“I always knew it was coming, I just really didn’t see it coming at 33,” said Joshua Ray Walker of his cancer diagnosis.
Seven of Walker’s eight grandparents had at the very least suffered from the disease, and his father died from it. His was stage three colon cancer, diagnosed in 2024.
“If I hadn’t had appendicitis, it probably would’ve taken me a little longer to find I had a mass in my colon,” said Walker. “Silver lining, I guess.”
There was still frustration, most clearly expressed on “Blue Genes:” “I got unlucky in my veins/so I’ll be the last to carry my name.” Elsewhere on the album, Walker mentions “wondering how I’d pay for all the bad hospital food”
“I do have terrible eyesight, I have terrible teeth, there’s lots of disease in my family, mental and physical. As far as the gene pool goes, I feel like I got the short end of the stick,” said Walker. “And that’s not something very nice to put into words when you still have family members who are living. But it’s how I was feeling in that moment.”
Needing to stay home in Texas was one of those silver linings.
“It was the first time in my adult life that I wasn’t travelling. I put a lot of that energy I would’ve had on the road into writing and producing records,” said Walker. “It was a trying time for sure, but a big change for me having so much time at home to see family and friends.”
After two surgeries and a first round of treatment, doctors found a mass on a scan of Walker’s lung. An 80 percent chance of recovery dropped to 14.
“There was a 50-50 chance whether I’d live for two years,” said Walker. “As someone who’s had multiple family members go through hospice for cancer, if they tell you that you have two years, maybe you have one good year. One of the things I did was make a one year timeline to finish all the creative projects I had in the works.”
Ain’t Dead Yet is the final creative project from that list. It’s Walker’s most frank and personal release to date, one that touches on mental health, difficult conversations, and harsh realities. He looks back on his life, sometimes with tremendous gratitude. Though the cover looks like a scene from his funeral, Walker is still doing well two years later. Doctors discovered the mass on his lung was benign and he’s now in remission. He’ll tell you he’s better off than before he had cancer.
“I’ve dealt with mental illness, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, pretty heavy stuff throughout my life. Whenever I got sick, I feel like I really showed up for myself unquestionably,” said Walker. “I was going to fight to be here, and that was kind of a revelation for me as someone who thought about checking out early. I had my perfect opportunity to just let it happen. Whenever the decision is taken out of your hands, it puts it into perspective.
The title track captures the joy of that revelation, “I think I’m ready to try again,” Walker sings, looking back on mistakes and feeling confident in a new path forward. Walker came up with a traditional country sound, sometimes telling tragic stories of sex workers and sometimes cracking jokes. He revealed a slightly weird side on a covers album, making country songs out of thoroughly unexpected tracks like Lizzo’s “Cuz I Love You” Yet this was the first time a Joshua Ray Walker album seemed to lean into an easy feeling and a softer sound. The harrowing journey is still documented on some tracks, but leading with that deep exhale completely changes the way harder moments hit. There’s still emotional investment, but not a sense of dread.
In a world where Walker didn’t recover, “Chasing Sunsets” would have been his most memorable and haunting track. “Memory lane is a freeway now,” he sings, describing his life flashing before his eyes. The high notes and regrets give a sense of his unease with his situation, but his decision to end the refrain on a line that doesn’t rhyme with anything is the most power: “When it’s my time I hope that I won’t feel alone.” In choosing to present that feeling that way, Walker highlighted it as uniquely real and painful. This is a man whose job it is to package complex emotions in neat couplets absolutely refusing to make this one thought more digestible. “Shoot Me Straight” is similarly blunt, asking people to say their goodbyes to him instead of dancing around the subject. Both those songs are clearly written from the perspective as someone about to pass, but later in the album, Walker is even upfront about the fact that the diagnosis that changed his outlook on life was not all positive: “Some people say all’s well that ends well/some people must have never been through hell.”
The most powerful decision Walker made was choosing to end the album, that last piece of art that would have served as a farewell, on a slightly older single in “Thank You For Listening.” It’s a quite genuine expression of gratitude to his audience, and in a way to his journey. After finding out he’d get better, Walker decided to stick to his original one year plan. It paid off more than artistically. A line from the album seems to have rung true: “If this were my final curtain call/I’d have no regrets at all”
“I got engaged, took care of my mom, got a lot of art made,” said Walker. “If that had been the last good year, I feel like I did a pretty great job.”
Despite being a critically acclaimed songwriter and possessing a powerful voice, Walker still seems in awe that people keep showing up to support him.
“I really appreciate the people who have given me the opportunity to do what I got to do. I think ‘thank you’ is a pretty good way to end anything,” said Walker. “I’m shocked I get to do any of this. I played on the street for years so I could get gigs playing to no one in dive bars. I’m going to sell out a show in the arctic circle on this tour. Just a kid that grew up playing on the streets in Dallas. The fact that anyone listens just blows my mind.”
If discovering that he truly wanted to live was Walker’s most important revelation, the whole experience of making a short term plan was a clear second. He described a life of making goals for at least ten years down the line, touring 250-300 days a year in order to build his dream career.
“That was the first time I took an inventory of my life where the goals were short,” said Walker. “I realised the life I wanted was really obtainable, it was similar to the life I had. I just needed to do more things I love with the people I love and less time doing things I don’t like doing with people I don’t like doing them with. That seems like such a simple realisation, but getting told there wasn’t a lot of time left really put that into perspective. My threshold for things I don’t want to do was so high because we’re all working toward this payoff.”
There will be some permanent changes in Walker’s life. Though he’s on a ‘victory lap’ tour at the moment, including a date in London I’ll be attending, Walker indicated that he’d like to maybe only spend 150 days a year on the road. On the title track, he bemoans that he “worked myself half to death.” Though he said he and his fiancé navigated long distance fairly well, it’s not the way he wants to live forever. Walker’s even revisited his declared intent from “Blue Genes” to never have children.
“Circumstances have changed since the song was written. Neither of us are in a rush, but it’s not off the table. It didn’t change my mind as much as I could be persuaded,” he said. “If I’m gonna do it, I want to make sure that I’m present. At this point in my career, that would be impossible. I know plenty of great musicians who are great parents and are gone a lot, so they seem to pull it off. I just can’t imagine how I would at this point.”
With the last of his three cancer tapes complete, Walker is about to embark on a creative chapter that didn’t factor into his previous plan. His intention to tour less for a healthy work-life balance never seemed to enter his thinking before the cancer. Which is to say, things he couldn’t previously imagine are well within his reach.
Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Joshua Ray Walker and the songs we discussed, starting with “Ain’t Dead Yet,” which generates its happiness from the fact things almost wound up so sad. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live alternate Wednesdays at 8am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://www.joshuaraywalker.com for more.
Country Pocket 