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Joshua Ray Walker

Joshua Ray Walker is a Dallas-born Country/Americana songwriter known for vivid, character-driven storytelling and a rich tenor that blends classic Texas tradition with a modern emotional edge. Since his 2019 debut, he has built a catalog defined by sharp writing, dark humor, and deep empathy for complicated people, earning national television appearances, multiple Grand Ole Opry performances, and more than 2,000 shows across the U.S. and Europe.

His sixth studio album, Ain’t Dead Yet, marks his most personal chapter to date. Recorded before, during, and after cancer treatment, (including sessions the day before lung surgery that could have permanently altered his voice), the record wrestles with mortality, gratitude, memory, and transformation. Sonically rooted in pedal steel, fiddle, and Walker’s signature guitar picking, it captures an artist confronting uncertainty with defiance , clarity, and hard-won joy.

Across every release, from early character portraits to ambitious concept records, Walker’s through-line remains the same: songs that tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. On Ain’t Dead Yet, he expands that hallmark into his most personal chapter yet, documenting a profound period of change and a hard-won second chance.

Thank You For Listening 

Thank You for Listening is a documentary film Co-Directed by Emmy and Peabody-winning filmmaker Gene Gallerano and critically acclaimed filmmaker Bob Ray in association with Texas Monthly.

It chronicles Joshua Ray Walker's journey in creating East Dallas country music while battling third-generation cancer and planning his return to the Grand Ole Opry, the mecca of country music. Drawing inspiration from the spirit of the Lone Star State, the enchanting surrealism of films like Beasts of the Southern Wild, and a touch of Dolly Parton flair, this film weaves together personal, creative, and cellular elements in a visually captivating exploration of hope and healing.

John Baumann 

There is a place on Interstate 10, somewhere east of El Paso, where the road dips so far south  that America starts to fade. In the hours past midnight, the radio dial is mostly static, sliding in  and out of signal. What gets through is haunting, like the sound of an old Victrola playing songs  about broken hearts in broken Spanish. In the autumn, the winds toss 18-wheelers from  shoulder to median and it’s still 100 degrees in the dark. There’s heat lightning in the distance,  maybe from a storm 200 miles away at the next exit. The light at the end of the tunnel is an old  town called San Antonio, offering salvation in the sweetness of its pan de muerto and the cool  of its slow, shallow river. If that road – in all of its chaos and its quiet – had a soundtrack, it  would be John Baumann’s Border Radio. 

Baumann takes a cue from storytelling greats like Townes Van Zant, Guy Clark and Lyle  Lovett, Adam Carroll, John Prine, Jackson Browne, James McMurtry, Nanci Griffith, leaning  more into observation than experience in his writing, preferring to inhabit stories that are not  his own. And on Border Radio, his sixth album out October 6, the stories range from a man’s  love for his “Gold El Camino” to falling in love in the red light glow of “Boy’s Town.” On each  track, it’s clear the Austin-based Baumann is at the top of his songwriting game. “Saturday  Night Comes Once a Week” could easily be a country radio hit, while the lyrical deftness and  timelessness of “The Night Before the Day of the Dead” and “Turning Gold” rival the best of his  heroes’ work.  

Those great storytelling songwriters were the ones that brought Texas to Nashville, and it’s a  path that Baumann finds himself increasingly taking – with a nudge from Kenny Chesney, who  recently recorded a version of Baumann’s song “Gulf Moon”. But, as a fifth generation Texan and a self-proclaimed geographical songwriter, Baumann will always see the Lone Star State as  the ideal canvas for his writing. In fact, he says Border Radio is simply a collection of “colors and  vignettes from San Antonio and Hill Country down to the border. Like Steinbeck said, Texas is  ‘rich, poor, panhandle, gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study’. 

“My pleasure as a songwriter is to be somebody else for three and a half minutes,” he  continued. “I’m not the hunting and fishing guy in ‘South Texas Tradition’ and I’m not falling in  love on the border. The record is a journey of someone’s experiences through a certain place in  the world – south Texas. And discreetly it’s a love story. It’s all the highs and lows of love. And  there’s real character in the border region, there’s some controversy to it, but I wanted to get  away from the news about the border walls and instead focus on it as a beautiful, interesting  and mysterious part of the state.” 

The album rolls from dance hall tempos to lonely ballad and back again, honoring both place  and love as the two ultimate experiences. It’s a journey through those border ghost lands to a  neon-lit bar and back again. It’s a quest for love and a life well-lived.

“I hope the listener can transport themselves out of their lives and go somewhere else in a  cinematic way,” he said. “I hope listening to this album is like going to the movies. This album is  about experiencing something else, somewhere else.”

