What could a recording artist who has sold millions of albums, performed for sellout crowds and racked up hit after hit possibly have left to prove? For Clay Walker, the answer is nothing. And everything. Interesting, then, that a singer and songwriter who has been one of country’s most consistent hit-makers over the last decade is preparing for the most important release of his career. Could it be because the Texan finds himself working with a new record company after the abrupt closure of his previous label? Or is it the deepening maturity of a young man (33) who has experienced enough of life to realize who he is…but how much he still doesn’t understand?
Appropriately, the answers are found in the music. A Few Questions, Clay Walker’s seventh studio album, his first for RCA Records, will arrive in late summer. It will be preceded in the spring with the title track as the first single. In many ways this launch is a fresh start, though an unexpected one.
Walker was supposed to have taken his remarkable career to even greater heights with his last release, the overlooked Say No More. “I was on Giant my whole career,” Walker says. “The last record we did the label folded two weeks after it was released. That stung me. But I’m proud of the music we made and that’s the only way I’ll look back.”
And why not when you’re speaking of four platinum and two gold albums that sold more than eight million copies combined? Among Walker’s 11 No. 1 singles are “Live Until I Die,” “If I Could Make A Living, “This Woman And This Man,” “Then What” and the most recent, “Chain Of Love.”
Walker’s accomplishments don’t end there. He is the only artist to have one of his songs included five years consecutively in Billboard’s year-end Top 10 country list. He’s also been one of country’s top 10-grossing touring acts several times.
Those achievements, however, are now pushed aside. Walker knows he must establish himself with this new album, with a new support team around him, and with renewed focus as an artist. “I haven’t had a new single at radio in a couple of years,” he says, explaining the extended hiatus between single releases by rattling off the untimely demise of Giant, sorting through deal offers and recording a new album. “But now I’m on the best label in town. Whether I fumble or not is up to me.”
Certainly sure-handed to this point in his career, Clay Walker has, if anything, tightened his artistic grip. He has become secure in himself—accepting of his strengths while mindful of his challenges. That sense of self has instructed his view of the world and continues to shape his musical journey.
