PORTLAND, OR—To singer Adam Watson, Dog Days and the Coming Age represents the crossroads of life and his growth as a musician. It is also the name of his upcoming 5-track EP, his debut that Watson is inspired by artists from Dave Matthews to Jay-Z. But it was listening to Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower" before a fishing trip in Alaska started it all.

“When I was 13, I was getting ready to go on a fishing boat. I heard a Jimi Hendrix song, and I heard that guitar solo in the beginning. And I thought that's what I want to do. My friend happened to be selling a guitar at that time, so I bought it to start trying to learn how to do scales and solos over the summer in Alaska on a fishing boat. And then it just kind of started this whole thing.”

Those seminal moments leading up to his music career today, along with the origins of his stage name, “The Voodoo Soul”—which also references Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child”—represent Dog Days and the Coming Age best.

“I remember dog days of summer and I just kind of thought that was the grueling, hard parts of time and the coming of age, just fit together and that’s exactly where I got the name from,” says Watson. “Breakthrough,” the lead single from the EP, takes that further to talk about the people supporting him from day one with a trip-hop sound fused with Watson’s acoustic guitar riffs.

“When I sat down and wrote it, I was just thinking a lot about the people in my life that have been encouraging or have been there from the beginning, or when I had absolutely nothing, to once I was able to accomplish any kind of success, about leveraging that success to help others and come back and bring those people up as well,” says Watson, who learned to self-produce at the beginning of the pandemic. “It’s been pretty cool to just feel the echo of support that has come from it.”

While Watson has plans to relocate to Los Angeles after the release of Dog Days and the Coming Age, he’s also looking into releasing a new track weekly.

“It's finding that balance of getting out all your content and not blowing through a lot of good material that you won't hear. I’ve got so much content that I’m not worried about running out of singles to release. It’s pretty exciting to go ahead and put out something that's a reflection of your work in total.”