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Although he only released two albums in the mid-'60s,
Peter Walker influenced a whole host of subsequent guitarists with his modal drone explorations of Eastern musical forms and his experiments with raga and flamenco. His "Rainy Day Raga," the title track from his 1966 Vanguard debut album, reveals his study with
Ravi Shankar and
Ali Akbar Khan, and underscores the role he played as musical accompanist to Dr.
Timothy Leary's acid celebrations at Millbrook. While
Walker is often lumped in with the American primitive school of guitarists such as
John Fahey and
Peter Lang, he is a formally trained and disciplined experimentalist, a decades-long student of both Eastern and Western musical traditions, and closer in spirit to musicians such as
Sandy Bull (whom he befriended along with
Karen Dalton in the early '60s).
Walker is a world traveler who spent time in Franco's Spain (learning the basics of flamenco), and in South America, India, Vietnam, and Europe. The second of his two Vanguard albums, 1968's
Second Poem to Karmela, or Gypsies Are Important, is regarded by the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper as one of strangest records available on streaming services. Though his recorded output is somewhat meager, comprising less than ten albums, he is regarded as deeply influential on contemporary guitarists such as
Jack Rose and
Ben Chasny.
Walker has also been rediscovered by the millennial generation, resulting in the re-pressing of his catalog. His solo concert date Live at Third Man (Detroit) in 2015 was chosen by several publications as folk album of the year.
Born in 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts, into a musical family (his father played guitar and his mother played piano),
Walker took up the guitar early, although he didn't begin to play in public until around 1959. During a stint in San Francisco, he heard the legendary
Ravi Shankar perform and
Walker's lifelong fascination with Eastern raga was formed, along with his like passion for the flamenco tradition. He studied with
Shankar for a time in Los Angeles and also studied with
Ali Akbar Khan in San Francisco. Returning to the Boston area, he became a regular on the '60s Cambridge and Greenwich Village folk scenes, where he became close friends with guitarist
Sandy Bull and the tragic folksinger
Karen Dalton (
Walker was at her side when she passed away from AIDS).
Walker released the influential Rainy Day Raga LP on Vanguard Records in 1966, following it with a second Vanguard LP,
Second Poem to Karmela, or Gypsies Are Important, two years later in 1968, and then dropped away from the music scene, settling in upstate New York to raise his family. He continued his exploration of the guitar, though, and traveled to Spain to immerse himself in the tight-knit flamenco guitar community there.
Rediscovered by Joshua Rosenthal of Tompkins Square Records,
Walker contributed four new guitar pieces to A Raga for Peter Walker, which was released in 2008 on Rosenthal's label and featured tribute tracks from the likes of
Jack Rose,
James Blackshaw,
Steffen Basho-Junghans,
Thurston Moore, and
Greg Davis. In November 2013, Delmore Recordings issued his previously unreleased early-'70s album Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms? Two years later during a tour,
Walker appeared in Detroit at
Jack White's invitation, resulting in the all-but-unanimously acclaimed Live at Third Man. In 2018,
Walker joined the Woodstock-based band
Harmony Rockets for the full-length
Lachesis/Clotho/Atropos for Tompkins Square. The set also featured guests
Nels Cline and
Steve Shelley, and contained three long instrumental improvisations. ~ Steve Leggett