By Jessica Waller
“I’m sorta like these old folk singers Willie Nelson and Kristopherson in that I don’t sing great and I’m not the most intelligent—but I am authentic,” said singer-songwriter Sharon “Blu” Walker of Emory, Texas. She is the first artist I wanted to cover for Buddy as I have seen this bold 70-year-old woman playing her bluesy, “heart-hitting” songs in the trenches of east Texas for nearly ten years now, and have always wanted to know her backstory. Much like myself, many listeners have found her captivating as she’s made her name well-known by way of “whiskey and ramblin’” all across east Texas.
Despite the name, Blu says she was born under a yellow blanket, not pink or blue. She says this in regard to gender but it evokes her sound as well, like a sunbeam through pine trees on a deserted road. However, Blu doesn’t pay much mind to pronouns as she’s from an altogether different time.
Raised in Saint Louis, Missouri in the 1950s by a scientist father and artist mother, both of whom subscribed to a rejection of societal conventions, Walker’s freedom and authenticity was nurtured from early on. This freedom was a gift the musician does not take lightly. When Walker first played her songs for her mother, a pianist well-versed in classical music theory, she ruminates warmly on how maternal instincts overcame her dogged practicum as she embraced Walker’s originality with love and encouragement. Though, admittedly, the classical pianist’s knee-jerk reaction to a dissonant chord struck just once, to which Blu simply instructed “just listen.” Advice relevant today more than ever.
While a childhood free of judgment works wonders for artistic pursuits, Walker experienced a much different reaction upon leaving home in the 1960s. Inspired by the abundance of blues greats in Saint Louis at the time, Walker tells of how shortly after entering the downtown scene she had a falling out with a fellow musician when he wanted her to choose domesticity over music. Knowing how the weight of this had crushed her mother, a skilled painter as well as musician, she put two fingers up, “or maybe it was one,” and hitchhiked out of state.
Throughout the 70s, Blu struggled to be heard when she couldn’t quite find her groove in the motion of the era and her originals were never commercial enough to pay the bills. “Shoot, I lived in a chicken coop for a couple years,” she said with a somehow equal measure of humility and bravado. After continually being encouraged to play only covers in line with expectations of the time, Walker closed the case on her guitar and worked in the construction field for the next 30 years. I was most curious how a person so seemingly self-possessed could be silenced, even in oppressive times, but Blu seemed remiss to pinpoint what had caused her 30-year hiatus. “I guess I just wanted to be liked,” she said, unmooring expectation with her trademark authenticity.
At the age of 61, in the aftermath of a torrential divorce, Walker could no longer bear the weight of her silence. She threw out her medications, quit her job, and held a life-altering seance to exercise her demons and resurrect her soul on the hardwood floor of her cabin. It was then that she decided: no more covers and no more wasted years—the only thing that could save her soul was to let it sing. She needed to play her own songs, own her voice and never feel silenced again. Walker had finally obtained the financial, mental, and spiritual freedom it took to pierce the veil and she was ready to pay whatever dues it took to get there; only this time with money instead of her artistic integrity. With her savings she “roadhoused” for years with a band that “got paid even when she made nothing.” This time she found that the new millennium had opened up a space for her androgynous aesthetic and true Blu sound to flow freely. An unmistakable east Texas sound, made up of unvarnished words, gravel vocals and melodious plucking. Blu built her name this time with a vengance, an indomitable soul finding new life within the sacred space of a 12-string Takamine.
Soon after building a name, Blu was driven to give back some of the joy she had found in these noise rooms and built a place for other local music-makers called the East Texas Songwriters Collective. This collective, still going strong today, is Blu’s pet project to strengthen and unite the “troubadours” of the east Texas music circuit This project came to bolster creativity and friendship among many talented artists like Heather Little, Daniel Westmoreland and Meredith Crawford.
Nowadays, Blu plays regularly all throughout Texas, backed by noteworthy muscians like Keith Hass, Darrin Kobeitch and Robb Lindsey on strings and a rotation of percussionists like Marcia Keys, Chase Murdoch and Alan Litt. While other people in her generation are retiring to live out their days in peace and quiet, Walker has turned up louder than ever. She wears her age like a badge of honor, never attempting to conceal the hard-won swagger of years spent proving her worth as a nonbinary artist from long before there was a word for it. Blu has forged her authentic voice, and at long last she refuses to dial it down for anyone or anything. Within the first hour of knowing her, anyone can tell Blu will go out of this world “ramblin’’ as loud as she came in. When asked what still keeps her “roadhousing” at the age of 70 she replied, “All I can say is it’s an important time for all art, but in particular the art of music—for it is in the times of revelation or revolution that music speaks the loudest.”
Read, listen to, and see more about Blu at her official website, https://sharonbluwalker.com.
