Joe Louis Walker loves the blues – he always has, and he always will. Samuel J. Fell
As any seasoned Bluesfest punter would know, a large part of the joy in attending a festival such as this one, is the probability of finding something new. On the one hand, you’ve got your big names, bands who you may have seen a number of times before, but hiding in amongst them, on stages both big and small, are the undiscovered gems, the ones you happen to stumble across and who change the way you listen to music. One such act for me this year (and yes, I’ve had a heads up), is actually not a new act, but one who’s been plying his trade for decades. It strikes me as odd I’ve never heard Joe Louis Walker play before, but that will soon change to be sure.
Walker is regarded as one of the new guard of bluesmen; not in the same generation as the likes of B.B. King and Buddy Guy, but the next one along, the guys drawing from that same rich well, but moving it on into the 21st century. Walker began playing in San Francisco, picking up his first guitar at eight years of age, and was soon immersed in the world it opened, playing with everyone from Muddy Waters to Mike Bloomfield, with whom he became good friends. With the untimely death of Bloomfield in 1981 though, Walker left the industry, not reappearing until some years later, releasing Cold Is The Night in 1986 and re-stamping his blues authority on the world.
Today sees Walker as one of the best. His songwriting and guitar playing are up there with anyone else you care to mention – this is a man who’s lived the blues and who delivers them with that passion and enthusiasm that makes them the blues, and that’s for real. “Well, I think this music chose me,” Walker says on how he came to play blues. “There were no instruments in my house when I was growing up, we just listened to the record player, so I just wanted to see what sorts of sounds I could make and so I started checking out instruments – I played violin and the cornet and different things.
“But the blues was the one thing I really felt I could do, that I was special in,” he goes on. “I took to it whereas people twice my age didn’t take to it… I found I could express myself in the blues.” The blues is indeed where Walker builds from, but it’s worth mentioning that he doesn’t feel he needs to be confined by that, his music showing regular flashes of soul, gospel and R&B. “It’s not really a concern, in that I don’t really start out planning to do stuff, that would give me too much credit,” he laughs on his eclectic sound.
“But because I’m an exploratory kind of person, it just kind of fits me,” he goes on. “I’m sort of a student I guess, of blues and jazz and country, and I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to meet my heroes in all of those fields, so that’s the thing about me – most people who know me and my music know that it’s not a put-on, you know?” Exploring is certainly what Walker has done a lot of, not least of all on his most recent cut, 2009’s Between A Rock And The Blues. He’s been quoted as saying something along the lines of, “I’ve seen the young rock guys finding their blues roots, this is me finding my rock roots” – an interesting way to look at it.
“Well I was born in San Francisco, so when I was 16 and 17 and 18, that’s when the Summer Of Love was going on… so I grew up with a lot of guys who were playing rock,” he explains on where this record has come from. “So I played with all those guys, but also the blues guys because that was my first love and always has been and always will be… so I like to mix it up and I always have, so that record was like that for me.”
Between A Rock And The Blues is a white-hot melding of blues and rock ‘n’ roll, another feather in Walker’s cap, one which at this point in time, certainly has its fair share of feathers. And so to the future, for this is where Walker is looking, he’s a man on a blues mission after all. There is another record on the horizon, although it’s been delayed somewhat, as Walker tells me his basement, where he was recording, has just flooded. “I can laugh about it now, talking to you, but all day I’ve had my head hangin’ down,” he laughs. “But it’ll all be good, I’ll dust it off, clean it off, dry it off and play on it and just keep doin’ it.” Just like he’s always done, and just like he’ll always do.
Between A Rock And The Blues is available on Stony Plain Records through Only Blues Music. Joe Louis Walker plays Bluesfest on April 25 & 26, full tour dates in the Gig Guide.