Walk the West

In the height of their short career, the recognition of Nashville’s Walk the West rivaled that of EMI labelmates Jason & the Scorchers for the Southeast circuit. Walk the Western was shaped in 1984 by guitarist/vocalist Paul Kirby, the boy of songwriter Dave Kirby (author of “Can be Anybody Goin’ to San Antone?”, years as a child friends John and can Golemon, and drummer Richard Snow. The band’s rise in recognition echoed that of additional similar middle-’80s Nashville performers like Will Rambeaux & the Delta Hurricanes, resulting in a cope with EMI America that led to the band’s lone, self-titled recording in 1986, made by Jozef Nuyens. The band’s country-rock cross received a modicum of essential applause but didn’t reach a nationwide audience inside a field dominated by cowpunks just like the Defeat Farmers and hometown heroes Jason & the Scorchers. In the long run, the people of Walk the Western found it better to change than to keep fighting the stigma of showing themselves like a rock band in the house of nation music. Kirby as well as the Golemans would type the Cactus Brothers like a twangier side task, eventually acquiring the plunge and abandoning Walk the Western while pursuing nation stardom full-time in 1989.