PHILLIP WALKER "GOING BACK HOME" Source: Living Blues Magazine Date: 05/2007 Writer: David Whiteis

Louisiana-born, Texas-raised, California-seasoned Phillip Walker (featured in LB#188) has worked with everyone from Roscoe Gordon through Johnny Shines to Clifton Chenier over the course of his career. He’s also, of course, compiled an impressive catalog of solo outings, and in so doing ensured himself an honored niche in the postwar Gulf-Coast-to-West-Coast blues pantheon.
   
Here Walker and his bandmates—including guitarist Rusty Zinn, bassist Jeff Turmes, and drummer Richard Innes, along with a stalwart crew of guests on various tracks—invoke some of the diverse regional styles Walker has immersed himself in over the years. Honey Stew, a recent creation by producer Randy Chortkoff, sounds as if it could have emanated from a backstreet juke in ’50s-era West Memphis (Turmes’ tub-thumping bass is a retro marvel); Walker updates Percy Mayfield’s Lying Woman with a dose of East Bay funk, maintaining the song’s West Coast pedigree while remaking it in a newer image; harpist Al Blake’s Sweet Home New Orleans is actually a remake of Big Bill Broonzy’s venerable Key To The Highway theme, on which Walker’s vocals summon an unforced but gripping melancholy and Blake’s harp melds the influences of Little and Big Walter. Blackjack, a dark-hued meditation on fate in Brother Ray’s hands, gains a new, anguished intensity from Walker’s choked vocals and linear, obsessively forward-thrusting guitar lines. Frankie Lee Sims’ Walking With Frankie, set to a toned-down but propulsive Hookeresque boogie, concludes things on a rollicking, irreverent note.
   
Few bluesmen could pull off a set this eclectic that nonetheless holds together so tightly. And what holds it together, along with the spot-on musicianship of the band, is Walker’s own indelible combination of technical mastery, deep blues feeling, and unerring taste.