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Wheeler Walker Jr. on Sex, Drugs, & Country Music

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Wheeler Walker Jr. Knows the Way to Be Unique Is to Be Yourself

Country music star Wheeler Walker Jr. wants you to stay away from Nashville. The Kentucky-born singer has no disdain for outsiders, but rather laments the city for accepting what he likes to call “posers” into its limits. “This city is turning into fucking Disney Land. Everyday you go down there it’s like Halloween. New Yorkers and LA fucks dressed up in cowboy costumes.”

When Walker connects with AskMen by phone, he’s just getting back from being downtown with his wife where they spent time checking out shows that left him feeling more depressed than ever. Fortunately for Walker, his new album Sex, Drugs & Country Music offers a reprieve from the “bad” music he’s fed up with, and gives him and his listeners an opportunity to get back into the flow of listening to fun music.

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Over the course of our conversation, Walker reveals his formula for a successful music career, how he draws the lines between work and personal life, and how being authentically unique is the only way to differentiate yourself.

AskMen: Was becoming a music sensation always part of your plan or did you ever have other aspirations?

Wheeler Walker Jr.: I’m from Kentucky and as a kid I loved country music and I loved rock and roll and I always wanted to play music. I thought, “What if I could just play music and not have a regular job?” That was the goal.

My goal was just to pay the piggly-wiggly bills and eat food. Not to sell out shows or play theaters. I’ll take it, but my dreams and aspirations weren’t that big. I just love playing music.

You play a gig and you get twenty five bucks and you wonder, “Man, I wonder if I can get twenty-five bucks a night? That would be great.” And now, as you probably know, I’m getting twenty-five mil a night. So it’s much better.

AskMen: The economics have certainly changed.

Wheeler Walker Jr.: Yeah, totally. But that’s back when twenty-five mil meant something.

AskMen: If you’re not doing thirty mil, what are you doing?

Wheeler Walker Jr.: The house prices in Nashville…what’s that going to get you? A condo?

AskMen: Well that’s because of all the New Yorkers and LA-ers coming in and scooping up the real estate.

Wheeler Walker Jr.: These fucking assholes.

AskMen: With your burgeoning career and increasing popularity, how do you balance your work and your personal life successfully?

Wheeler Walker Jr.: You kind of just draw a line, you know? This is my time, don’t fucking bother me. And this is work. Wife, kid—don’t bother me. You just have to draw that line. I hate to be so blunt about it.

Once you start making a living in this business, you do realize it’s a fucking job. It’s a great job, but it’s still a job. Like, my family wouldn’t stop by. I mean, I guess they would stop by my job, since it’s separate from my home life. It’s a good job, but it’s just a job, so you draw that line.

AskMen: Are there times when that line is crossed and if so, what happens?

Wheeler Walker Jr.: I’m the one who crosses it when I say something crazy in an interview or on an album, and my family goes, “Hey, um, that ain’t cool.”

I had a song on my first record where I talked about my uncle Andy. And I changed it to ‘Andy’ so my uncle Randy wouldn’t be offended. But he listened to it and I guess I mumbled when I sang or whatever—I don’t remember. In the song, I I said “Then I’ll grab uncle Andy, reach around give him a handy.” My uncle Randy called me up like, “The fuck you giving me a handy for on a fucking record?” I’m like, “Oh, it’s ‘Andy,’ it’s made up. I’m trying to add some artistic license to it.” But he still thought it was him. You gotta watch it, you know?

AskMen: Well that also sounds more like a Randy problem than a Wheeler problem.

Wheeler Walker Jr.: I didn’t give my uncle a handy so I ain't sweatin’ it, but I don’t want my uncle thinking I was saying that. I want to clear it up.

AskMen: That touches on the importance of communication in relationships.

Wheeler Walker Jr.: If you’re going to say a name, make sure you enunciate. I like to give lessons to the younger folks coming up.

Oh, and you might want to change it a little more from 'Randy’ to ‘Andy.’ Richard might have been a little better.

AskMen: Right, because then there’s less room for confusion.

Wheeler Walker Jr.: Yeah, I ain’t got an uncle Richard, so I ain’t gotta worry about him. I don’t think I do, but you never know. You do all these shows, all of a sudden you got cousins and uncles you ain’t ever heard of.

AskMen: Let’s pivot to your new album—Sex, Drugs & Country Music. Creatively for this one, what was the inspiration and thought behind it?

