Ruf Records artist: Bart Walker - Waiting On Daylight - New release review

I just received the new release, Waiting On Daylight from Bart Walker and it's really strong! Walker, a new artist with Ruf has put together a package of great material that really nicely displays his skills and a performer. Opening with It's All Good, Walker wastes no time getting on the slide. This track reminds me a lot in rhythm to Stealin' Watermelons, a great Elvin Bishop track with a bit of funk and a bit of country in the rock. Walker is a modern slide player with southern influences sounding a lot more like Derek Trucks than Elmore James but really playing with his own guitar voice. Cool track. Black Clouds opens with a swampy bass riff by Dave Smith and then followed by grinding guitar riffs along the lines of Mule.Steve Potts has a good had with the drums and this blues rocker sets a firm footing. Walker is certainly no stranger to the guitar ripping gret guitar riffs throughout the track and his voice is well suited for the band. Took It Like A Man is a rock track with a funky back beat.. Walker has great fat tone on this track with super grind. On Girl You Bad, Walker is using what sounds like a loaded P90 with tone that blasts the paint off of the wall. This is great stuff. Waitin On Daylight is a honest ballad with twin guitar leads. This could easily be that track with the hook that gets all the radio play. Happy is an aggressive blues rocker with grinding guitar rhythm guitar and breaking into a full blown "Call Me The Breeze" crap kicker. Hipshake It is a modern take on JB Hutto's track but done really as an uptempo rocker with voracious slide. This is a another great track. 99% is a solid blues rock track giving Walker a productive space in which to really unleash the dog. he is relentless on his guitar and I'm certain blues rock fans everywhere are gonna really dig this. The release completes with an obtuse but very nice version of the Allman's Whippin Post. This is more quiet track done in a more bluesy melancholy manner. I like this version of it better than than most covers that I've hear (Frank Zappa's was pretty cool). It shows real thought and feeling. Walker doesn't allow the opportunity to rip a hole in it get away from him and his guitar is likely bleeding after this track. Very nice job!

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Ruf Records Signs Blues Guitar Blaster Bart Walker & Will Release His Label Debut CD, "Waiting on Daylight", On March 12

Ruf Records Signs Blues Guitar Blaster Bart Walker & Will Release His Label Debut CD, Waiting on Daylight,

On March 12

New Album Produced by Multi Grammy-Winner Jim Gaines

ATLANTA, GA – Ruf Records announces the signing of Nashville-based blues guitarist/singer Bart Walker and will release his label debut CD, Waiting on Daylight, on March 12. The new album was produced and engineered by multi Grammy-winner Jim Gaines and recorded at his Bessie Blue Studio in Stantonville, Tennessee. Backing Walker on Waiting on Daylight are all-star Memphis session players Steve Potts (drums), Dave Smith (bass) and Rick Steff (keyboards), along with special guest Dave Cohen on organ.

The 11 tracks on Waiting on Daylight feature nine new songs written by Walker and such other Nashville notables as Grammy-winner Gary Nicholson and Pat McLaughlin, plus blazing covers of J. B. Hutto’s “Hip Shake It,” and the Allman Brothers Band classic, “Whippin’ Post,” which closes the album.

The timing of the new CD couldn’t have been better for Bart Walker, having won the Gibson Guitarist Award at the 2012 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, and earning glowing reviews for his first album, Who I Am, which he also produced. Coupled with some major buzz after recent appearances on Delbert McClinton’s Sandy Beaches Cruises, blues audiences are primed and ready for a new album of music from the blues guitar blaster.

"When we started out with this new record," says Walker, "I was constantly thinking about how I was I gonna top the last one. About 20 minutes into the session, Jim showed me how that was gonna happen."

A gifted guitar player, Bart Walker has been playing since the age of four and has already logged plenty of road miles as the right-hand man to country-rocker Bo Bice and collaborated in the studio with such heavyweights as Steve Gorman (Black Crowes), Audley Freed (Cry Of Love, Black Crowes) and Robert Kearns (Cry of Love, Lynyrd Skynyrd). He's played with Stevie Ray Vaughan's original back-up band, Double Trouble, and until recently had Double Trouble keyboardist Reese Wynans as a regular member of his own touring outfit.

Waiting on Daylight kicks off with the funky blues groove of "It's All Good," featuring a vocal that instantly recalls Louisiana swamp man Tab Benoit. On "Took It Like a Man," Walker’s influences from southern rock icons ZZ Top and the Allman Brothers show their colors. "Those are definitely some of my most favorite artists, along with my all-time favorite guitar player, Stevie Ray Vaughan," explains Walker. "But honestly, I have so many influences from so many genres: Guns 'n' Roses, Zeppelin, Jack White, Doyle Bramhall II, Warren Haynes … the list is 100 miles long."

