Singer/Songwriter Joshua Ray Walker’s made a name for himself with poignant, human portraits of flawed, fascinating characters. Now, on his latest album, Ain’t Dead Yet, Walker’s telling a more personal story – his own.
“Human beings are super multi-faceted, and part of the reason I wrote about characters in the first place was because I could explore things about myself that I didn't feel comfortable exploring if I were to admit that it was really about me,” Walker says. “All my songs are about parts of me, I just didn't try to stick them on another fictional character this time.”
Beneath the album’s flippant title resides some of Walker’s heaviest storytelling yet. Three years ago, when he started writing Ain’t Dead Yet (his sixth studio album, to be released May 29 via Thirty Tigers/East Dallas Records), Walker hadn’t yet received the cancer diagnosis that rearranged and threatened his life (he currently has a clean bill of health). But that year was still uncommonly fraught with mental, physical, and career stresses. Pulling the songs out of the can to finalize them for the album – including re-writing and re-working almost all the songs – Walker, who was then undergoing and recovering from cancer treatment, was surprised by their prescience.
“That whole year I just felt awful and like I was dying. I didn't feel right, and mentally I was off, like there really was something wrong the whole time,” Walker says. “So I think the reason some of these songs feel the way they do is because I felt that way, even though I didn't know something was wrong yet.”
“Memory lane is a freeway now,” Walker sings on “Chasing Sunsets,” a cinematic Laurel Canyon sound-inspired song all about the unease in life’s liminal moments. The idea came to Walker while chasing the last of the daylight across the California desert on a 22-hour drive from his home in Dallas to a co-writing session in Los Angeles (where he finished the song). Though all but one verse were written before cancer, the song’s melancholy belays Walker’s uncertainty, and revisits a familiar thread in some of Walker's best-known songs: reckoning with life’s worth and mortality (“Canyon,” “Voices,” “Flash Paper”). “Chasing sunsets / Where the light starts to bend / The darkness / Is where the end begins,” he sings; after all, when the sun sinks into darkness at day’s end, it’s always hard to believe it will rise again.
Throughout the album, Walker grapples with big life questions – a reluctance to pass down his flawed genes (“Blue Genes”); the importance of being content to put one foot in front of the other rather than dream big, sometimes (“Stepping Stones”); and on the loping Texas dance hall track “Some People,” Walker tries his hand at a John Prine-esque consideration of human nature, cautioning against short-sighted assumptions about other peoples’ situations.
Ain’t Dead Yet is often lyrically somber, but sonically, it’s reminiscent of Walker’s early albums, relying on pedal steel and fiddle as much as Walker’s consummate guitar picking, sweet tenor, and high falsetto and yodel. The album was recorded before, during, and after cancer treatment
(including three songs the day before the lung surgery that could have changed his voice forever) and at three Dallas, TX studios: Audio Dallas, Modern Electric, and album producer and long-time collaborator John Pedigo’s home studio.
Coming out the other side of a fight with cancer offered Walker a second chance. But the angst inherent to facing death and the requisite perspective on the past figure thematically across the album, as well. “I live with few regrets / Played my cards far from the vest / I’ve always been my biggest threat / But I ain’t dead yet,” Walker sings on the title and opening track. Equal parts defiant and bittersweet, it sets up Ain’t Dead Yet as a reflection on his last few years. Fittingly, the album concludes with a softer bookend, “Thank You For Listening,” which is a sincere note to Walker’s listeners.
Though the songs on Ain’t Dead Yet are more overtly about Walker than on his past albums, he still plays around with character, at times embodying his most outrageous selves: “Every hat’s a cowboy hat / If it’s sitting on my head / Just like every girl’s a cowgirl / If she’s laying in my bed,” he sings on “Outlaw.” The first of those lyrics is a real line Walker delivered once on a tour in response to a fan, who thought he should wear a cowboy hat to sing country music. A rare moment when Walker felt he’d said something exquisitely cool in the moment, he jotted it down and later wrote the whole song. (Walker imagines “Outlaw” delivered by the self-aggrandizing titular character of his song “Cowboy” (released on 2021’s See You Next Time)). Elsewhere on the album for “Shoot Me Straight,” Walker brought back the horn section from “Sexy After Dark,” to add bravado to a song all about his brashest moments. And in “Texas Sober,” Walker pokes fun at the arbitrary rules for living well he’s watched both himself and friends set.
Song ideas come to Walker from many places, and he honors two of the most personal ones on “Capital Letters.” Written for two important mentors – Walker’s grandpa (about whom he wrote his first song ever, “Fondly,” which was released on his 2019 debut, Wish You Were Here), and Trey Johnson, co-founder of State Fair Records, Walker’s first label – the song is Walker’s way of honoring the roles these long-gone loved ones still play in his life. Sometimes he finds himself talking to them, seeking their advice; others he even wonders if they have some hand in the songs he writes.
Ain’t Dead Yet is Walker’s time capsule of the past three years. Standing on the other side, it’s also a dedication to the future. “I'm really grateful to have a second chance, and I'm also grateful to have lived through thinking I was going to die. It gives you perspective in a way you really can't fake until you've actually done it; in a way, it was kind of a gift,” Walker says, though sometimes a new beginning also feels like a lot to live up to.
“I faced death; I almost lost my house; I got engaged; We lost most of our belongings to flood and mold; I’ve had loved ones die; I almost lost my entire music catalog. It's been a lot, good and bad. I'm just a much different person,” he continues. “I'm very intentional with my time, and I'm a lot happier, even though things have been hard, I genuinely do think I'm happier. It's been a pretty wild transformation.” Track Listing: 1. Ain't Dead Yet
2. Shoot Me Straight
3. Chasing Sunsets
4. Outlaw
5. Capital Letters
6. Texas Sober
7. Blue Genes
8. Stepping Stones
9. Some People
10. Thank You For Listening
