When Joshua Ray Walker received a cancer diagnosis in early 2024, he thought he only had months to live. This led him to contemplate not only his life and what he’s done with it, but his possessions and what would happen to them if he were to perish.
His latest album, Stuff, is the culmination of that pondering. Across 10 songs, the Dallas-based singer breathes life into a variety of inanimate objects ranging from a brick to the scent of perfume on sheets, bowling balls striving for perfect games, and even Barbie dolls eyeing everlasting love. Despite its deeply personal nature, the record leans into universal themes of grief and mourning since we’re all ultimately destined to suffer the same fate.
“We’ve all had someone in our lives die,” he says. “That’s why love and death are go-to topics for most songwriters – they’re two of our most universal concepts.”
With his future uncertain, Walker threw the rule book out for recording Stuff. Teaming up with longtime producer John Pedigo inside his home studio, the duo laid down everything on their own in a week – even instruments like the synth and melodica that Walker had never tinkered with before. The result is the “Sexy After Dark” singer’s most personal, dark, experimental, and hopeful album all rolled into one.
“Growing up everyone wanted to make records in their bedroom, but I never knew anyone with nice enough equipment to actually do it,” says Walker, who’s now stacked up a year’s worth of clean CT scans. “In junior high and high school I remember recording vocals in my friend’s laundry room or sneaking into a friend’s house whose mom had a piano and recording parts on it on the fly. There’s just always been something really fun about trying to make something sound the way we wanted from a sound people wouldn’t expect.”
Ahead of Stuff’s release, Walker spoke with Good Country from inside his van stacked to the gills with merch ahead of a run supporting Molly Tuttle. Our conversation covered his health struggles, the healing nature of writing these songs, experimenting in the studio, and more.
How’d the idea for this album come about?
Joshua Ray Walker: Before I even got sick I had thought about writing a song or album from the perspective of inanimate objects. Once I fell ill, I made a plan with my best friend and producer, John Pedigo, to write a song every week so that at the end of my year [at] home doing treatment I could have 50 new songs. When you’re planning to write that much, it’s easier if you pick a theme.
At the time, I was also starting to do estate planning for myself due to the nature of my advanced cancer. Even though I had multiple family members die where I was the main person who had to deal with their belongings after they passed, it was an eye-opening experience. So somewhere between the inanimate object song idea and thinking about where all my personal belongings would go if I died, I came up with the idea to write a whole album of songs from the perspective of stuff that was left over at an estate sale.
Subconsciously I was feeling like a burden to people. Anytime you’re sick, it’s a lot of effort that your loved ones have to put in, and even though they reassure you that you’re not a burden, it doesn’t stop you from thinking that way. [On this album] I was trying to think about that while projecting onto these items how leftover stuff can be a burden even after its owner is dead and gone.
Were any of the songs on Stuff more difficult to bring to life than others?
There were around 30 different ideas for the actual items, so the ones that got made were the ones that came the quickest since we were in a time crunch to make the record. If it was difficult it just didn’t end up getting written.
That being said, there was definitely some unexpected stuff. Like on “Brick” – I wasn’t necessarily expecting a brick to make it on the record, but it actually ended up being one of my favorites. I’ve always been very nostalgic for physical items as well, which only made it easier to connect with these objects. It made for a fun challenge writing from these perspectives and trying to get people to relate to it or have some emotional response. I’m known for being able to write from a character’s perspective and have been fascinated by how fictional characters can conjure up real emotions. It made me wonder if I could take things a step further and get people to feel something for these fictional objects.
Well, I’d say mission accomplished!
In addition to the concept and lyrical depth of these songs I also adore the sonic direction as well, which pulls from your previous material at times while navigating into pop, electronic, and other territory elsewhere. What motivated you to take that approach?
Because of where I was at with my health when we were conceptualizing the record, I really just wanted to explore some sounds that I’ve always loved and been influenced by, but didn’t make sense for the projects I worked on previously. Since I wasn’t sure how many more records I would be able to make I wanted to have as few limitations on what I was making as possible. If you put yourself in a box it forces you to be pretty creative. The rules were that John and I had to play all the instruments and we could only use ones we already had inside his home studio. It forced us to stretch a bit from our normal production style and was a lot of fun to make. We did it all in a week, locking ourselves in the studio for as many as 14 hours a day to get it all done.
