The Bart Walker Band Album Release: at 3rd & Lindsley (Nashville, TN) Thu. March 14, 2013

The Bart Walker Band Album Release

Blues

Nashville Scene Critic's Pick …

Last year, Nashville-based six-string slinger Bart Walker strutted away from the International Blues Competition in Memphis with the coveted award for Best Guitarist. Now he’s celebrating an even better prize: an international record deal for his second album. Waiting on Daylight is a soul-searching collection of 11 songs that ride the edge of blues and rock, helmed by raw-boned roots music producer Jim Gaines. Walker’s path from bluegrass prodigy to Christian rocker to full-opera-scholarship winner to Bo Bice sideman to brawny blues dynamo has followed a surprisingly straight line thanks to his obsessive devotion to craft. So it’s no surprise that the album — from the autobiographical title track (co-written by MVP blues songsmith Gary Nicholson) to numbers that build on the guitar legacies of Duane Allman, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan — is a muscular tour de force. Coming directly after playing two months of sold-out European dates that followed an impressive 300 shows in 2012, Walker is superbly primed for his homecoming.

—Ted Drozdowski