I first ran into Joshua Ray Walker last December, when putting together my 2025 top ten, scouting for a last unusual or underdog inclusion. The cover alone of his album Tropicana was kind of hilarious and yet questionable: Joshua’s a big guy, and he filled the frame with a loud Hawaiian shirt, a parrot on his shoulder, and an umbrella drink in his hand. The album itself was a sort of tropical paradise, or I pictured it unfolding at a gay bar at a Texas beach resort, if there are still such things, as if Jimmy Buffett had gone country fabulous. Country fabulous is Walker: when not on the beach, he bedecks himself in flowers and feathers as well as cowboy hats.
One test I have for music, though it may be somewhat unreliable on a given day, is to play it for my 101-year-old mother. Sometimes, though she’s pretending to be asleep in the corner, she starts swaying and wiggling to the beat. The very best songs by her own lights draw her to her feet and cause her to sway and hula while she smiles. Not only did Tropicana do better on the Ma test than any album last year bar Joshua Hedley, whose Western swing album All Hat is a classic of centenarian dance music, but Walker continues to grow in its capacity to delight The Ancient One. It’s the year of the Joshuas.
I listened to the Walker album closely and repeatedly enough as a dance occasion that it finally dawned on me that the lyrics were shockingly writerly. "Novella, novella," Walker warbled, "you're a short handsome fella." It occurred to me that "Dirty Laundry" wasn't a metaphor, but concerned an actual visit to the laundromat, "watching the suds forgive all I've done." He wore it well and sang it beautifully: "Lady in the corner, she's been around the block. I'm looking for answers, she's looking for her lost sock." The lyric of the last song on the album, "I Hope I Have Fun Dying" was a puzzler, however, and was one of several factors that set me to googling.
Joshua Ray Walker, the data centers tell me, is a cancer survivor, a theme which is all over his great new album Ain't Dead Yet. His pronouns are he/him, that he's "cisgender heterosexual" and that he's "definitely not a woman." It seems to come up, though, as he flies way up into his magnificent yodel range. Or: searches indicate that I'm not the first to wonder about this. But the gendering and body positivity and survivor status are intriguing and feed into the sense that you've entered a different universe, albeit one located in the Texas hill country and arranged with beautiful traditional country precision by a real writer.
Tropicana was a last-minute find or addition, and I hadn't even listened to Walker's first three albums, Wish You Were Here, Glad You Made It, and See You Next Time, which largely consist of songs written in the personae of barflies and down-and-outers. They have a Prine literary quality without a hint of pretension. And I hadn't realized that Tropicana was the second album Walker put out last year. The first, Stuff, is more or less the greatest concept album ever made. Walker sings from the point of view of a bowling ball, perfume ("do you still smell me on your sheets?") and a brick, among others. "I sure love a hot summer day; I was born in a fire, that's just the way I was raised."
The recent Ain't Dead Yet isn't a concept album or a beach vacation, just a delightful set of country songs. I like the instrumental tracks underneath the vocals: traditional with flair, as on "Shoot Me Straight," one of a number that mess about with jazz progressions. There's positivity everywhere, but it comes from facing the darkness constantly, facing the darkness with constancy. "I think I'm ready to try again" he sings. "I'm done waiting around to die." I believe him, or it's impossible to deny it when the 101-year-olds are dancing.
He's evidently been through a lot, and does teach lessons, as on last year's great Lift Heavy Stones (how does that have only 3000 views?) or this year's "Stepping Stones." He can write a sad country song, as on Blue Genes, which also features his killer yodel. But, since he ain't dead yet, Joshua Ray Walker is also up for a party, as he points out again on the hilarious Texas Sober ("don't drink in the daytime, unless you're trying to unwind").
I can't think of a more interesting contemporary artist, or one as fun or complex, which is a pretty devastating combination. He's bringing back in another form for another era the outsider Texas songwriter persona of Townes Van Zandt or Blaze Foley. And he's in the midst of his creative outburst right now, which not everyone can say in 2026.
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @crispinsartwell