 

Joshua Ray Walker – See You Next Time

On his new album See You Next Time, Texas-bred singer/songwriter Joshua Ray Walker shares an imagined yet truthful portrait of a brokedown honky-tonk and the misfits who call it home: barflies and wannabe cowboys, bleary-eyed dreamers and hopelessly lost souls. His third full-length in three years, the album marks the final installment in a trilogy that originated with Walker’s globally acclaimed 2019 debut Wish You Were Here and its equally lauded follow-up Glad You Made It (the #5 entry on Rolling Stone’s Best Country and Americana Albums of 2020 list).

“The whole idea with the trilogy was to use the honky-tonk as a setting where all these different characters could interact with each other,” says Walker, who drew immense inspiration from the local dive bars he first started sneaking into and gigging at as a teenager growing up in East Dallas. “In my mind, this album’s taking place on the night before the bar closes forever—the songs are just me taking snapshots of that world, and all the moments that happen in it.”

Like its predecessors, See You Next Time came to life at Audio Dallas Recording Studio with producer John Pedigo and a first-rate lineup of musicians, including the likes of pedal-steel player Adam “Ditch” Kurtz and rhythm guitarist Nathan Mongol Wells of Ottoman Turks(the country-punk outfit for which Walker sidelines as lead guitarist). The album’s immaculately crafted but timelessly vital sound provides a prime backdrop for Walker’s storytelling, an element that endlessly blurs the lines between fable-like fiction and personal revelation. “I learned a long time ago that writing from a character’s perspective lets me examine things about myself without ever feeling too self-conscious aboutit,” he points out. Closely informed by the tremendous loss he’s suffered in recent years, See You Next Time emerges as the most powerful work to date from an extraordinarily gifted songwriter, imbued with equal parts weary pragmatism and the kind of unabashedly romantic spirit that defies all cynicism.

On the album-opening “Dallas Lights,” Walker presents a potent introduction to the vast and sometimes-harrowing emotional terrain of See You Next Time. “I used to hang out in Lower Greenville, which is a neighborhood in Dallas with a lot of homeless people,” he says of the song’s origins. “One of the guys there knew someone who’d passed away and there was nobody to claim the body: no wife, no family, no kinfolk at all. I was really struck by how terrible that was, and over the years it became a song about hometown pride, and wanting to die where you lived.” Anchored by the heartrending fiddle work of Heather Stalling, “Dallas Lights” ultimately lends a bit of glory to that tragedy, its chorus lyrics unfolding as their own resolute prayer (“Lord, don’t bury me deep/Under the sycamore tree/Burn Me/Spread Me/Where the city can be seen”).

In its nuanced exploration of so many disparate moods—grief and celebration, sorrow and surrender—See You Next Time takes an entirely unexpected turn on its lead single “Sexy After Dark.” Fueled by a fiery horn section, the wildly catchy track hits a brilliant balance of bravado, soul-stirring confession, and brutally self-aware humor. “There’s a deep history of sexy-crooner country songs played by dudes who were pretty unsexy by all accounts but still had so much swagger,” says Walker. “‘Sexy After Dark’ was my attempt at writing a song like that, a fun song I’d want to crank up and party to. It all came back to wanting to really push the boundaries of what I could do on this album.”

In a stunning tonal shift, See You Next Time then delivers its most devastating moment, the intensely intimate “Flash Paper.” “My dad had a four-year battle with lung cancer and passed away in November, and before he died he gave me a cigar box full of notes and cards and lots of random little things, like a ribbon from a reading competition from when he was in elementary school,” says Walker. “He also put in a flash drive with a video he’d recorded, which he told me not to watch until Christmas. My dad was from East Texas and kind of a good-old-boy type, and the video was really vulnerable for him. Some of it was similar to things he’d said over the years, as he dealt with his illness and the two of us grew closer, but that song’s mostly about me wishing I’d heard more of those things while he was still here.”

With its untethered textures and beautifully sprawling guitar tones, “Flash Paper” bears a mesmerizing quality that magnifies its raw emotion. “That was definitely the hardest one for me to write on the album—I broke down multiple times in the process,” says Walker, whose voice slips into an achingly tender howl at the chorus. The final track recorded for See You Next Time, it’s also one of several songs that Walker penned in the dead of night, while his home was undergoing massive reconstruction following the rupture of a hot-water pipe. “Half my house was torn apart, and I was living at an extended-stay hotel, but I couldn’t get any writing done there,” he says. “I didn’t want to move back the recording sessions, so I ended up going back to my house late at night and staying up for hours to finish some songs. I remember thinking at the time that it was pretty depressing—writing at 4 a.m. in this torn-apart house with no furniture and no heat in the middle of winter—but looking back, I think it’s good that I was forced to be totally alone and just think.”

