Seth Walker Isn’t Worried About His Worries 

“I’ve never seen worry accomplish anything… so I decided not to do it.” – Willie Nelson

Whether you’re a green musician or a seasoned veteran with years of releases, heeding the musings of the legendary Willie Nelson is a wise idea. Nelson’s take on eliminating worry is the mindset and theme for crooner Seth Walker’s twelfth album Why The Worry. 

Walker ingested Nelson’s mantra far beyond the eleven songs on the album. He made it part of his personal and professional core. The results are profound allowing Walker to find a deeper, broader sound he’s never reached in his bountiful career.  

Shining examples see Walker grab a unique sounding percussive guitar to drive Al Green’s Take Me to the River into unexplored territory. Supernatural Thing expands Walker’s realm and reach into world music with a perfectly balanced chill vibe born from his worry free approach. Midway Girl and Somewhere Out There’s newfound pace allow Walker to explore dreamy, ripe, flavor infused sounds paired perfectly with his autobiographical lyrics about lost loves and past mistakes. 

The album is bookmarked between a duo of covers of The Same Love That Made Me Laugh and I Must Be in a Good Place Now. Walker turns to the king of chill J.J. Cale for another pair of covers… Hey Baby and Magnolia. His vocals and pace are so similar to Cale, it’s haunting. An incredible nod to one of the most overlooked and underappreciated musicians ever.  

Despite delving into deeper territories, Why The Worry is full of Walker’s vintage and unmistakable vocal/guitar blend. His country-funk homage to his North Carolina home Up on the Mountain keeps the Walker sound while the lyrics about moving from city life to the country to reduce your worries sustains the theme of the album.  

It’s those same Carolina mountains Walker lives where Hurricane Helene unleashed apocalyptic devastation in late 2024. Nearby Asheville was nearly wiped off the map. Walker who sat down for a wide ranging interview with Slide&Banjo begins by discussing how nature’s wrath outside his window impacted his life and almost the fate of Why The Worry. 

“It was harrowing. I live in Fairview which is twenty minutes up the hill from Asheville. There’s a lot of creeks and rivers that converge in those mountains. Luckily my house is up on a hill so I didn’t get much flood or tree damage. The creek I live on swole up so high. There were cars and trees coming down. It took out every bridge. Right down the street from me was devastation.” 

“Of course, I’ve never experienced anything like that.” Walker adds. “We were without power for six weeks. The bridge stranded fifty houses. It was the only way in or out. We couldn’t get out for six or seven days. One thing I discovered. We all would meet where the bridge used to be. There were all walks of people. Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians. Half man, half goat from up on the top of the mountain. We all helped each other out. My landlord had a generator and a well. We would pump water down to the street. We all came together. It was reaffirming we are a lot more alike than different.” 

With an unimaginable reality staring him in the face, Walker came very close to shelving his unfinished album. Instead, he turned to friend Oliver Wood who co-wrote the title track Why The Worry for some sage advice. “I was almost ready not to release this album. After the hurricane, I was like I don’t know if I have the steam to put it all together. Raise the money, promote it, tour behind it. Oliver helped me take our own advice. Worrying isn’t going to fix the hurricane or its damage. There’s a service and communal part in this music. That realigned me to release it.” 

Working with producers Jano Rix and Brook Sutton (who also engineered the album), Why The Worry is a well thought out and placed collection of covers and originals that perfectly encapsulates Walker’s life on stage and off. His attention to detail pays off from start to finish. “I’m one of these guys that likes an album to flow. I’m old school with sequencing and trying to paint a whole picture. As I was listening, I randomly put in I Must Be in a Good Place Now, which had never found a home on an album. I thought it was the perfect send off for this set of songs. Going from the angst of Same Love through ending with Good Place Now.” 

“It was never I’m going to do five covers and six originals or whatever. These records are a snapshot of where I was at the time. Those were the songs I was singing. Those were the songs that moved me. I didn’t think any more about it other than that. If it feels good to me, then it is good. That’s the inspiration on why I chose those covers. They lend themselves to a delivery that I naturally have. My aim was to take those great songs and put my spin on them.” 

As he did with his previous album, I Hope I Know, Walker hit the studio without much of a plan or direction he wanted to take musically. He muses, “It didn’t take long for themes of space, openness, and a free-flowing pace to begin to take shape. Oddly enough, there was no real thinking. There was no conceptual idea. No preconceived notions about it. Honestly, we just got in the studio and were just banging some stuff around. I didn’t even have all the songs fully developed. The band and I just kinda almost fell backwards into the sound. It’s a relaxed feel, and the songs started to…we discovered and started to see this as a kind of a vibe. One we haven’t touched on before. The songs started to roll from there.” 

