Glasgow's Kerri Watt charts journey to debut album

As far as natural writers go, there are few as prolific as Kerri Watt. Ever since she fell into the world of musical performance, she has presided over a steady supply of songs with frightening regularity.

Whether she is crafting new songs for her own brand of Scottish-folk-infused Americana, or lending her pen to other artists, it simply appears effortless.

There is no greater testament to this claim than the two-month period in 2018 where she wrote 35 songs – a stunning stretch of productivity that lay the seeds for her debut album, to be released in 2021.

Indeed, considering that level of prolificacy, it is jarring to think that Watt turned to songwriting as a happy accident rather than by any grand design. She fell into the craft – but she never looked back.

"When I was younger, my plan was to be a dancer," She tells The Weekender. "I went out to California when I was 16 and studied theatre there – music, dance and drama. After a year there, I moved to London to attend a theatre school and I really thought that was what I was going to do: musical theatre and dancing.

"After graduating, I did my first professional West End show and someone on the cast would occasionally keep an acoustic guitar with them backstage and I just started to teach myself some chords.

"And once I had a few chords figured out, songwriting just came quite naturally. I just absolutely loved it – and I went to test the water at some open mic nights in Glasgow and just, really quickly, decided that this was what I wanted to do.

"I then made that bold decision to leave behind this theatre career I had spent years building up, so that I could try music. I went in totally blind and didn't know any bands or anything, but the Glasgow scene was just so welcoming.

"It felt organic; the open mic shows led to other shows, which led to slightly bigger shows and bigger shows and then eventually I moved down to London and was signed to a label."

The trouble with songwriting is that – no matter how good you are – there is only so much of you to go around. Even the most talented and fertile minds can fatigue.

Picture by Hana Haley

Watt had been toiling away in London alongside a variety of music industry professionals, focusing on material for other artists. In many ways, these endeavours had their virtues, but the spark had started to wane from the process.

She recalls: "I sort of got burnt out on the co-writing, where every day you get set up in a studio with a different producer and you come out with all these different sounds each day. And it's great, but one day it's a dance track and the other it's an acoustic ballad or whatever.

"I moved back to Scotland at the start of 2018 and by then I felt like I hadn't written just by myself – and for myself – in a really long time.

"Then, in the spring of 2018, I just had this notion to sit down and write a whole set of songs.

"Over March and April of 2018, I wrote about 35 songs and whittled them down to about 15 that I thought would sound good on a record and we ended up recording 12 of them.

"Musically, it was just a reset. It was away from all those 'industry' things that you can easily get caught up in when living down there.

"It's so easy to get sucked into that. I know a lot of songwriters who – because of lockdown – have found it so nice to be able to write for themselves again."

Those two months laid the groundwork for Neptune's Daughter, Watt's debut album. Around five tracks have already been released as singles online – all carrying the singer's signature blend of kilted Americana.

Kissing Fools, Chasing Aeroplanes, Cut Me Loose, Jessie and You Can't Catch Me will all feature – with the five songs racking up tens of thousands of streams between them already.

Watt's output has always been marked by her Scottish upbringing and the apprenticeship in music she served while in the States in her teens. The mixture is symbiotic.

The singer says: "I think my sound goes back to the fact I was only 16 when I moved out to America – I was still pretty impressionable. Also, the music course I did there was filled with a lot of different styles that I didn't really hear much growing up at home, things like blues, gospel, real country stuff and America rock. That was a real education for me in music.

"I think the fact I learned guitar only a few years after that – when I was still listening to the stuff I had picked up in America – was also a reason for that. The way I would strum would also lend itself to that sort of music; it was always at the back of my mind."

Picture by Hana Haley

She adds: "The most prominent influences that will come through on the album will be Sheryl Crow, The Rolling Stones and The Eagles. Lyrically, Van Morrison is my hero; and then there are some newer influences like Kaleo, from Iceland."

By the middle of 2018, Watt had herself an album written and ready to record. She began to scout around for the right move but found she could not have predicted where she landed.

As the summer months came in, the singer had travelled over to America once again to meet with renowned heavy metal producer Machine – who had previously worked with bands such as Lamb of God.

"It was a bit of an unusual musical marriage," Watt reflects. "But we had such an interesting introduction and found that we had a lot of common ground and similar musical taste. We chatted loads and we just decided that we would go out there.

"We tried a couple of songs and it worked so well that we ended up staying out there for five weeks and recording the whole album with him.

"Working together was really easy – he would also come away with these wild ideas and he would sing the instrument parts, even though he is not much of a singer, but he is just so full of passion and excitement.

"He's like a kid; so full of enthusiasm, and it brought out my personality so much in the way that I sing and the way we record."

Neptune's Daughter will be released on January 15, 2021.

LISTEN: Kerri Watt on Spotify