Another profoundly heavy-hearted track, “Gas Station Roses” reveals the poetic sensibilities within Walker’s songwriting. “There’s a double meaning to that song—it’s partly referring to the roses you’d find in a gas station around Valentine’s, but it’s also about how gas stations get away with selling crack pipes by hiding them in those glass tubes with the origami flowers,” he explains. Layered with bright piano melodies and Pedigo’s cascading banjo rolls, “Gas Station Roses” offers a clear-eyed meditation on the hardship of addiction (“We’re like gas station roses/You can wrap us however you’d like/If you prop us up in pretty poses/We’ll really catch the light”). “I grew up around a lot of kids who had parents with substance-abuse issues, and in high school a lot of my friends got hooked on heroin,” says Walker. “This song in particular is about crack, but the overall story is addiction leading to a loss of innocence.”

A working musician since the age of 13, Walker first began honing his lyrical talents after the death of his beloved grandfather. “My granddad’s the one who got me into music, and I wrote a song called ‘Fondly’ in the parking lot of the hospital he was in,” recalls Walker, who was 19 at the time. “Back then I was mostly playing rock and punk and blues and metal, but I quickly realized that the songs I was writing were country songs.” Raised on bluegrass, he lists Texas legends like Guy Clark and Billy Joe Shaver among his essential inspirations, but also notes the undeniable influence of country superstars like Alan Jackson and George Strait (“All those ’90s country songs were so hook-driven, they really bored into my brain,” he says). With the arrival of Wish You Were Here (an album that spent 12 consecutive weeks on the Americana radio albums chart), Walker won lavish praise from outlets like NPR Music and began opening for such artists as Colter Wall and Charley Crockett, in addition to headlining tours in the U.S. and Europe. Hailed by No Depression as “an album that outshines expectations for what country music can, and should, sound like,” Glad You Made It earned the admiration of leading critics like Ann Powers (“a new voice who really impressed me”), with its singles featured on such coveted playlists as Spotify’s Indigo and Tidal’s Best of Country 2020. Over the years, Walker has continually captivated crowds with his magnetic live show, a feat that finds him joined by musicians like bassist Billy Bones and drummer Trey Pendergrass (both of whom played on See You Next Time). “I’m really proud of the band on this record, and I’m also proud that I didn’t just go out and get hired guns from Nashville or Austin,” Walker says. “They’re guys I’ve played with for 10 or 15 years, and at this point we’re all like family.”

True to that communal spirit, See You Next Time closes out on its sing-along-ready title track: a fitting end to Walker’s trilogy and its tribute to the fleeting, yet possibly life-changing, connection to be found at your nearest honky-tonk. “There’s not a lot of pretension at a honky-tonk, and there’s much more interaction than in other bars—you see a lot less people on their phones,” says Walker. “We’re there to talk to other humans, put a song on the jukebox and dance with a stranger, get to know your bartender and tell them all your problems. I really wanted to capture that feeling on this record—I want everyone to feel like they know all these characters, and that they’re somehow better understood because these songs exist.”

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers

North Carolina’s Sarah Shook sings with a conviction and hard honesty sorely lacking in much of today’s Americana landscape. Always passionate, at times profane, Sarah stalks/walks the line between vulnerable and menacing, her voice strong and uneasy, country classic but with contemporary, earthy tension. You can hear in her voice what she’s seen; world weary, lessons learned—or not—but always defiant. She level-steady means what she says. Writing with a blunt urgency—so refreshing these days it’s almost startling—Sarah’s lyrics are in turn smart, funny, mean, and above all, uncompromising. The Disarmers hit all the sweet spots from Nashville’s Lower Broad to Bakersfield and take Sarah’s unflinching tales out for some late-night kicks. At times, it’s as simple and muscular as Luther Perkins’ boom-chicka-boom, or as downtown as Johnny Thunders. The Disarmers keep in the pocket, tight and tough.

Aaron Vance

Aaron Vance was born on Christmas Day in Amory, MS with undeniable gifts; a talent for writing songs and a voice with which to sing them. He got his first cowboy boots at the age of 4 and began singing in the church his father pastored by the time he was 6.

His truck-driving grandfather doted on his only grandson and Aaron remembers hearing country music sitting beside “Big Daddy” in his green and white crackerbox cab or on his tractor.

