Vintage Review: Walk The West’s Walk The West (1986)

There’s a new breed of cowboy roamin’ the range these days, pahdner…fierce young men with one foot in the saddle and one foot on the hot asphalt of the city street…six-string guitarslingers, uniquely American artists mixing C&W influences with an undying allegiance towards Rock ‘n’ Roll with a capitol ‘R’, bands spurred on by the success enjoyed by their musical antecedents (such as the ever-amazing Jason & the Scorchers, the still-vital granpappies of the “cow-punk” legacy), bands such as Nashville’s Walk The West.

Walk The West’s debut LP is a dark, smoky slab o’ petroleum by-product, a record that reinforces as well as illustrates the basis for their incredible local popularity. Rich in texture and heavily-laden with the wailing riffs of lead guitarist Will Goleman and vocalist Paul Kirby. Walk The West experiments with a variety and diversity in styles, ranging from the Pettyesque “Backside” to the country-tinged, rollicking “Sheriff of Love,” to the urban-rocking “Living At Night.”

Kirby’s vocals are strong and clear, if appropriately nasal, and the production is almost invisible, never interfering with the music. The result is an enjoyable and solid debut that combines some of the best elements of thirty years of rock music and country influence into one nice, neat, and potent little package. The intensity contained within their music and their sense of roots proves that rock ‘n’ roll lives outside London or Los Angeles. (Capitol Records, released 1986)

Review originally published by The Metro magazine