#RYLEY WALKER RECORD LABEL FREE#

Walker returned in the spring of 2018 with his own recording entitled Deafman Glance. The following year he and frequent touring partner Bill MacKay issued SpiderBeetleBee, a collection of guitar duets described as 'slide blues, Baroque dance, percolating Latin, and deep-focus space' on Drag City.

#RYLEY WALKER RECORD LABEL FREE#

2016 also brought the release of Cannots, a collaborative work between Walker and Chicago free jazz drummer Charles Rumback that was released in limited vinyl quantities for that year's Record Store Day festivities. Inspired in part by the Windy City and local musical heroes Tortoise and Gastr del Sol, the eight-track album, Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, was released in August 2016. After nearly ten months of touring Primrose Green, Walker returned to Chicago and set about writing and recording his third album. Musically, it blurs the lines between folk, rock, jazz, and new music. It was the first of his recordings to feature his own vocals. Recording in Chicago with a cast of improvisational and jazz session aces (including cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz), Walker completed Primrose Green, issued in 2015. His debut album, All Kinds of You, was issued by the label in April of 2014.Īfter intensive touring and playing on others' records, he signed to Dead Oceans in the fall. Walker's first widely circulated recording was a vinyl-only three-song 12' entitled West Wind from Tompkins Square Records in 2013. Later that year he released - again via cassette on Plustapes - Of Deathly Premonitions, a four-song collaboration with fellow fingerstyle guitarist Daniel Bachman. Its artwork was deliberately reminiscent of John Fahey's Death Chants Breakdowns & Military Favorites, and inspired by the American Primitive lexicon of Takoma Records. The first recorded aspect of his complex musical persona arrived with the cassette-only EP The Evidence of Things Unseen, issued in a limited edition from Plustapes in 2011. For his part, Walker proved delightfully unpredictable, shapeshifting styles from blues and folk to pop and experimental sounds. Walker's love of DMB was highlighted in his dark interpretations of their songs on the 2018 covers album The Lillywhite Sessions.Īfter spending a few years cutting his teeth on the Chicago indie and experimental music scenes, Walker began giving solo live performances on acoustic guitar, drawing the inevitable comparisons to his peers, from William Tyler and Glenn Jones to British Isles guitarists ranging from John Renbourn to Davy Graham and Martin Carthy. He moved from noisy avant-garde work in his nascent stages into virtuosic guitar playing and floating spiritual pop that traced lines between Bert Jansch, Van Morrison, and somehow even the Dave Matthews Band. Ryley Walker is an accomplished fingerstyle guitarist, singer, and songwriter from Chicago whose music and evolution as an artist have proven mercurial.

Ryley walker record label