|
Darren Watson is one of New Zealand’s finest exponents of classic rhythm & blues. His reputation is based partly on his stellar live & recorded work with legendary Kiwi Blues band Chiacgo Smoke Shop in the late 80's and early 90's.
Formed in the mid-eighties, Smoke Shop earned their reputation as New Zealand’s number one blues band. They toured the country regularly and extensively with a show that had all the class and panache of a BB King revue. There was a high powered horn section & some of the hottest rhythm players in the country.
Fronting the whole thing was Darren Watson – who had the talent, vision and drive to take Smoke Shop to the top of the national charts and scare some big name international blues acts along the way. By the time Watson left Smoke Shop in 1991 he had worked alongside blues legends like Koko Taylor, Robert Cray, George Thorogood, and The Fabulous Thunderbirds and he never looked anything less than world class.
Two albums and numerous chart-topping singles are more than some of our veteran bar-playing RnB artists have achieved in a lifetime. Darren Watson had achieved all this by the time he was twenty-four.
Since leaving Smoke Shop Watson has been involved in several great bands including The Hot Leftovers, a band that held down a six-year residency at a prominent Wellington venue. He's featured on several albums by international & NZ blues artists, and toured regularly billed alongside his boyhood hero Midge Marsden. Watson’s recent activities also include appearing on Bend’s superb children’s book & CD set ‘The UnderwaterMelon Man’ alongside Neil Finn & Renee Geyer. Along the way Darren has set new benchmarks for live and recorded blues performance in New Zealand.
Watson is a rare thing in the world of rhythm and blues – he’s the ‘complete package’ – a singer with a soulful voice singing well written original songs and topping it all off with blues guitar playing that’s tasty and gentle one minute, aggressive and fiery the next. He’s ‘authentic’ sounding , yet he remains firmly rooted in New Zealand’s long tradition of goodtime rhythm and blues performers . . . a line you can trace all the way back to artists like Max Merritt and Johnny Devlin.
Darren has released two albums - 'Overnight Sensations' in 1998 and 'King Size' in 2002.
Artist Website
|
