By Mark Hansel
NKyTribune managing editor
Joe Louis Walker plays the Southgate House Revival Sunday and the Tribune is giving away a pair of tickets that include a meet ‘n greet with the legendary blues musician.
Joe Louis Walker (Provided photos)
Walker a Blues Hall of Fame inductee and four-time Blues Music Award winner, has performed and recorded with a wide range of well-known musicians.
In addition to his own impressive catalog of albums, Walker has collaborated with Branford Marsalis, James Cotton, Tower of Power, Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Taj Mahal, Ike Turner, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, and many others.
Walker, 67, took some time to reflect on a career that began in the San Francisco Bay when he started playing the guitar at just 14 years of age, and his return to the region.
“I have played in the Cincinnati area, but it has been some time,” Walker said. “It’s always nice to come back to a place that you haven’t been to for a while and see how things have changed.”
Walker’s music has its roots in blues and gospel, but he admits he likes to mix things up a little.
“It’s hard for someone to describe your own music, but I can say how a couple of people I respect describe it,” Walker said. “Willie Dixon said my music is all over the place, but it fits me and I think he was right. I started in the 60s but I’m not from Chicago or Mississippi – I have been and lived in all of those places – but I’m more a product of the Bay area and my music is steeped in blues, gospel, psychedelic and East Bay funk.”
By the time he was sixteen, Walker was a known quantity in the Bay area and roomed with Mike Bloomfield of Paul ButterField Blues Band fame for a while, who introduced him to Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead.
By the mid-70s, Walker burned out on the blues and sang for the next decade with a gospel group, the Spiritual Corinthians. In 1985 they played the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and Walker was inspired to embrace his blues roots again. Throughout the 1990s he merged his wide range of influences with his trademark blues sensibilities in a group called the Boss Talkers and recorded several albums released by Polydor/Polygram.
Walker was nominated for a Grammy this year and has collaborated with musicians on albums that have won the award, including Cotton and B.B. King. He said he always enjoys jamming with other musicians, but Tower of Power holds a special place in his heart.
“I think of Tower of Power as my home boys – they were East Bay and I was East Bay and I was doing my thing when they were doing their thing in a different landscape,” Walker said. “But for me, with people like Gatemouth Brown, Ike Turner or Scotty Moore, when I get with them the session will be three hours long and we talk for another three hours. In that respect, that’s a dream come true, because you are basically talking to people who invented the road map.”
Having the talent, Walker says, is only one piece of the puzzle. He has experienced, firsthand, the music industry adage that “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” The template for breaking an artist is to open for someone who has a strong fan base, but unless you have a connection to that artist, it’s hard to get that gig.
“Sometimes, to be quite honest, the odds are stacked against you,” Walker said. “If you are being managed by someone who has the top five acts, and he might manage 15 acts that aren’t as well known, he’ll tell the promoter that he wants two of his other acts on every show with one of them. That’s how you get exposure and if you are someone who doesn’t have that kind of juice behind you, you have quite a big hurdle to jump.”
Walker was nominated for the Contemporary Blues Album of the Year Grammy for, “Everybody Wants a Piece.” It includes the instrumental “Gospel Blues,” and a rendition of the traditional Negro Spiritual, “Wade in the Water,” which is associated with slavery and the Underground Railroad.
“With ‘Gospel Blues,’ in particular, yeah, you could have sung over it, but to me it would have been like a million other gospel songs, so I tried to tell the story with the blues guitar, on top of the traditional-style gospel changes” Walker said. Now “Wade in the Water’ is one of those transformational songs that transcends race and religion. There’s a million versions of that song and people do it all kinds of different ways. All of those versions have been added on during the course of history and they are all relevant.”
The Joe Louis Walker performance at the Southgate House Revival begins at 8 p.m. Sunday. Tickets can be purchased by clicking here.
To enter the Tribune’s contest to win two seats to the show and a meet ‘n greet with the blues legend, send an email to news@nkytrib.com by noon Wednesday. Include the words, “Joe Louis Walker contest” in the subject line and provide a phone number to receive instructions on how to claim the tickets, if you win.
Contact Mark Hansel at mark.hansel@nkytrib.com