Were there any instruments you played that you hadn’t tinkered with much before, if at all?
I played a lot of the keys, which I’d never really done before.I’d never played synths or melodica before, either. There were also just a lot of weird ambient sounds on the record. At one point we even had a sponge tucked under the bridge of a guitar as I was playing the strings with drumsticks, giving it a dulcimer-esque sound. We also utilized paper clips on ukulele strings to make them rattle, the pull string from a lamp on a cymbal so it would sizzle and random cups and pillows as percussion on the song “Stuff” – we wanted to turn non-instruments into instruments.
One of the songs I love most on Stuff is “Barbie,” a song about playing with dollhouses that contains some of the best one-liners on the whole record like, “…Do you want to play house with me and practice making babies?” Tell me about how it came to be?
Like you said, it’s a song about kids playing house put onto the characters of Barbie and G.I. Joe. It’s Barbie looking out her window and seeing G.I. Joe get played with in the sandbox and pining for this love connection. For one reason or another, G.I. Joe makes it into the house one day and they have the chance to run off in her Jeep and canoodle. When you’re a kid you don’t even really know what that means, but if you watch kids play with dolls at some point they’re going to make them kiss. They know people fall in love, but they don’t understand how or why – they’re just acting out what they see their parents doing. Such a big part of childhood is trying to figure out what all that means, so I thought it’d be funny to have Barbie trying to work that out for herself in this song.
Sounds like it has the potential to lead to a lot of conversations about the birds and the bees between parents and their kids. [Laughs]
Another song I want to ask you about is “Bowling Ball,” which features by far your lowest vocal register on the entire album. Tell me about your decision with that along with what made you want to bring a bowling ball of all things to life?
I don’t bowl much anymore, but used to be in a league when I was a kid. There’s a local bowling alley in my neighborhood called Jupiter Lanes that I’ve been very nostalgic for since I had a birthday party there and won a Johnny Bravo bowling ball when I was eight. [John Pedigo] is also a good bowler who grew up with a mom who worked at a bowling alley. We both know more about bowling than the average person, which allowed us to write a song from the ball’s perspective pretty well.
It’s got the best beginning, middle, and end to any song on the record, because it’s one short story about someone getting ready to finally bowl a perfect game. Only a frame away they throw too hard and pick up a chip or crack in the ball return, leading to a “put me in coach” or Rudy moment. They’re contemplating whether to walk over to the pro shop to get a new ball to finish out their first perfect game or continue on with ole faithful that got you there.
In terms of the vocal delivery, that’s pitch-shifted down with a Whammy pedal – I simply don’t have that kind of range on my own. That’s also something you’re just not allowed to do on a typical country record, which is another rule I guess we broke.
I gotta know more about this Johnny Bravo bowling ball!
I got it from that bowling league I mentioned, which was sponsored by Cartoon Network. At the end of the league, if you placed in the top three you were able to pick out a custom ball with whatever Cartoon Network character you wanted on it. The color was called galaxy, which is this purple kind of nebula-like color with Johnny Bravo etched into the side. It was awesome!
I remember choosing between him and Dexter, but I wound up choosing Johnny because of my dad, who would jokingly do an impression of Johnny Bravo’s voice that I loved. I also just related to that character and had a blonde pompadour haircut of my own.
You mentioned the song being about the journey to bowling a perfect game. Have you ever tossed one?
Definitely not. [Laughs] The best I’ve ever done is in the 220 range. I peaked at bowling when I was around nine years old. If I were to go bowling right now I would not do well at all.
With how much you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone on Tropicana and Stuff, what direction do you see taking next, musically?
I have a lot of projects, but only thought I’d have a couple years to make them, so I focused on jotting all of them down since I tend to see records as entire concepts, not just collections of songs. I have an autobiographical project I’m wrapping up now, but I also have a western trilogy on my mind along with a bluegrass record and even something a bit heavier.
Hopefully I’ll get to keep making records and all of these projects will come to light. Even though my music sounds different record to record they’re all still country in my mind. I’m always trying to make country music, whether it sounds like that or not.
What has Stuff and everything you’ve experienced the last couple of years taught you about yourself?
I hold onto things a lot less now than I used to. But in general, I just want to spend more time doing things I like with people that I like. This health scare has taught me to make music however I feel like making it and to do it as much as I can while I still can.
Lead image courtesy of the artist.