The family moved frequently when Aaron was a boy, settling in Mooreville, 6 miles East of Tupelo, when he was 13. Often the “new kid” at school, he was teased by peers for his strong country bias but believes that the experience taught him self-reliance and how to forge his own way.

Aaron graduated from Itawamba Community College in Fulton, MS and spent a year at Ole Miss before striking out on his own. He worked a variety of jobs from men’s store retail to tire factory manufacturing while playing clubs and festivals around North Mississippi.

Aaron began visiting Nashville in 2012 and made the move permanent in August 2014. To date he has recorded and released three LPs, (“Talk of the Town”, 2014, “My Own Way”, 2017 and “Cabin Fever”, 2021), two EPs, (“Country DNA”, 2013 and “Shifting Gears”, 2016), the Mississippi Football anthem, “My Dawgs and My Rebels”, 2014 and “The Dark Wolf Trilogy” (“The Dark Wolf”, “Hillbilly Cat”, “Take Me As I Am”) 2020 for Windy Holler Music.

With his powerful vocal talent and strong personal charisma, Aaron Vance is a compelling musical artist, confident and comfortable in his own skin.

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Joshua Ray Walker

Once the best-kept secret of Dallas’ music scene, Joshua Ray Walker catapulted himself into the international spotlight with his 2019 debut, Wish You Were Here. An album of character-driven songwriting and golden-era Texas twang, Wish You Were Here didn’t just nod to the larger-than-life troubadours who’d inspired Walker’s craft — it brought him into their ranks, too, adding Walker’s name to the shortlist of songwriters worthy of carrying the torches of Guy Clark, John Prine, and Blaze Foley.

What may have looked like overnight success to an outsider was, in reality, the product of a decade-long climb up the industry’s ranks. A working musician since the age of 13, Walker spent years balancing his gigs as a sideman with a dizzyingly busy schedule of solo shows, regularly racking up more than 250 gigs annually. He sharpened his songwriting, too, developing a blend of autobiography and fiction that often revealed as much about the song’s creator as its characters. That prolific approach now leads Walker to 2020’s Glad You Made It, a sophomore record that both matches and magnifies the vital, vulnerable lure of his debut.

John Baumann

“I could use a shot of confidence to get a word in edgewise, I need to see that silver lining, in those dark and stormy skies, and pray I catch that feeling that I used to know back when, back when I never knew I’d ever need a second wind,” John Baumann sings on “Second Wind,” a deep cut from his forthcoming album, Country Shade. After having a conversation with the singer-songwriter, it’s evident that he tends to look at things with a glass-half-full mentality-complemented by a deeply-ingrained dose of ambition. He is curious how time passes in its unknowable and ever-interesting way, and he’s ready for what it’s bringing next for him.

“‘Second Wind’ is about digging deep and finding the next gear when you’ve lost interest or motivation,” John says about the track. “It’s about the times when I feel like nothing is moving forward, but ultimately really about anyone struggling to get up and get back on the horse.”

It’s a familiar sentiment to most anyone who’s felt like they’re teetering on the precipice of taking their next step, making their next leap out into the world. John has had a busy last few years – he’s a member of The Panhandlers, with fellow Texans Josh Abbott, William Clark Green and Cleto Cordero, and signed on with The Next Waltz, the Texas-based brainchild of legendary songwriter Bruce Robison, for management. He’s also continued to prove himself as a promising songwriter within his home state and beyond its borders, with Kenny Chesney recording “Gulf Moon” for 2018’s Songs for the Saints.

American Aquarium has been touring extensively in support of their latest release Things Change, a powerful narrative chronicling the last two years as seen through the eyes of front man BJ Barham. Stacked with his signature storytelling, which is deeply personal and instantly relatable, the album is an introspective reflection of personal growth and change, which also touches on the current social climate in our country. Produced by Grammy nominated singer/songwriter John Fulbright, the band’s seventh studio album is their finest collection of southern rock-n-roll to date and the group’s first release on a label after building a loyal fan base and selling thousands of records on their own. American Aquarium recently made their television debut on Last Call with Carson Daly and their music has received praise from press including NPR Music, Billboard, Associated Press, American Songwriter and Rolling Stone who says, “‘Things Change’ is an unabashed rock & roll record – a snapshot of a band and its reinvigorated leader.”

Raised on the music of the Smokey Mountains, Joshua Ray Walker took a precarious path back to traditional country music; one forged by musical exploration and life experiences that most his age have not yet endured. He has played his songs on stages all across Texas and beyond, enthralling listeners with his brand of melodic, character-driven writing which puts a new spin on traditional story-telling country. Already with a great deal of buzz, expect his first full-length release in January of 2019 on State Fair Records.