two children, with a third due in May. Even with that, however, Watterson Hall stands out for the artist.<\/p>\n

\n\tWatterson Hall \u2014 which lent both the album and the title track its name \u2014\u00a0is a real dance hall near Bastrop, Texas. It\u2019s where Green and his wife spend their holidays two-stepping, and it\u2019s where Green found the sentiment that blankets Watterson Hall, his seventh studio album, from start to finish.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s where me and my wife go dancing at Christmas time,\u201d Green says. \u201cIt\u2019s not a music venue, it\u2019s just a dance hall. They have a cover band, and that\u2019s where we go dance. There\u2019s no beer on the dance floor. You can\u2019t stand on the dance floor. It\u2019s one of those places, and it\u2019s real strict. Kids are there. Grandparents are there. It\u2019s a legit old-school dance hall, which doesn\u2019t really exist much anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatterson Hall has 14 tracks, and Green co-wrote all of them with a cast of songwriters that includes Muscadine Bloodline\u2019s Gary Stanton, Sean McConnell, and Logan Wall \u2014 who also produced the album with Green. The album\u2019s current single, \u201cWhere the Wild Things Are,\u201d has spent most of February in the top five of the Texas Country Music Chart<\/a>, which monitors radio airplay in the Lone Star State. Throughout the record, Green\u2019s gravelly, reverberating vocals are front and center, accompanied by electric guitar and keys, with the occasional fiddle thrown in for good measure. Fans of Green\u2019s best-known songs like \u201cShe Likes the Beatles\u201d or \u201cRingling Road\u201d should recognize his straightforward, deadpan lyrical approach, even as Green says he\u2019s pushing himself to the edges of his comfort zone.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tThe most striking such example is \u201cMan on the Moon,\u201d which he wrote in Los Angeles with Justin Glasco, Sean Van Vleet, and Joe Walker. Most of Watterson Hall is steeped in traditional country, but \u201cMan on the Moon\u201d finds Green experimenting with pop melodies and riffs over lyrics that could easily have fit into a classic country love song instead. When Green sings, \u201cNothing but time doing our thing\/me and you, and the man on the moon,\u201d though, he does so over heavy percussion, keyboards, and backing vocals.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt made me want to go back to L.A. more and more,\u201d Green says. \u201cI went in with a negative vibe, like, \u2018What the fuck am I gonna write? They\u2019re writing pop in L.A.\u2019 But what I found out was that they were so fucking sick of writing pop that they were fired up to write with me. In Nashville, they\u2019re doing the same thing every day, and I felt like I was excited to write in L.A. because they were excited to get out of their lane, and I was excited to get out of my lane.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGreen has a heavy tour schedule planned in the wake of Watterson Hall, highlighted by his annual Cottonfest at Cook\u2019s Garage in Lubbock on June 26 and 27. Green will host and co-headline with Flatland Cavalry and 49 Winchester, but between now and then most of his shows will be in support of Treaty Oak Revival, a band he has forged a tight friendship with in recent years.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Treaty Oak Revival frontman Sam Canty approached Green to help him compose \u201cWest Texas Degenerate,\u201d the title track of Treaty Oak\u2019s latest record<\/a>, Green\u2019s response was \u201cHell yeah. I\u2019m in,\u201d and they wrote it in the green room of Billy Bob\u2019s Texas in Fort Worth. Green liked what he heard.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWilliam was like, \u2018Man, that song is so badass. Do you think I could be on it?\u2019 And I\u2019m thinking, \u2018Are you fucking kidding me? Of course, you can be on it, you\u2019re William Clark Green, dude,\u2019\u201d Canty says. \u201cAnd, through that song, me and him have become really close friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tFor most of the spring, Green will join Treaty Oak as the opener for a series of high-profile concerts. The first such show is March 12 in Springfield, Missouri, at the Great Southern Bank Arena. Green has played arena stages before, supporting artists like Cody Johnson and Koe Wetzel, but he says playing ahead of Treaty Oak at Houston\u2019s Toyota Center on New Year\u2019s Eve taught him that his fans and Treaty Oak\u2019s have a heavy overlap.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a huge blessing,\u201d Green says of his West Texas friends. \u201cThey\u2019re very aware of where they are and what they\u2019re doing, but they have remained extremely respectful and humble. Including me in writing the title track, which was something they didn\u2019t have to do, was awesome.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cApproaching a tour like this, I told the band, \u2018Let\u2019s not pretend to be Treaty Oak,\u2019\u201d Green continues. \u201cWe\u2019re not gonna out-rock them. Let\u2019s go and do our show and see what happens. We\u2019ll adapt to the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGreen, who joined up with Josh Abbott, John Baumann, and Flatland Cavalry\u2019s Cleto Cordero to moonlight as the Panhandlers<\/a> back in 2020, turns 40 in May. He says he\u2019s trying to cut back from his usual tally of around a hundred shows a year, especially with another child on the way.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe problem with that, as Green sees it, is that he and his band have found a groove. After two decades of grinding out a living, he\u2019s discovering more opportunities than ever to bring his music to a wider audience.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMan, it was a dead space for a couple of years,\u201d Green says. \u201cBut I kind of feel the aura around me growing. I\u2019ve been doing this for 18 years, and to feel like there\u2019s growth and light at the end of the tunnel, it hits a different note.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJosh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose book (Almost) Almost Famous<\/a> will be released April 1 via Back Lounge Publishing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"William Clark Green has never shied away from soul-baring songwriting. The Texas native\u2019s catalog, and the fan base…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[48360,27,20154,29,28,61547],"class_list":["post-198341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-red-dirt","tag-texas","tag-texas-country","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-william-clark-green"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}