From The Big Easy to The Pearl of the Antille

Blues-fusion singer Seth Walker was wandering through the streets of Havana when a painting caught his eye—a man standing under an umbrella, rain falling on his head from inside his supposed protection. Fidel Castro had just died, and music was still banned across Cuba as a way to pay respect to the fallen leader. The reason Walker had come to the island was suddenly nixed. The whole world felt inside out, he remembers.

“The image in that painting just burned into me, and I immediately wrote this poem to it,” Walker says two years later. Soon enough, he’d paired the poem with a slippery bass riff he’d recorded at an Asheville, N.C. soundcheck months earlier—and the knotty groove “Inside” was born. Walker knew he was on to something new.

With his tenth album, Are You Open?, the North Carolina-bred musician has added a deliciously different twist to the rootsy, rhythmic, folk-influenced sound he’s been cultivating for two decades. And he’s got two musical cities to thank for it: New Orleans and Havana.

Walker had already spent much of his long career living in two other legendary music towns, Austin and Nashville. However, his 2016 Cuba trip and a move to the Big Easy shortly after, inspired him to craft a new, jubilant, boogie-down, bass-heavy groove sound—complete with the most heartfelt lyrics of his career.

“My environment has always affected me deeply,” says Walker. “I bleed into them, and they bleed into me. And being open to that is the responsibility of any artist.”

Walker released “Spirits Moving,” the first finished product from his New Orleans stay, as a stand-alone single in 2017. It was a key clue that his sound was evolving. The track danced out of the studio, with shuffling percussion from jazz drummer Johnny Vidacovich, keyboard wizardry courtesy of John Medeski and Walker singing, “Feels so good, I feel like jumping for joy/ Spirit moving through me, Lord!”

“I remember Vidacovich pointing to the syncopated bassline and saying, ‘You see that push right there? That’s what makes it not country. That’s what makes it New Orleans,’” says Walker. “That rhythm, that syncopation, is everywhere in the city. Not just in the music. If you can’t get inspired there, you ain’t breathin’.”

Armed with a slew of new songs, Walker returned to Nashville to lay down Are You Open? with The Wood Brothers’ Jano Rix serving as his producer. They recorded at home and took their time, letting the warm, welcoming tunes unfold naturally. From the liquid guitar of “Hard Road” to the tiptoeing bass of “Giving It All Away,” the men built the songs on simple grooves. The cover art—an abstract self-portrait Walker painted—adds to the humble, exciting exploration of Are You Open?

“It’s important to ask the question because we close ourselves off so much. We live in our little bubbles, our velvet ruts,” says Walker. “But you’ve got to stay open. It’s a big ol’ world out there.”

This article originally appears in the March 2019 issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more, subscribe here.