At Work: Butch Walker
“We met on Twitter, which is so fucking stupid,” Butch Walker recounts of his initial contact with current pal, producer and tourmate Ryan Adams. “‘Lucky Now’ had just come out as a single [in 2011], and I randomly tweeted, ‘Fuck you for writing that song.’ I meant it as the highest compliment because it’s that good.”
In this age of digital immediacy, Adams was quick to respond and a relationship was born. Flash-forward to the present day and the Georgia- based singer-songwriter is armed with a new Adams-produced LP, Afraid Of Ghosts, along with a slew of tour dates opening for his new musical muse.
While Walker is ecstatic about his new project, the origin of the record stems from an insurmountable loss: Big Butch, Walker’s father, passed away in 2013. The younger Walker describes his dad as a “very hardworking, blue-collar, stubborn, small-town boy.” Big Butch’s health rapidly declined over his last few years, leading Walker to emote privately during the process and shaping what would become the lyrics to his seventh album. “I really had a lot of things I wanted to say,” Walker recalls. “A lot of [the lyrics] describe the feeling of having to move on and look death in the eye.”
Shortly after Big Butch’s passing, the Adams connection came to fruition when the two found themselves staying in the same New York City hotel. “I told him about some new songs and he said, ‘Let’s listen to some of them.’ I played them all and he immediately began thrashing into the songs—ingesting, commenting and critiquing. I loved that.”
The duo holed up in the guitarist’s PAX-AM studio for four days alongside the likes of Johnny Depp (who delivers a heart-wrenching solo on one of the album’s strongest tracks, “Bed On Fire”) and Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould, who unearthed a shared connection with Walker. “He stopped by and heard us working on ‘Father’s Day’ and said, ‘Is this song about your dad?’”
When Walker explained that they were recording on the one-year anniversary of his father’s death, Mould revealed that it was also the two-year anniversary of his own father’s passing that week. “He said, ‘I would love to play on this song.’ He sang these gut-wrenching background harmonies [on ‘Father’s Day’] in the chorus. When I hear them, I can’t not cry.”
