Joshua Ray Walker Releases Tearful Ode To His Late Father, “Flash Paper”

Talk about getting me in my feelings on a Wednesday.

Joshua Ray Walker is quickly making his rise to stardom in country music.

His unique sound, and emotional storytelling can have us all getting sad drunk on a Friday night. But the other hand, he can throw down a boot stomin’, honky tonk heater with the best of them. Either way, the man makes you wanna twist one off.

And now, he’s back at it again, as he just released “Flash Paper,” an ode to his late father.

He went in-depth about the song and the passing of his father:

“My dad had a four-year battle with lung cancer and passed away in November.

Before he died, he gave me a cigar box full of notes and cards and lots of random little things, like a ribbon from a reading competition from when he was in elementary school. He also put in a flash drive with a video he’d recorded, which he told me not to watch until Christmas.

My dad was from East Texas and kind of a good-old-boy type, and the video was really vulnerable for him. Some of it was similar to things he’d said over the years, as he dealt with his illness and the two of us grew closer, but that song’s mostly about me wishing I’d heard more of those things while he was still here.”

As you can imagine, the song was incredibly difficult for Walker to write:

“That was definitely the hardest one for me to write on the album—I broke down multiple times in the process.”

He also discussed the pros and cons of working on his new album, See You Next Time, while his house was undergoing major reconstruction after a busted water-pipe:

“Half my house was torn apart, and I was living at an extended-stay hotel, but I couldn’t get any writing done there.

I didn’t want to move back the recording sessions, so I ended up going back to my house late at night and staying up for hours to finish some songs.

I remember thinking at the time that it was pretty depressing—writing at 4 a.m. in this torn-apart house with no furniture and no heat in the middle of winter—but looking back, I think it’s good that I was forced to be totally alone and just think.”

See You Next Time officially drops on October 8th, and from what we’ve seen so far, this has the potential to be Walker’s greatest work to date.

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