“Just Leg It” sounds like slang somebody made up in the ’30s or ’40s.
It’s not. It’s the title of a new album produced, mixed, and recorded by Bruce Watson of Fat Possum and Big Legal Mess Records.
“It’s a term for dancing I made up,” says Watson. “When people hear the record, I hope they ‘just leg it.’”
The album includes 19 party instrumentals from Memphis and North Mississippi artists, including Matt Ross-Spang, Jimbo Mathus, Will Sexton, Jack Oblivian, and Memphis Flyer’s Alex Greene.
There was “really no idea” behind the album, which Watson began working on nine years ago. “It was an excuse for a bunch of friends and musicians to get together and hang out. And make up songs, basically.
“I would come in with old records and say, ‘Okay. Let’s kind of build something inspired by this.’ Someone would come up with a riff and we could record it on one-inch eight-track tape.”
Watson began recording with a few musicians at Dial Back Sound, a recording studio he owned in Water Valley, Mississippi.
He recorded nine tracks and then put the album away for a while. “I sold that studio and moved to Memphis five years ago,” he says. “I put a little studio in a building in Memphis and started working with guys like Matt Ross-Spang, Will Sexton, George Sluppick, Jack [Oblivian] Yarber, Mark Edgar Stuart. We would just kind of hang out and do the same thing. So, that’s how the whole thing came together. There wasn’t any big plan.”
Also, he says, “I had been in production for about 10 years and hadn’t been engineering. I used this as an excuse to get my engineering chops back. It was really to go back in the studio and twist some knobs and do the engineering thing.”
Why did it take nine years to complete? “We did two songs, and then we wouldn’t do anything for six months. There was no urgency. I was producing and recording a lot of other records, running Fat Possum Records.
“About two years ago I said, ‘Well, I’ve got all these songs. Why don’t I do something with it?’ So, I reached out to Kerri Mahoney, a graphic designer, and said, ‘Let’s come up with a concept. I’ve got this idea — Just Leg It. People dancing on the front. And just a fun party record.’ So she came up with the design.”
The cover and selections evoke the ’60s, Watson says. “And it also ties into a whole tradition of instrumental music. It was really inspired by the Hi Records catalog of instrumental records.”
Watson didn’t just make up the album title. “All the titles on the record I just made up. Man, when I would go on trips — especially driving around small towns — I would see stuff to give me inspiration for a name and I’d jot it down. When I was putting it all together, I had a list of about 100 names, and I’d pick one and assign it to a song.
“I can’t remember if I was in the Arkansas Delta or Mississippi Delta, but I saw a pawn shop that said, ‘We have machine guns.’ I thought, ‘That’s a good name for a song: Delta Machine Gun.’”
Watson currently is involved in recording gospel music at his Bible & Tire Recording Co. in Memphis. “We are approaching sacred soul or gospel music kind of in the way it would have been recorded in the ’60s and sounded in the ’60s — pretty stripped down, pretty raw.”
Meanwhile, Watson is pleased with Just Leg It. “There’s something about improvising a song on the spot, capturing it in one or two takes, and that’s it.”
Then there’s “the party aspect,” he says. “Something you can put on and not really think too much about it. It’s fun. You don’t have to sit there and analyze lyrics. You don’t have to think about this.
“The songs are happy. A couple are dark, but for the most part, it’s a pretty happy and upbeat record.”