Glad You Made It by Joshua Ray Walker is one of the best new LPs that I heard last year. Raised in Dallas, Walker has been playing professionally since he was 12 (almost 20 years now).
Since releasing his debut album Wish You Were Here early last year, the 29-year-old Walker has become one of country’s most fascinating young songwriters, a baby-faced 6XL guitar hero who writes deep-dive character studies about lost souls, truck-stop prostitutes, and D.B. Cooper. His second album, Glad You Made It, is out Friday, and opens with a first-person contemplation of suicide made to look like an accident. Titled “Voices,” the song includes chilling lines about putting a truck in neutral and letting it roll into a lake, but leaving behind an empty bottle on the floorboard to make people wonder.
“I have definitely dealt with pretty severe depression and anxiety at times, and suicidal ideation. Shit that lots of people go through. Sometimes you feel like you’re just screaming at the sky. You’re pleading with someone and you don’t even know if they’re there,” Walker says. “I’ve never literally sat at the edge of a lake in my truck, but yeah, metaphorically, you know, it is about me.” — Rolling Stone
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‘Voices’ (2020)
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‘True Love’ (2020)
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Serious Mark Knopfler guitar vibes on this next one.
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‘Cupboard’ (2020)
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WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
Jimmy Kimmel: Michelle Pfeiffer, George Lopez, Arlo Parks
Jimmy Fallon: Keegan-Michael Key, Terry Gross, Fontaines D.C.
Stephen Colbert: Viggo Mortensen, Charles Blow
Seth Meyers: Desus & Mero, Ryan Shazier
James Corden: Carey Mulligan, Jhene Aiko
SPOILER WARNING
A late night gathering for non serious palaver that does not speak of that night’s show. Posting a spoiler will get you brollywhacked. You don’t want that to happen to you. It's a fate worse than a fate worse than death.
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Lefty Frizzell ‘Long Black Veil’ (1959) / Marijohn Wilkin 'My Long Black Veil' (1961)