WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT ELRIC WALKER: "In 1969 Duane Allman turned me on to Bob Dylan's 'John Wesley Harding'. In 1998 Bill Klock turned me on to Elric Walker's 'Odd Man Out'..." -JAIMOE The Allman Brothers Band "...lives and breathes the the neo-bohemian folk-rock spirit of the last three decades..." -JOHN STIFLER Daily Hampshire Gazette "...He's got the groove, plus he can see through snowflakes. That is not a common thing..." -JENNY Ear To The Ground Cafe "Get the man out from behind the curtain, cloaked in decency...." -BZ Ear To The Ground Cafe " In an attempt to not drown in the dark swirling vortex of our times and not to go deaf of the political noise of voices screaming nothing, I put "I Believe" on the repeat mode and turn it up til I remember what it is that i lost-and found it sitting in my heart waiting to be asked for the next dance..." -Ken LaRoche D’OAH World Music "Carl Jung meets Willie Nelson?? Johnny Cash meets Arthur Rimbaud??...train rhythms mixed up with biblical references...uncompromising quality...A stubborn insistence..." -KERRY Ear To The Ground Cafe ELRIC WALKER ODD MAN OUT Ten Song Debut CD A Smoking Mirror Music Limited Edition "With a star studded band featuring guitar legend JEFF PEVAR on lead, lap steel, dobro and banjo, Grammy award nominee SETH FARBER on piano and accordian, ABE GUTHRIE on the b3 organ, BILL KLOCK on drums and with MARK EPSTEIN and GUY DEVITO trading off on bass duties, ELRIC WALKER'S lyrical visionary poetics are placed with muscle and confidence into a unique blend of folk balladry, electric blues and anthemic rock'n'roll with strongly credentialed American musical roots. The title song ODD MAN OUT, begins the song cycle with the lyric, "When the streets are full of violence, when the land is full of lies" setting the opening scene in a contemporary urban landscape with an eerie guitar heavy electric blues. Conjuring an edgy atmosphere of alienation, the underdog theme is struck of the embattled outcast hunted and surrounded by overwhelming and maelevolent forces with "gaurds at every exit and no way out of town" . The song climaxes with a reminder that all may not be as it appears suggesting that hope may yet triumph with "the wild card in the hand of the odd man out" . The journey begins here in apocalyptic anxiety moving deftly thru a varied palet of love, longing and even prophetic vision to eventually exit gently in the last song with the quiet back porch home on the range Blake-like vision of "the face of God" appearing "beneath green boughs" as the "plow man plows" and the "watchmen nod" . The songs take the listener to the edges of our contemporary world with its "refugee roads" and "false shepherds" who "ravage their sheep " and "starve their flocks" while the underlying thread seems always to return to the search for love and the Beloved. In various tales of love lost and won the singer quests "neath a bloody red moon" rolling "the Wheel of Ages round" following a strange woman on a train bound for the apocalypse or losing the Beloved in the ravages of war -looking for that "jewel in the road thats been passed by" and for that "somebody who still believes". Connections are made between the big picture and the little picture, the personal and the universal, where the crisis in the environment or in the political world are seen to be the outer reflections and reverberations of the crisis deep within the human heart. Elric tells us that "nothing's gonna change" until there is an internal and personal change of heart-implying that each of us holds the fate of the world in our hands individually as well as collectively and encouraging each of us to do our part. Elric speaks for many of us when he sings of an abiding belief in truth and justice-not the belief of one naive to the ways of the world but of one who has looked squarely into the brutal and terrifying face of evil, seen its broken spirit and concluded that it cannot ultimately prevail-that love and truth will prove stronger. Elric has painted the landscapes of our times with courage and compassion and this collection of songs is a memorable oddessy filled with adventure, romance & occasional flashes of visionary wonder..." -NSP