My New Obsession

An advance of Walt Wilkins’ Diamonds in the Sun (Palo Duro Records) arrived in the mail today. I’m hooked — its been in my cd changer playing nonstop from beginning track to the end and back again…I’m writing a review now and it should be up by Monday — in the meantime circle Jul 24th on your calendar! This is my favorite album of the year to date…Walt Wilkins has already established a successul and respecful career in Texas – but this album promises to bring him to a much wider audience.

In the meanwhile — here’s our review of Walt’s first album from 2002 – Rivertown

(Western Beat) Walt Wilkins was raised in San Antonio, Austin and Honolulu. He presently resides in Nashville, where he’s a staff writer for Curb Publishing, and has had some of his songs recorded by artists ranging from Ty Herndon to Ricky Skaggs. He released his own well received, independent debut album (distributed by GrooveTone), Fire Honey & Angels in 1999. Although Walt resides in Nashville, and writes for a major label publishing company, don’t think his music is the typical mainstream fluff that Music Row’s been cranking out the past several years. His style is still decidedly steeped in his Texas roots, and has far more in common with Steve Earle, Guy Clark, Kevin Welch, or even Townes Van Zandt.

Rivertown is a guitar and fiddle driven disc, where Walt presents little snippets of observations that make up everyday life, and strings them together with colorful imagery and strong melodies giving his clear personal overview of the circumstances surrounding life itself. He’s also pulled together some outstanding talent that excellently adds to the textures and depth of Walt’s songs, including such names as Kevin Welch, Pat Green, Jon Randall, Roxie Dean, Nick Pellegrino and Tina Mitchell Wilkins (harmony vocals on various tracks). Tim Lorsch is superb on fiddle, as is Mike Daly on steel and slide guitar. Rick Plant is on electric guitar, Mark Prentice contributes on bass along with Billy Block on drums on various cuts, while Fats Kaplin tosses in a bit of accordion. 

Rivertown opens with the upbeat “Poetry,” a reflection on life, how people make mistakes along the way, hopefully learn and grow from them, yet should grab hold of all the small things and enjoy all they do have. In other songs he savors the small joys of life as in the reflective, “Walnut Street” (the old house in which he lives), “One Of Those Moments” (the beauty of an unexpected snowfall), and ”Velvet Sky” (taking the time to see, and always carry with you all of life’s experiences ). He sings of the exuberance of love in “Spacewalk” with it’s absolutely infectious fiddle driven reggae beat, and “Hey Tomorrow,” about the anticipation of setting out on a life together with the woman he loves.

Walt also touches on despair with the stellar “Seven Hillsides,” a mournful bluegrassy tale of burying seven miners killed in a mining accident. “Rainy Night City” looks at the despair of a man who feels trapped both by the town he lives in, and his own life. The achingly plaintive “Genevieve” has the character hitting a bump in the road, and asks his love to help see him through. ”Some Men Fall” is an observation of how some people can fly in the face of life’s adversities, while it dooms others. The sole non-Wilkins penned song on the disc is Tim Lorsch’s instrumental, “Waltz On The White Sands,” an outstanding fiddle waltz.  Rivertown closes with a hidden track, “The Blue Field,” which is a Tex-Mex tale about longing after an elusive lover. 

Though his songs are simple observations of the various aspects of everyday life, his writing is full of strongly written poetic imagery that takes his subject matter and transforms it into thought provoking themes, while his melodies range from achingly mournful to sheer exuberance, that immediately hooks and draws the listener in. With Rivertown, Walt Wilkins has proven there is still indeed a very strong breed of singer/songwriters out there, even in modern day Nashville.