Album Review – Joshua Ray Walker’s “Ain’t Dead Yet”

Honky Tonk (#510.2) and Progressive Country (#564.5) on the Country DDS.

Even before Joshua Ray Walker stared into the abyss of his own mortality, he possessed an uncommon connection to the emotional rivers that ebb and flow through our lives, and how to render those experiences into song. Then he sings those songs with a deftness nearing the angelic, allowing the stories and messages to stir the inner soul of his captive audience, resulting in an experience difficult to impossible to achieve through any other conventional means.

After his Cancer diagnosis in 2023 and subsequent battle, Walker could have met his brush with mortality with anger, darkness, morbidity, even resentment at his circumstances. Instead, it’s been almost the exact opposite. Walker has been expressing gratefulness, gratitude, humor, and dare we even say a sense of happiness and contentment, even before he knew he would come out on the other end with the “all clear” from doctors. Beyond his music, Joshua Ray Walker’s attitude through the whole thing has been quite inspiring.

But on the music specifically, Walker has only continued to meet or exceed the expectations he set with his first trilogy of albums, Wish You Were Here (2019), Glad You Made It (2020), and See You Next Time (2021). Those records looked to sketch out the characters one might encounter at a honky tonk. The trilogy Walker has released to chronicle the Cancer years started with the immensely entertaining Tropicana, which was Josh’s beach song/country radio project done in part for its levity. Then he released the rather avant-garde concept album Stuff told from the perspective of material objects left behind after someone’s death.

Ain’t Dead Yet is where Walker puts all the frivolous fun and experimentation to the side (at least for the most part), and gets down to the exploration and expression of the very real lived experience of facing what at one point was basically a terminal diagnosis. Sometimes he sings about it directly. Sometimes it’s only alluded to. But from diagnosis to the ultimate triumphant resolution is the through line of this record.

Walker has always been willing to walk outside the lines of country for a song or two. In fact he did a whole record of chick covers called What Is It Even? in 2023, exploring his incredible range, both in vocal ability, material, and influence. On Ain’t Dead Yet, he is more loyal to what the song wants first as opposed to genre. At times this means making music that sounds more progressive than what fits in the traditional country canon. Yet for large portions of this album, he continues to serve up super twangy honky tonk tracks slathered with steel guitar that assure you he is still most certainly country, and committed to the sound.

On the subject of sound issues though, one concern the album presents comes through in some of the drums tracks that feel a little too compressed on the album. At times the vocals feeling a little too buried. The radio fade on “Stepping Stone” also feels awkward. You definitely wouldn’t call Ain’t Dead Yet a “rough” record. But it does feel like another run through mixing and mastering might have made for a more solid-sounding project.

But the playing on the record is darn near perfect, as is Joshua Ray Walker’s voice, which is no worse for the wear after his health battles, including gracing us once again with yodels and those high “ooh’s” that have the hairs on the back of your neck standing up, and/or goosebumps breaking out across your arms.

The reason Joshua Ray Walker’s diagnosis gripped us all with fear is how it required us to ponder not having an opportunity to experience an album like Ain’t Dead Yet. Walker might remain independent, if not outright underground in the music universe. But his talent, his voice, his writing, and his his spirit soar so far beyond the corporeal plane. As he sings in the full band version of his song “Thank You For Listening,” “If this were my final curtain call, I’d have no regrets at all.” But we’re all beyond elated he remains with us, and be able to extend his catalog well into the future.

8.4/10

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Stream/Purchase Ain’t Dead Yet

Song Reviews:

1. Ain’t Dead Yet

The title track sets the table for the album, allowing the audience to calibrate their brains, while Joshua Ray Walker has some things to get off his chest, and others to celebrate now that he’s come out victorious on the other side of what could have been a catastrophic prognosis. “Ain’t Dead Yet” is a fine song, but frankly the writing gets bested and rather resoundingly by subsequent tracks.

2. Shoot Me Straight

This is the kind of super fun, up-tempo song that will get you a speeding ticket if you’re not careful. Nobody better kvetch about horns in a country song when it comes out like this. The idea was to make a song that’s so frenetic, it threatens to fly off the handle, and that’s what “Shoot Me Straight” accomplishes.

Though Walker never comes right out and says it and instead relies more on indirect inferences, the “shoot me straight” command feels like it was inspired from doctors looking over charts and scans, and giving Walker their diagnoses.

3. Chasing Sunsets

This song very well could have been included on Josh’s 2025’s beach album Tropicana, and perhaps was supposed to be originally. It’s a beach song both in its writing, and in the way a sweet, rising melody meets the chorus. At the same time, the song does speak to seeking out memorable moments and reflecting back on ones lost, so it works within the Ain’t Dead Yet concept. The line “Memory lane is a freeway now,” hits hard knowing Joshua Ray Walker’s story.

4. Outlaw

“Every hat’s a cowboy hat if it’s sittin’ on my head, like every girl’s a cowgirl if she’s laying in my bed,” is one hell of a line for a country song. “Outlaw” is also one hell of an Outlaw country song. But please don’t fall for the idea that our thoughtful songwriter from Dallas has turned into a braggadocios turd on this track. You must read the sarcasm between the lines. But that doesn’t make “Outlaw” any less fun.

5. Capital Letters

Rendered in an alt-country sound, “Capital Letters” feels like the most powerful and propulsive moment of the entire album, however you want to interpret it. Without the aid of explanation, one could take it as a commentary on the tendency of some to go ALL CAPS on social media or in comments sections, or figuratively raise their voices in a way that strips the humanity out of interactions by inserting arrogance and judgement in the place of civility.

But according to Walker himself, the song was inspired by both his grandpa (RIP) and State Fair Records co-founder Trey Johnson (RIP), who supported Joshua greatly. He feels they still inspire him from beyond, including with his songwriting specifically.

6. Texas Sober

Joshua Ray Walker pokes a little fun, and offers some commentary on the often mutable and arbitrary rules of “sobriety” these days, taking a play off of “California sober” (marijuana only) to explore how sobriety native to the Lone Star State might render itself, or not. Beyond the clever nature of the song, “Texas Sober” is just an entertaining little country track.

7. Blue Genes

In a vulnerable and expressive piece of writing, Walker explains why he’s no fan of procreation, and plans for his bloodline to end with himself. Though many of the reasons he gives are scientific and delivered in clever twists of the double helix, the song is really about exploring the inferiority complex even the most confident of us feel during our lowest moments. Then the song is graced with Walker’s yodel and some really great steel guitar, resulting in a standout track on the record.

8. Stepping Stones

This is a song about appreciating life as it happens, because as Joshua Ray Walker knows, it can be fleeting. This song does not feature the strongest writing from Walker, but it does highlight that beyond all his other talents, he has an easy knack for finding the right melody for a song, and one that accentuates his vocal strengths.

9. Some People

Walker takes some time from his ruminations on life and mortality to explore the gulf between the have’s and the have not’s, and how perspective plays such an important role in how one sees this gulf, or doesn’t, and how and why it exists. Joshua dresses it all up in what sounds like a light and easy country track, complete with twin fiddles.

10. Thank You For Listening

This is the full band version of a song Joshua Ray Walker originally released acoustically as the title track to a 2024 album that also included acoustic versions of many of his biggest songs to date. It was the first thing Walker released after revealing his Cancer diagnosis. This strongly country version comes with plenty of steel guitar, even a little mandolin, and a half-time twist to really separate it from the acoustic rendering that will have few complaining how they’ve heard this song before.


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