Reggie
Reggie Watts is singing about jumper cables. He’s seated at a keyboard on the stage of the Newberry, Great Falls’ hip one-year-old performance venue, and his slow, haunting piano intro resolves into a ballad extolling the virtues of having the right cables, knives and pocket multitools on hand for any situation. It’s received with welcome ears on this chilly night at the end of December, when the sold-out crowd is still reeling from minus-30 temperatures only days before.You’d have to be from around here to appreciate such a song, and even more so to dream one up. Reggie Watts is definitely from around here.
Which might be surprising, if you only know Reggie from his prolific standup career, spontaneous beat-boxing compositions, or day job as bandleader for James Corden’s The Late Late Show on CBS. But despite a brisk shooting schedule for the show, doing solo performances nationwide and elsewhere and lining up new projects, Reggie Watts always makes time to come home to Great Falls.
“I get to hang with Mom, in the house I grew up in, and, you know, hanging out in the basement,” Reggie explained when I spoke with him via Zoom in September. “And I still have some friends there. I hang out with them a little bit, catch up with them and make some rounds with the local businesses. So it’s pretty chill.”
Unstructured time here at home is a welcome break from Reggie’s busy schedule in Los Angeles, and it’s the sort of time that helped shape his early creative interests.
He opened his show at the Newberry with a loose, heartfelt monologue on growing up here, from meeting friends who’d become his inner circle to quasi-legal jam sessions at the local cemetery and a location known only as “the caves.” A 1990 Great Falls High graduate, Reggie pursued a path followed by many Montana kids of his era—heading to Seattle for school and its booming music scene.
But Reggie didn’t find growing up in Great Falls boring or a disadvantage for his ambitions. “I was always looking for more stuff to do; I was just a really curious kid and would take advantage of whatever was around me and make use of that. You know, Great Falls in the late 70s and 80s where I grew up, it had all the stuff. Going to the ice skating rink and doing midnight bowling...junior high was great, and then break dancing came out around that time. And you know, it’s just the perfect timing for every single cultural event that happened, or like seeing a John Hughes movie, right?”
Reggie’s teenage years were punctuated by many of John Hughes’ coming-of-age films, from Sixteen Candles to The Breakfast Club, so it’s unsurprising to hear the sentiment of those films finding its way into projects he’s working on now. He’s close to releasing an autobiography entitled Great Falls, which recounts his life growing up in the Electric City, and has plans in the works for a film project based on events from the book. Reggie even hopes to film at Great Falls High because, like much of the city, it remains largely unchanged since his youth.
Change has been inevitable in Reggie Watts’ career, though. James Corden announced in 2022 that The Late Late Show will end in April of this year, and Reggie will be busy developing his film and pitching other projects such as a game show or music-based show which he’ll host. “James has been an amazing boss, and Ben Winston, the showrunner, has been amazing. They’re all truly cool people.” He adds with a grin, “They didn’t pay me to say that.”
Whatever he winds up doing next, Reggie’s creative process absolutely revolves around the thrill of working without a net. For The Late Late Show, he prefers not to attend rehearsals before each taping so that he’ll react in the moment, and sometimes the less preparation he has the better. To illustrate this point Reggie tells a story.
“Jack White asked me to introduce him at a show in London. I was on a flight and it had been delayed. As soon as I landed, I was in contact with the tour manager, Lalo. They had a car to take me to this gig. And the car couldn’t figure out where to drop me off and drives circles around the venue and then finally finds the gate. I grabbed my luggage. I’ve got my backpack, my suitcase, and I’m running and Lalo’s like, ‘Come with me.’ We’re running up the staircase on the side of the building, like three floors.
“And then we come through the door and Jack is there with his band in a circle, having the pre-meet before they go on stage and I’m like, ‘Hey, Jack.’ And Lalo’s like, ‘No time for that. Just drop your s--- and say this.’ And I went on stage and introduced Jack White. I love stuff like that.”
That spur-of-the-moment energy absolutely comes through at the Newberry. Reggie builds songs from scratch, sampling beat-box elements before adding keyboards and vocals over them. Sometimes his vocals aren’t anything you’d strictly call lyrics; if the song’s a crooner, he croons; if it’s hip-hop, he raps. What Reggie Watts is making is occasionally a kind of pure music, to be enjoyed for its own sake and its considerable vibe.
And by blending music with storytelling about his home town, the audience gets a show that will never be seen again the same way, anywhere. It was personalized for them, and personal to him.
“Whatever ends up happening with my mom, I don’t think I’ll end up selling the house; I’ll keep it as a place to come back to,” Reggie said when we spoke in September. He was alluding to his mother, Christiane’s, health and since that time, more change has come to pass. Christiane passed away at the beginning of November, and Reggie’s trip home for the show is his first since that time. He still has the house; soon after the show he posted a photo to social media of a glass of wine he’d poured in memory of his mom. It’s on her bedroom dresser, beside a framed photo of a younger Reggie with his father, Charles. Behind them in the mirror’s reflection is Reggie himself, for now, at least, at home.
Tags: Great falls, Reggie Watts, comedy and music