Review from French Blues Magazine -
Blues & Co.
ATTENTION -- Masterpiece!!!
A new CD from Toby Walker is always an event and a treat.
Be it said that with him one never gets hungry for something new -- he is hardly finished with one album before going to work on another, and always producing something of great quality.
It must be said that Toby could be known not just as a player of traditional blues, but as "Master Toby," an extraordinary musician, both for his exceptional fingerpicking, with a purity and stellar precision, and with his always appropriate and enchanting singing.
With this album he returns us to the roots of blues music, and transports us through 16 splendid blues songs, from Piedmont to Chicago, passing through Texas, and the Delta, and not forgetting to include ragtime from the Smoky Mountains.
It is a magnificent musical voyage to the heart of the deep blues, with traditional arrangements from Mance Lipscomb, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Boy Fuller, Muddy Waters, Bo Carter, and others.
It is a magical journey, with the majority of the album played with acoustic instruments, with one electric track -- "I Got To Love Somebody" by Muddy Waters. Adding spice to this album, Toby is accompanied on nine tracks by his wife, Carol Walker, who proves to be very skillful on the upright bass.
Another feature of this album is that Toby uses a wide variety of vintage guitars -- a 1900 Columbia Parlor Guitar, a 1930 Triolian National, a 1936 Gibson L-00 with an impressive sound, along with many other guitars, all of which give this album a sound of very old blues.
Toby Walker, gives us, once again, a jewel of sensations and purities -- this guy is a magician!
Erick Tonton. Blues & Co.
Order your copy here!