New Members
Joe Louis Walker
12-9-2016Joe Louis Walker has been nominated for 2 categories in The Blues Foundation’s 2016 Blues Music Awards: Rock Blues Album of the Year for his new CD "Everybody Wants a Piece" and Contemporary Blues Male Artist. For many years now Joe has been raining fire with his guitar and spitting brimstone with his vocals. His playing "blows all over the map…gutbucket blues, joyous gospel, Rolling Stones-style rock crunch, and aching R&B. Walker’s guitar playing is fine and fierce." - Billboard
Already renowned for crafting innovative blues that merge gospel, jazz, soul, funk and rock, Joe turns the heat up, breathing fiery new life into guitar-stoked houserockin’ blues. The New York Times raves, "Walker is a singer with a Cadillac of a voice.. His guitar solos are fast, wiry and incisive, moaning with bluesy despair." Rolling Stone simply calls him "ferocious." Walker finally takes his rightful place among the pantheon of legendary electric blues singer/guitarist/songwriters like B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Luther Allison. This Blues Music Award winner and Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise favorite has been releasing critically acclaimed albums and touring the world since 1986.
Joe has opened for Muddy Waters and Thelonious Monk, hung out with Jimi Hendrix, Freddie King and Mississippi Fred McDowell, and was a close friend to Mike Bloomfield. At one point, he left behind a promising career as blues guitarist to play for a gospel group. In 1986, he returned to the blues; and some 20 albums later, still rises above the doldrums of the contemporary blues scene by drawing on his experience with both the early heroes of electric-blues guitar and what remains of the blues-rock movement of the late 1960s.
He has won four Blues Music Awards, including the 2010 Album Of The Year Award for "Between A Rock And A Hard Place," and has been nominated for 43 more. He has also recorded as guest with some of the blues world's best-known artists, including appearances on Grammy-winning records by B.B. King and James Cotton. Blues Revue calls Walker "one of contemporary blues' most dynamic and innovative musicians, releasing consistently exciting music... soulful, heartfelt and spellbinding." Living Blues says, "His fretwork is indelibly stamped with his own trademark blend of emotional heat and impeccable precision. Even at his most flamboyant, Walker sounds as if he's playing ideas, not just notes."
He's a modernist at ease with mixing, matching and sometimes trampling as his heart dictates; attacking each song like the gospel vocalist he once was while his guitar rips down the walls.
Videos: VIDEO 1 - VIDEO 2
* Joe Louis Walker (at Bull Run Resta...
Date and Time
Friday Dec 9, 2016
