In my mind, music was doing nothing for me anymore. It’s a miracle I got on stage every night somehow. We were playing a lot of cities where I didn’t know anybody, so that kind of gave me incentives to just walk up to people on the street who looked out of it and be like, “Hey, where can I get drugs in this town?” I would go to some shitty house in the wrong part of town and pick up. And I realized I can’t be alone on tour anymore. But I was all alone, driving nine hours a day. ![]() It was a dream come true to be able to be on that tour. Richard Thompson was so cordial and friendly, and his crew was so cordial and friendly and wonderful. Can you tell me about what led up to your decision to get help? Walker came perilously close to the brink this year, but was able to survive. Just this week, 21-year-old superstar rapper Juice WRLD died from as-yet-undetermined circumstances, though he had been candid in the past about his struggles with drug abuse. In 2019, the great indie singer-songwriter David Berman took his own life on the eve of a tour in support of his acclaimed Purple Mountains album. It’s a scenario that has played out far too many times in music lately. ![]() The previous month, while on tour with the legendary folk-rock guitarist Richard Thompson, he tried to kill himself in a New Mexico hotel room. Mere weeks after playing that show, he checked himself into a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in Nashville. The freedom and invention of Flops In New York - which deserves to be mentioned among 2019’s very best albums - belies the personal hell that Walker was enduring at the time. ( You can also stream the performance for free at .) And he swiftly made his presence felt, playing an incredible set of improvised music in March at Brooklyn’s Union Pool with fellow guitarist Steve Gunn and drummer Ryan Jewell that Walker later released as an excellent live LP, Flops In New York, on his own label, Husky Pants Records. He had high hopes for his immersion in the local music scene as a semi-famous singer-songwriter and one of the leading lights of the so-called “indie jam” scene. In early 2019, Walker relocated from Chicago to New York City. ( This is a good, and pertinent, example.) But it also alludes to a deeper and more profound truth about Walker’s life this year. It’s exactly the sort of exuberance that Walker has become known for via his popular Twitter account, where he’s established himself as one of the funniest people in indie rock. ![]() I’m full of wonder at these sort of rock gods again, you know?” I’m turned on by the way Mickey Hart hits the drums and the way Steve Hackett has a goofy 12-string-guitar on stage. “I feel like a little kid again and it’s cool. “I’m enjoying making music so much right now,” the 30-year-old guitarist enthused. When Ryley Walker checked in last week from a tour stop in Las Vegas, you could hear the sunshine in his voice.
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