Golden Walker by Will Dailey

A few years ago, I was playing small town in a smaller club, on my first tour in France. It was after the show, while standing at the merch table meeting people, when a gentlemen, half in the bag and anywhere from 40-70 years of age, grabbed my shoulder and told me I need to come with him. He looked like if a hipster Gandalf in a rainy noir film. Naturally, I had to follow him. I grabbed a friend who knew French, and would be good in an emergency, to come with me. We were lead out of the club and down a dark alley into a century old forgotten apartment.

Inside it looked like the place was hit once with a wrecking ball and overtaken by iron sculptures. Miniature ones, giant ones, pieces of metal scattered in an un-cleansed space but for the carved out paths through the garden of metal. Some rusted, some shining and some too delicate or dangerous to touch. There was no place to move. Our guide immediately disappeared upstairs.

He came back with a piece of metal to declare, in slurred broken English, that my music, which he had heard from his workshop, had guided him to this item and he told me to turn around as he took out a welder and began welding it to a base. The blue light threw our shadows onto the 200 year old stone walls. He propped the piece up on a log balanced on top of a folding chair in the doorway looking out over a surreal midnight valley. Then from two giant gas tanks by the door he ignited a torch. Gloveless and without eye protection, our midnight chaperon began carving into the metal. Sparks were flying haphazardly in every direction into the night as I contemplated the safety of the gas tanks, how flammable hair is and what corner of the room I would dive to in an emergency. With this fresh sculpture now before us still molten red, he disappeared upstairs. The sound of frantically rummaged workshop piles banging above our heads as my friend and I used eye language to rate the madness and joy of our adventure. The artist returned to stand before me with his hand in a fist.

“All the gold is taking from our world. They take it all to use in technological devices that are supposed to help us communicate. The gold is disappearing, hidden in phones and computers that only leave us feeling more alone, separated and disconnected. When I heard you tonight through the walls of my work shop, I heard real communication. I heard you. You are a communicator.”

Opening his hand he revealed a small nugget of gold. He brought it over to the cooled sculpture that now revealed a man walking forward out of the metal. He used the torch to melt a small amount of gold onto his foot.

“You have to keep communicating like that. Carry the gold, protect it. Be a golden walker.”

We then sat, sipped coffee and talked to 3 in the morning. A conversation I am still processing.

We are told we are disconnected. Maybe we are over-connected in the wrong ways? Since that midnight meeting in France, when I find myself lying awake at night wondering what I’ve done with my life or think there is nobody in the world who needs to hear one of my songs, I think of his call for true connection. The great human pay-off of being in a live concert venue, a recording studio full of people engaging in one moment together or just seeing a face right in front of you!

With each listen I hope that some extra sound, word, idea or performance is found and taken in and a bond, outside of our personal screens, is created. As it happened when one sculptor heard some music across the street through 200-year-old stone and all of a sudden patterns are upset and connections are made.

Tracklist

1.	The Submariner	3:12
2.	It Already Would Have Not Worked Out By Now	3:27

3.	Today Is Crushing Me	4:05
4.	Bad Behavior	3:37
5.	He Better Be Alive	4:03

6.	When It Dies	4:59

7.	Middle Child	2:03
8.	Everybody Wants You For An Angel	3:19
9.	Up To Your Heart	2:47
10.	Tell A Friend	3:30
11.	Ultimate Companion	3:16

Credits

released September 28, 2018

Produced and Written by Will Dailey

License