Lone Ranger (album)

"Lone Ranger" is a 1992 album by Jeff Watson. Allan plays chords and a solo on “Forest of feeling”, an instrumental rock tune. The short but sweet chordal part sounds like it was written by Allan. The rest of the tune sounds like a couple of riffs thrown together. Allan solos are nice enough, but drown a bit in the overblown mix. Steve Smith plays a nice drum feature over Allan’s chordal part. Jeff has the guts to do a longer section of trading licks with Allan.

Track listing

Jeff Watson: Lone Ranger (D)

	Track title	Composer	Length
3	Forest Of Feeling	Watson	6:05

Jeff on Allan

Jeff writes on Facebook, May28th, 2020:

Allan and I were friends, and there’s definitely no ‘dueling’ here, as I’m just a self taught plunker, and Allan is... well.. Allan... Our playing here is just what we were feeling at the time.. Allan was staying here at The Camp, we were checking out some of my studio gear, and he settled on one of my old rack mounted ADA Stereo Tapped Delay units, and used his guitar directly through the ADA to record his clean guitar harmonies at the front, middle, and end of song. He used my Boogie 1x12” 50 Caliber amp for solo parts, and must have moved the SM57 on the speaker 20 times by a quarter inch or so until he had the “sweet spot” to his ears. We were cutting on 2” tape then, and he erased more amazing solos than I’ll ever have time to remember.. drove me nuts.. I’d go running up to the studio yelling at him “Allan!! That’s the one!!” Red light on, performance gone. Shit!! Ended up giving him one of my two ADA units, which went home with him in his suitcase, and I still have the one he used in the rack with his chalk-marked settings on it. Now.. My solos? What a joke.. flailing away as best I could as a confused “80s guitar player WAY out of my depth. All that said, I love Allan, and his sense of humor and knowledge about outside things was very fun to experience, and I’ll never take for granted the days and nights we spent laughing....

he didn’t like his performances or mix of the finished product. He and I spoke and emailed after he did a couple interviews where he would dismiss his performances, and what bugged him (and still bugs me..) is that we both feel his solos were mixed a bit low. Allan wasn’t aware at the time that I didn’t mix the song / album and had nothing to do with any of it once it left my studio, and he felt bad and apologized profusely for saying whatever negative things he said about the project.. One thing I do remember well about those times is that Allan hated everything he ever played or recorded, and couldn’t be talked out of it.. Frustrating as hell, as I’ve never seen or heard anyone with his level of knowledge and ability... but that’s just Allan’s humility and self deprecating nature.

Jeff writes on Facebook Feb 25 2022:

Allan hated the mix, and as I didn’t mix it I agree with him! (we had fun with him staying here and finding good brew pubs together, but in honesty I had no business even looking at a guitar with Allan here at The Camp..) I spoke with him after that comment came out and he was super apologetic.. (he didn’t know I didn’t mix the album..) we both had fun making it, but the second mixer didn’t have Allan’s parts up enough in both our opinions. I’m most happy about the clean harmony intro lines he wrote.. (over Brad Russell’s tapped harmonic bass intro..) which was very difficult to even understand the scalar foundation of.. Finally years later, (last year?) our pal Steve Vai decided to take it apart and transcribe for me and my curious guitar pals, and if I find Vai’s email with breakdown I’ll share. What blows my mind even more is the time Allan was staying here and I got a call to put guitar on a Mike Varney project and I asked if it would be cool to bring Allan up to the studio and maybe share the parts. Obviously, it was a “oh hell yeah” and we played together on a cover of ‘Play That Funky Music’…. That was a source of many laughs for us for many years!! Allan was a kind, gentle soul, a reliable man, and good friend. I miss hearing his voice…. (he also played some pretty interesting guitar…)

Links

"Forest Of Feeling" on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh5051j9f24

Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/master/454961-Jeff-Watson-Lone-Ranger

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Ranger_(Jeff_Watson_album)