Walker landed on Bill Wither’s The Same Love That Made Me Laugh a song he’s been covering for ages to open the album. He admits, his longtime favorite almost didn’t make the cut. “That was a last addition to put on the record. I had another song we mixed and everything called Found in the Dark. It has a slow blues kind of thing.” 

Like the opener, the title track Why The Worry co-written with Wood went through several changes before Walker took his own advice, stopped worrying and let the song find itself. “We wrote it at the studio in Nashville. We originally wrote it in a different groove. It was a ska groove. Kind of like a We Got This or a Tomorrow groove. We were in the studio trying a song called Roots in the Dirt. I was listening to the playback and going I love the sound of this groove and music, but it’s not Roots in the Dirt. All of a sudden it clicked. That’s the Why The Worry groove. Then the light bulb went off. Ding. That’s how the song winded its way into being. It’s a mantra I kept coming back to.” 

Regarding the country funk filled Up on the Mountain, Walker exclaims, “It’s absolutely autobiographical. I’d come off the road or just come out of the weeds of my mind. There’s so much noise and chatter. When I was writing this tune, if I wasn’t up on that peaceful mountain, I wanted to get there. I channeled those images. I’ve lived in the big cities, New York, New Orleans, Nashville. Now I’m up on this peaceful place. I kept trying to channel that feeling of being trapped in the hustle and bustle and wanting to get my ass to the mountain. It’s got a Leon Russell country, or The Band’s Up on Cripple Creek kind of vibe. 

Getting Ready, let Walker work with a special musician. It’s a straightforward ballad. Still, it serves as another example of Walker finding depth in the basics. “That song features my dad on the cello on the bridge. I was just messing around singing these tunes. That one seemed to be an introspective moment on the record. I like the idea of I’m not ready but I’m getting ready.” 

Walker continues, “With Take Me to River, I was at my house in Fairview talking to my buddy. We were either talking about the tune or Al Green in general. I picked up my guitar and it’s a good thing I never learned the song. I started messing around with this groove and thought that’s cool. When we got in the studio, that was the first tune we cut. That sound served as a blueprint for the whole record. How it came to be. The space and amount of air I was singing with. I sang really quiet. I remember I listened back in the control room and was like ok, whatever that is, I want to do a lot more of that. I’m really happy where that track came out. I used a rubber bridge stella guitar that I had never touched. It has zero sustain so it makes you play differently.  It’s almost like a West African desert blues approach to playing blues. I tried to channel some of that.”   

Walker and crew’s laissez-faire attitude allowed the album to explore sounds and rhythms never heard in his decades long career. “Supernatural Thing was a later addition.” Walker remembers. “I pulled from Paul Simon. I watched the documentary about the making of Graceland. He went down to South Africa. Had no songs or lyrics. He just recorded all this instrumental music. That is how the supernatural thing came. It was me Jano and Brook. We cut this long wholesome groove. As I started messing with it, the supernatural thing channeled itself.” 

“With Midway Girl, co-writer Ed Jurdi is a friend who lives in Asheville. So, we’re neighbors.” Walker reflects. “The song has a feeling of suspension in the lyrics. Caught between what I could and couldn’t be. That suspended feeling of the lyric informed the music. It’s only two chords that bounce between one and four. You’re constantly in this suspended place. That song definitely means a lot to me personally. The lyrics as well are from a personal place I was in when I wrote it. The music behind it is completely different. These sounds just showed up.” 

“In Somewhere Out There, the way the last chord of the song dissipates and goes into the first chord of Magnolia, I really like the way it sounded. The groove, when we originally recorded it was a swing or dixie jazz kind of feel. Jano who co-produced the album came up with the half time feel. There’s a reggae kind of thing. Definitely a world beat.” 

Walker’s wraps up his deep dive discussing his magical pair of J.J. Cale covers that elevate Why The Worry to its highest point. “When we were messing with those tunes, I almost subconsciously channeled his unhurried delivery. Then I was like let’s pay homage to the man himself. Originally, we had Hey Baby cut. I wasn’t planning on putting two J.J. Cale songs on the album. Then I started listening to Magnolia and was like this track has got to go on there. It feels like it belongs as one of the last two songs at the end of the record. Both songs have such a simple melody. He’s a master of not wasting a word or note.” 

With worldwide acclaim and success, Walker could have rested on his laurels and rehashed any of the numerous musical styles he’s covered in the past for Why The Worry. Fortunately, that’s just not in his DNA. He concludes, “Doing things over and over- I can’t. I just can’t. It’s probably a blessing and a curse. The only way I know how to do it is rewire it or else you’ll go crazy. That’s not what art is to me.” 

Seth Walker Why The Worry (2025) Royal Potato Family 

Cover photo- Parker Pfister