By: Rick Landers
Toby Walker – Photo credit: (c) Rick Landers 2022
A musical romp of a show by the stunningly extraordinary finger style guitarist, storyteller, singer-songwriter, Toby Walker, at the 37-year old Reston-Herndon Folk Club in Northern Virginia, kept the audience captivated, song after song, story after story.
Offering up traditional old blues tunes and more contemporary blues of his own, Walker, plucked, bent and made his Huss & Dalton guitar sing with a full bag of tricks, honed over decades of playing the usual and unusual haunts in the States and internationally.
To be clear, Walker is not only a master of the blues, but also jazz, gypsy jazz, nuanced and syncopated finger style guitar. And last night, he also playfully punched out a wee bit of Jimi Hendrix for fun. And check out his other website where he’s got some excellent instructional videos HERE.
Months before, folk club member Stephen-Wade Potter coordinated the evening’s show with Toby working to get the featured artist to find his way from New Jersey to Herndon, an outlying suburb of Virginia where the Folk Club has offered local showcases, along with nationally and internationally known celebrated musicians. And, tonight Toby didn’t disappoint, not for a single moment.
But, let’s start with two definitive observations.
Toby Walker is one of the finest guitarists we’ve seen not only at the club, but anywhere. And, two, his stories roll off his tongue as if they’re the first time he’s told them, and he had his audience laughing between songs and sometimes during them, with lyrics cleverly tethered to his original compositions.
Walker kicked off the night with some humor, before loading up with his cool arrangement of Freddie King’s classic, “Hideaway.” Bodies immediately began to move to its rhythm as the folkies got into the song, and the guitarists in the crowd became transfixed on his fingers as they danced among the strings.
It was a nice introduction of things to come.
Toby Walker – Photo credit: (c) Rick Landers 2022
Next up was Mississippi John Hurt’s “Avalon Blues,” followed by “Keep on Drinking,” the blues ditty “Shorten’ Bread,” and the 1929 jazz song by Fats Waller and Andy Razaf, “Ain’t Misbehavin'”. Then a bit of clever humor showed up in the song, “You’ve Got Something On The Side,” before he slowed things down a bit with a very tender instrumental rendition of The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.”
Song after song kept the crowd rivited to Walker and they sang along to “Online Religion,” a parody of “Old Time Religion,” evoking smiles and laughter.
The show never skipped a beat, with Toby rolling out the syncopated classic, “Sweet Georgia Brown,” and a set of articulate and quick finger acrobatics couple with quick-witted lines and some of the best traditional roots lyrics, like those in “Come In My Kitchen.”
A standing ovation at the end erupted with Toby beaming a big smile to his newfound folk club fans.
Returning to his chair, Mr. Walker sat down and ventured into an exquisite version of, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” before he bid everyone a sweet farewell, along with offering a thank you to Potter, and others who worked that night and the local performers who opened the show.
BONUS VIDEO
