Joshua Ray Walker Announces New Album, ‘Glad You Made It’, With Single ‘True Love’ [LISTEN]
Joshua Ray Walker will release a brand-new album, Glad You Made It, on July 10. In advance of the project, and to celebrate its announcement, the Texas singer-songwriter has shared one of its tracks, "True Love."
Steady drums guide "True Love," while a vaguely retro electric guitar line and some completely country steel flourishes elevate the upbeat track, which tells a pretty pessimistic story. While the couple in the song are totally in love at the moment, it's not meant to last.
"You can already tell it by the way she smiles / When you tell her that you love her, she laughs real soft and your ears ring loud," Walker sings in the chorus. "Love's just something people say / Won't grow old together, holdin' hands when your hairs are gray / Let's just call a spade a spade / True love was meant to fade."
Glad You Made It, due out via State Fair Records, was produced by John Pedigo. Walker recorded the project in both Dallas and Nashville, keeping the studio doors open to friends and fellow musicians.
"We told people to just come over and hang out. There was beer and food in the fridge. I wanted it to feel like a party and have this loose, fun energy," the artist shares. "Even if the lyrics were dark, we didn't want the songs to sound depressing. We almost wanted to trick people into dancing to them."
In addition to "True Love," Glad You Made It will feature the yodel-filled "Voices," a song called "Cupboard," the rocking "D.B. Cooper," the honky-tonk-ready "User" and more. Each tells the story of a down-on-their-luck character, but Walker says there are pieces of himself in them all, too.
"Even if I'm writing about a boat show girl — a woman standing in a bikini, trying to sell Bud Light — I'm examining something about myself through these characters. They're part fictional and part autobiographical," explains Walker, alluding to the album track "Boat Show Girl." "These are people who're running out of luck, but that's not going to stop them. Everyone's doing what they've gotta do to get by, and I love meeting characters like that. I take bits of those real-life people and combine them together to create the subjects of my songs."
Glad You Made It follows Walker's acclaimed 2019 debut album, Wish You Were Here. Now almost 30, he's been a working musician since he was 13 years old.
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