By Georgette Brookes

On International Women’s Day, on the first day of Europe’s biggest country festival – Country 2 Country – Kerri Watt releases her long-awaited new song, Predictable. The timing couldn’t have been better.

Kerri took some time on Saturday at C2C to chat to us about her new single, her music
being used as soundtracks on TV and what it was like to share a stage with the legend that is Keith Urban.

Yesterday you opened the Pepsi Big Entrance Stage

Yes! It was great, once I warmed up a bit out in the cold! No, it was fun. It’s always great
to open a stage – and open a festival (it was one of the first slots yesterday). People are
sort of coming and getting a feel for the whole thing. And outdoor stages – I don’t know,
there’s just something about the fresh air that it just relaxes me verses being a room
where you can see every face, so I loved it, it was a nice warm up into the weekend.

Predictable released yesterday – what a great weekend to release! International Women’s Day, a female country artist at C2C! How’s that been for you?

Yeah, it’s been real exciting. I’d taken a bit of hiatus there from releasing music for three
years – I had a baby and was just busy doing other life stuff, so this has sort of been
my…not my come back because I didn’t leave, but my first single back in a long time and I really love the song. I love the collaborators on the whole thing. I was just excited to get it out. The response has been great so far both on stage and from the recording so yeah this just feels like the start of ‘Predictable’ and then next week we’ll see, you know, radios and stuff who picks it up.

What was the process/inspiration behind that song?

I had this line in my head for ages, ‘you be predictable you, I’ll be predictable too’. And
the idea was like in my early twenties I loved the wild, like, freedom of being a touring artist and travelling the world and different hotel room every night and the uncertainty of life I craved it and loved it and never wanted to settle down and do anything other than this. Then obviously I got older and met my now husband and I just sunk into really loving that feeling of loving predictability and just knowing who I was coming home to every night and just the security of that and I was like, ‘I think I’m going to write a song
about that’. And then the end of the chorus has a fun twist of like ‘when I do still like the unpredictable’ – you need to listen.

So, your album just turned three – how do you feel about the music on that album, do you still love playing it, is it still a big part of your life?

I mean that album was literally ten years in the making. I had spent so long trying different sounds and road-testing so many songs so to actually finally get it out was the biggest relief, you know, like ah it’s out of my system here you go it’s out into the world. I don’t go back and listen to it myself and it wasn’t ‘til just a couple of weeks ago when I was doing band rehearsals for this weekend that I did go back to listen and be like ok what am I going to be playing on stage this weekend and I was like, ‘I love these songs’.

I think the memory of how I recorded them – I did it with a live band in Austin, Texas – and
it was just like six weeks of so much fun, so much experimentation with sounds and instruments so it was a really nice time of my life when I recorded it so it’s a nice memory wrapped around that album.

If you look at her Spotify, Kerri Watt is probably most well known for her song, ‘Band of Gold’ off her album, ‘Neptune’s Daughter’. However, you may have heard her music
elsewhere. Her song, ‘Coming Loose,’ was optioned for soundtracks in shows like
Eastenders and Call of Duty. We talked about what it’s like to hear your music on TV and
how that comes about for an artist.

I started over the past few years writing for television and film and stuff and putting myself out there. I’ve got a great music publisher who pitches me for opportunities and stuff like that and then I’ve got a great writing agent who does a similar thing. But it’s fun because half the opportunities we’ll pitch the song for, and the others sort of just come our way so that’s always interesting – another song off my album was on Big Brother at
the end of last year which was a total surprise to me, and it was like one of the evictions so that’s funny. Most of the time I know, it might just be like the day before.

In 2019, Kerri Watt was invited to support Keith Urban at London’s O2 Forum which was
a sell-out show. She also sang Carrie Underwood’s parts on ‘The Fighter’ with him
during his set.

So, I got the call I was going to be doing the gig as the opener which was very exciting for
so many reasons – obviously Keith Urban is a legend. It was his first show back in London in like ten – maybe twenty years? I just remember it was a really long time he hadn’t been in London, so he had all his fans here, you know, just dying to see him. We knew it was going to be a great night. It was the first time I was going to be playing with a full band all my new songs from my album at that time. And then the week before I got a call saying Keith’s also wondering if you’d like to join him for ‘The Fighter’ during his set so I was like…OK! He was so nice. We had a little rehearsal before and his whole team was so nice. It was an amazing.

How do you top that? Where do you go from there?

I don’t know, for me I love the challenge of being a support act – whoever it’s for – and I’ve supported a lot of really diverse acts – some country acts and I did a BST with Celine Dion, Kew the Music with Rick Astley, I opened for Coldplay once so you know it’s always like I love the challenge of trying to get someone else’s fans on board so whatever the gig is, it’s always fun and you kind of tailor your set to that particular audience a little bit so what’s next is just more of that. Like I said, I’ve just come back from a hiatus so I’m planning a headline show in the next couple of months, some festivals and stuff over the summer.

Is there anything you can talk about with your new music/tour?

I will say I’m headlining London in May but I’ve yet to announce the details. A few more singles lined up this year – it’s all in the pipeline. Watch this space!

What is your country story – did you find it or did it find you?

So I grew up in Glasgow which, you know, I mean now we have C2C in Glasgow which is a huge scene but growing up I didn’t really know much country music other than LeAnn Rimes so there was that. When I was 16, I moved to California and went to an American high school for my last year of school and that was a whole education of genres of music that I didn’t know growing up – country obviously being the biggest one. You get in the car and flick through the radio stations and it’s country…country…country. I just fell in love with the storytelling. I did a lot of theatre when I was younger, and I always say that musical theatre and country are really similar in that they’re the two genres that are all about storytelling and so it just felt really natural to me. As the years went by, I started going on trips to Nashville – my brother is now a Nashville based producer and just finding my way in that scene. I found it a lot friendlier than the pop scene that I had started trying to get into in the beginning. It just feels like a community of people that want to tell great stories. I love the authenticity of it, I love that everyone plays and writes I mean, what’s not to love.?

Who are you looking up to at the minute who are you taking inspiration from?

Gosh so many people. In the country world how can you not talk about Lainey Wilson?
(points to her gorgeous green wide-brimmed hat). A lot of different stuff – I recently discovered this artist called Spencer Sutherland – I don’t know how to describe his music. It’s not country but like I say I take inspiration from a lot of places. I wouldn’t call myself a true true through and through country artist, it’s sort of a bit of country a bit of folk a bit pop and stuff. There’s this band Lawrence that I love – they’re siblings and I
work with my brother a lot and they’re brother and sister so that’s fun to see their dynamic. I just love artists at the level like all these outside stages at C2C I just love exploring like Sinead Burgess – I’m a big fan – I’m going to try and catch her in a minute.

‘Predictable’ is just the beginning for Kerri Watt’s resurgence and with her country/folk/pop influences, we’re confident that her new music will be anything but predictable – and we can’t wait.