SXSW 2012

Patrick Watson first broke through to audiences in 2006 with his album Close to Paradise. The album went gold in Canada and won numerous awards, including the Polaris Prize. It saw international release in September 2007 and has since sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. Watson also began to receive attention around the same time for his song “To Build a Home,” which he performs with Cinematic Orchestra on their 2007 album, Ma Fleur. Fittingly, the seeds of his own band were cinematic and collaborative in nature, having begun as a multi-media project entitled Waterproof9 with Quebec visual artist Brigitte Henry. His core four-piece band of Watson (vox, keys), Mishka Stein (bass), Simon Angell (guitar) and Robbie Kuster (drums) began to take shape in the wake of the self-released Just Another Ordinary Day in 2003, and before long buzz on their live show had lead to performances with an impressively diverse group of artists, from Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, to Feist. In the summer of 2006, they were invited on a European tour with the late James Brown, just before the release of Close to Paradise.