KJ likes to say the luckiest day of his life came before he was even born in Paris, France. That’s because an Irish American family agreed to adopt him on day one; and he fell into a great childhood as a foreign service brat raised, mostly, in East Africa. Growing up, his only link to western culture was listening to Elvis Presley on an old, beat-up transistor radio. The same station played Afro-pop and Congolese music too so his early musical education was eclectic in the extreme. Even today, you’ll never know what he’ll be listening to.
KJ was bitten by the showbiz bug when he was twelve. A local combo needed a mike stand for their vocalist/drummer. KJ was drafted to hold the mike, which he did with admirable steadiness and, immediately thereafter, he ordered his first guitar straight out of the Sears catalog – waiting six long months for it to ship from the States.
He got his first paying gig years later, earning $5 to play acoustic covers in a North Carolina pizza parlor. A young woman in the restaurant that night offered some much-appreciated words of encouragement. A year later, KJ found himself living in Bonn, Germany where, against seemingly impossible odds, he ran into that same woman.
Before long, together with a third American friend, they formed an acoustic trio, Sneaky Elephant, playing on street corners for spare change. They quickly became a popular attraction and soon graduated from the streets to local clubs in Bonn and then around Europe. But, upon return to the United States, Sneaky Elephant found it difficult to make a go of it and disbanded.
KJ found himself in Los Angeles just as the punk and new wave movements were reenergizing the music business. As excited about it as anybody, KJ bought his first electric guitar and joined a band called the Fender Buddies. Despite positive notices in fanzines from London to Tokyo, the Fender Buddies never got traction in the crowded Los Angeles scene and eventually fell apart.
KJ briefly joined another band and then tried a solo project but nothing seemed to feel right. Then, one day in 1984, he finished up a practice session, put his guitar in its case and slid the case under the bed. As it happened, he didn’t take it out again for almost twenty years. When asked why he stopped performing KJ is less than forthcoming, saying only, “I just made a stupid mistake.”
KJ eventually resurfaced in Northridge, California where he started appearing at a local blues jam, finally finding his musical roots again. It was there he found a family of like-minded musicians and an atmosphere of generous encouragement. Gradually, he felt his chops returning and swears he would have been happy just to play that one small club every Sunday night for the rest of his life. But it closed! Alarmed at the idea that his passion for music would be cut off again, just as he was rediscovering it, KJ enlisted some other musicians from the jam and got them to form a band, just so they could keep playing together.
Today, one of those musicians, Carl Bittman, still drums in the KJ Walker Band. Carl hails from Rockaway, New Jersey and is a veteran of CBGB’s and other NYC clubs. The band has seen a succession of bass players. Currently, KJ’s son Graham is sitting in on bass when he’s not working on his own many musical projects. In 2011, Hudson McKoy, from Trinidad and Tobago, by way of Toronto, joined the band as keyboardist. Hudson’s background is Soca (Soul + Calypso) and he’s made a significant contribution to the band’s unique sound. The band has been gigging in and around the Southern California area, playing their enjoyably addictive blend of blues, rock, funk and country – funk’n’country blues! – and picking up new fans at every stop.
Influences? “For me, it all began with Elvis”, recalls KJ, “I was about seven when he was at his peak and I could see he held a spell over lots of people. I didn’t know it then but this was my first introduction to the whole concept of ‘cool’. I didn’t know what it was, exactly, but I had a feeling it had something to do with his guitar. So that’s when I first wanted to play.”
His other influences constitute a who’s who of blues, rock, funk, jazz, country, R&B, hip-hop and every sub-genre under those umbrellas. Ask him to name a few and he’ll cite one for songwriting, one for performance, another for vocals, a fourth for instrumental mastery. Then he’ll name some more. And more.
KJ’s sets are mostly upbeat, designed to get the dead dancing, pausing only to surprise the listener with a haunting ballad here and there. His French, African and Celtic roots, when filtered through his American upbringing, naturally combine into a unique, hybrid sound with one foot solidly planted in the blues. But, KJ is a stylistic wanderer. A prolific songwriter whom critics have compared to Springsteen and Elvis (Costello), KJ allows himself permission to follow a tune or a lyric into whatever new territory it may yearn to go. As a result, listeners may find themselves grooving to an urban funk, then tapping into a country twang, then maybe even singing along to a pop chorus – all blended together in the kind of potent home brew you might find bubbling up from a backwoods still somewhere within that New Orleans/Memphis/Austin triangle.
From dicey beginnings in France to human mike stand in Africa to street busker in Europe to fronting his own band at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip. KJ Walker has quite a story to tell. And it all comes out in his music.