As things progress through rockin' tunes like the Chuck Berry-flavored "Happy," J. B. Hutto's "Hipshake It" or the introspective "Mary and Me," it becomes harder to ignore what is unquestionably one of the album's biggest strengths: a big, fat, gritty, greasy guitar tone massive enough to take hold of your soul. Walker confirms this is no accident. "If it doesn’t have the big fat, beefy tone, then I won’t play to my fullest potential," says the self-professed "tone freak" – who then runs off a list of the roughly dozen different guitars he used to get just the right sound on each particular cut. And he couldn’t have found a better producer to bring his muscular guitar sounds to fruition than producer Gaines, who literally lives and breathes guitar tones, as evidenced by his acclaimed work with such axemasters as the aforementioned Vaughan, Carlos Santana, George Thorogood, Luther Allison and Bart’s Ruf labelmate, Joanne Shaw Taylor.

It didn’t take long for the guitarist and his producer to realize they had something special going on in the studio. “I really felt like I had accomplished something when Jim Gaines turned around in his chair and looked at me while we were listening down to some of the tracks and said, ‘Man, we got us a really rockin’ record!,’ "exclaims Walker.

With the release of Waiting on Daylight, audiences all over the world will be able to experience that blinding blues flash of creative brilliance.

Bart Walker will tour Europe with Ruf’s “Blues Caravan” roadshow starting this month along with Joanne Shaw Taylor and Jimmy Bowskill and then return to the U.S. for dates throughout the spring and summer. He’s managed and booked by Gina Hughes of The Galaxie Agency www.galaxieagency.com. For more information, visit www.thebartwalkerband.com.

Slow Movin Train - Bart Walker Band

Bart Walker’s debut, Who I Am, is a portrait of the Nashville-based guitar and vocal powerhouse as a dreamer, a fan, a survivor, a creative dynamo and, most of all, a one-man argument for the continued vitality and emotional heat of the blues.

A born virtuoso who began playing and singing at age four, Walker and his band — which includes ex-Stevie Ray Vaughan keyboardist Reese Wynans — make his original plucked-from-life tunes sound like classics, delivered with the same incendiary energy as the live performances that have won them a growing following in the South and Midwest.

With the release of Who I Am and Walker’s continuing on-stage exposure as country star Bo Bice’s six-string right-hand man, Walker is ready to claim his place as a bold young torchbearer in the national and international blues scene, with his own distinctive and gritty guitar sound and a dynamic voice dappled with honey and gravel.

“I truly and deeply love what I do,” he says, “This music has given me so much, and has so much to give, and I feel Who I Am is just the beginning of what I have to give back to it.”
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Slow My Roll - Bart Walker Band

John Lee Hooker once said 'the blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning.' Lucky for us, talented musicians still feel the need to tell that story. And it’s even luckier for us that one of these musicians is Nashville-based up and coming blues man, Bart Walker.

Bart started honing his guitar skills at the ripe “old” age of four, while growing up in Tennessee. Along the way, he became an accomplished musician on a variety of instruments including the mandolin, banjo, dobro, bass, saxophone, fiddle and drums. His accomplishments include winning a variety of bluegrass competitions in his youth, a full scholarship from Vanderbilt's Blair School of Music to study voice in high school, being chosen as a vocalist in the Governor’s School for the Arts, as well as being selected by a Tennessee panel of judges for excellence for jazz band. After graduating high school, he was recruited into the army national guard as a musician. He attended Austin Peay State University on a full scholarship where his concentration was vocal performance and string bass majors and minors in guitar performance and composition.

After college, he moved to Memphis to pursue his dream of playing the blues. While there, his name became recognizable and he played for the likes of Ruby Wilson and Preston Shannon. He later formed a band called Five Mississippi, playing various Beale Street venues, as well as other parts of Memphis, and as far south as Tunica, Clarksdale and Oxford, Mississippi. He returned to Nashville in 2005 with a new feel for the blues, and has since contributed to many studio sessions as well as performing in a variety of clubs.

In addition to his current role as lead guitarist for B.B. King's All-Stars at B.B. King's Blues Club, and American Idol's Bo Bice, he has also chalked up countless hours in the studio with Steve Gorman (Black Crows), A.J. Croce (son of Jim Croce), Bo Bice, Audly Freed. (Cry Of Love & Black Crows), and Robert Kearns (Lynyrd Skynyrd).

In the live music world, he has played with Delbert McClinton, Steve Cropper, Lee Roy Parnell, Jim Peterik (from Ides of March and Survivor), Jimmy Hall, Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon (Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble), Jack Pearson and Gary Nichols. He opened For B.B. King (With the B.B. King All-stars), Styx, REO speed wagon and Lynyrd Skynyrd (with Bo Bice). He also performed on the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman with Bo.

Bart Walker's new CD, “Who I am,” is sure to help revive the blues with the younger generation, and at the same time prove to be a much-welcomed addition for those who already possess a love for the blues.

The band includes: Bart Walker - guitar and vocals, Reese Wynans (Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble) – B3 and other keyboards, Paul Ossola (G.E. Smith and the Saturday Night Live Band) – bass and Jim Thistle – drums.
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