When you are sitting in a room and somebody does something or says something and a thought comes, an idea or a melody - you have to just grab it while it's there because it will go away.
Joe Louis WalkerAt the school where I went you were able to check out instruments like you check out a library book, if your parents signed for you and vouched for you. Then after you had it for a little while you could decide if you were interested in taking lessons or you could also get your own gear. Or you could turn that instrument in for another one and try something else. So that's how I got my hands on the guitar.
Joe Louis WalkerI know that for category purposes, people have to lump certain artists in with genre that they make their name or their bones in. Nobody can tell me that Taj Mahal is pure blues. Nobody can tell me that Mike Bloomfield was pure blues. It was a lot of other things going on as well.
Joe Louis WalkerNowadays blues in particular has a wide, wide, wide, wide net of everything that's called blues. I think if somebody's coming to it in the last ten years or whatever, or even fifteen years, what their experience is what is called blues is different from mine. I have to expand my range of what's been called the blues. I think somebody who's new to it would have to go back and to see what is called blues now, where it came from. If that makes sense.
Joe Louis WalkerSome of the best advice I was given was that me doing a bad version of me is better than me doing a good version of someone else.
Joe Louis WalkerMaybe in my personal life, but as far as my career, I've been offered some humongous things in my career and didn't take them. I look back and think, oh man, well I'd have been well off monetarily wise, but artistic wise I don't know. I'd have to say, personally, in my personal life, yeah, but in my musical life, on twenty-twenty hindsight I would say just take the good with the bad.
Joe Louis Walker