In his cowboy hat and pointy-toed ankle boots, Lee Bob Watson looks every bit a gentleman country singer.

Although the lanky songwriter's influences range from Duke Ellington to John Lennon, something happens when he opens his mouth that puts a little bit of country into his rock and roll.

"When I sing, I've got a little bit of a drawl," he said.

He might prolong a vowel here and there, but the Grass Valley resident's music career is picking up speed.

Watson just finished recording the album "Aficionado" for The Grass Roots Record Company. He will perform on Saturday at The Miners Foundry along with 12 other bands from Nevada County, San Francisco and Sacramento in a show dubbed "Grass Roots Family Meeting."

No stranger to the music industry, Watson, 34, has been performing and writing songs for 10 years. He self-produced three solo albums and one album with the punk gospel band The Santa Cruz Gospel Choir. He also played and recorded with the Sacramento-based band Jackpot, which The New York Times dubbed "one of California's greatest unknown bands."

The prolific Watson is also working on a dance EP with a pop/hop ensemble called Happy Mayfield, which he hopes to release in 2007.

'Best recording

session ever'

Watson moved to Grass Valley two years ago with his wife, Rochelle Celeste Reynosa, after taking a breather from the music scene for several years. The couple had been living in Taiwan, teaching English as a second language.

"You make so many sacrifices to go out on the road," said Watson, who in the past has worked a number of odd jobs to support his musical endeavors, from substitute teaching to gutting fish in Alaska. "I thought, I'm going to step away for a while."

During a conversation at producer Dana Gumbiner's new studio in Grass Valley, where "Aficionado" was recorded in March, Watson talked about why the session was "easily the best recording experience I ever had."

Surrounded by his dream team of former Cake drummer Todd Roper, Cake bassist Gabe Nelson, Jackpot guitarist Rusty Miller and a handful of local musicians, Watson recorded the album in 10 days.

The quality of the players, some of whom he's known for a decade, pushed him to do his best work, Watson said.

In turn, Watson inspired the other players with his performance, Gumbiner said.

At one point during the session, when Watson was about to hit the first note of what ended up being the final take of a song, he blurted out to his band, "I love you guys."

"It's hard for an artist to come in and commit emotionally to a song and really give a performance that's special," said Gumbiner, who has produced hundreds of artists at Brighton Sound, his former studio in Sacramento. "Lee did that consistently every single take. It was pretty refreshing."

Watson said the warm sound of analog audio used for the album, as opposed to digital recording, is a throwback to pre-digital days and "sounds more authentic to people who grew up listening to music in the '60s or '70s."

Without relying on overdubs or other digital tricks, Gumbiner recorded songs in single takes, much like a live performance. The style is favored by Grass Roots president Marc Snegg because it captures the synergy between musicians in a specific moment in time.

Many pop styles

"Aficionado," which is scheduled for release in August, deliberately makes reference to a number of different pop styles, including an homage to the Beach Boys' album "Pet Sounds."

In Watson's harmonically rich song "Highway 1," the high-pitched male vocals and contagious backbeat are guaranteed to evoke thoughts of surf and sun as well as the underlying melancholy that permeated many of the tunes from "Pet Sounds."

But Watson prefers updating old pop styles to churning out carbon copies of the past.

"So much of our generation spends a lot of time rehashing the glory days of pop culture," said Watson, who prefers a fresh take on a retro sound. "You've got to take your influences and let them breathe in the room."

In his music, you can hear the influences of Bob Dylan and John Lennon, as well as those of Leonard Cohen, Willie Nelson and Hank Williams. But if you keep listening, one voice stands out, and it's pure Lee Bob Watson.

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To contact Staff Writer Jill Bauerle, e-mail jillb@theunion.com or call 477-4219.