Wheeler Walker Jr.: I think I saw each album had a theme to it. With this [new] one, I took some time off, the pandemic hit, and when I got back in the studio, I was like, “Man, this one we gotta have fun and we gotta fucking rock out and kick some ass.” I know that’s not really a theme but it was kind of what the album was going to do.

I knew that during the pandemic that everyone was going to have their lame, sad, “what the pandemic was like for them” album. I didn’t want to fucking do that. I wanted the opposite, like “Let’s just fucking party. Let’s have some fucking fun.”

AskMen: Cooped-up people need fun.

Wheeler Walker Jr.: Exactly. Obviously I love my country music a fucking lot, but it’s all genres that are shitty right now. Can we just have some good music that’s fucking fun like when I was a kid? Who’s having fucking fun now when they’re playing music? They all look like they’re fucking miserable.

AskMen: Is that why the name of the album—Sex, Drugs & Country Music—is named such? Wheeler Walker Jr.: I grew up on the idea of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I loved Guns N’ Roses, I loved Lynyrd Skynyrd, I loved Tool, I loved Soundgarden—I loved all that shit. Then sex, drugs, and rock and roll just seemed to disappear—just turned into a bunch of pussies. I felt there were some more badass people in country music.

I think the good country—which is very few and far between—sounded more like rock to me than the rock shit. You think Nickelback’s having sex, drugs, and rock and roll? I don’t think so.

There used to be music for the audience, like “Man, I want people to hear this.” Now, it’s somebody’s fucking diary or their artistic statement. Who gives a fuck about what you have to say about your fucking artistic statement? Go write poetry. Go to a fucking poetry slam for somebody else. All I hear is boring artistic bullshit. I’m just bored with all this fucking shit out here, you know?

Like, you don’t listen to ACDC like, “Man, I wonder what they’re trying to say?”

AskMen: Is it fair then to say Sex, Drugs & Country Music and the music you’re creating isn’t so much revealing yourself in a diary, but rather providing tunes to let people rock out?

Wheeler Walker Jr.: I’m still telling stories about myself or putting myself in the first person of crazy stories my friends tell me.

There’s a song called “God Told Me To Fuck You,” which obviously I sing about me, but it’s actually a story a buddy told me. He was trying to have sex with a really Christian girl and she obviously was a virgin and wanted to wait until marriage. They said they were going to pray on it, so he said he prayed, and God told him that they should fuck. So I was like, “Here’s a fucking song.”

AskMen: What ended up happening?

Wheeler Walker Jr.: Can I tell you a little secret? They had sex and they’re married to this day. Looking back, I wouldn’t say he was tricking her, but I think he was trying to be sly like any teenager would be, and they’ve lasted the long haul so it’s good.

AskMen: Could it also be that God actually spoke to him and told him that he needed to have sex with her?

Wheeler Walker Jr.: Well, I have no proof that it’s not true. And I’m sure when he said it to her that he believed it more than I even do.

AskMen: Are most of the stories you tell then focused solely on friends and family?

Wheeler Walker Jr.: I love Guns N’ Roses, but I remember listening to “Welcome to the Jungle” and seeing the video and I just didn’t know that life. I’m singing about me and my friends and my redneck cousins and my redneck family. I’m just trying to sing the shit I know. If I sing a song I dig from my point of view, and Snoop Dogg digs it, there’s some honesty there I would hope.

AskMen: Didn’t Snoop repost something of yours?

Wheeler Walker Jr.: I think that’s a good comparison because Snoop Dogg’s rapping about shit I don’t fucking know about, but I can tell he means it and I fucking love Snoop Dogg. So, just being honest in what you know—I don’t think Snoop Dogg would dig what I was doing if I was singing country songs about Compton. I dig what he’s doing because—first of all—he’s fucking awesome, and second of all, it’s honest and it’s real shit. And I’m singing my real shit and he doesn’t know my life but he digs my honest, real shit. And I dig his honest, real shit to be so blunt about it.

AskMen: There’s a relatability around honesty through music.

Wheeler Walker Jr.: Yeah, and that’s kind of where I think country got lost the last few years. The honesty, the stuff I loved in country—the Waylons, the Willies, and the Billy Joe Shavers—that kind of real, honest truth just disappeared and turned into fucking songs about trucks and beers and bullshit that no one can fucking relate to.

AskMen: On the relatability tip, do you have any collaborations on the new album that you’re super stoked about?

Wheeler Walker Jr.: There’s some stuff coming up down the road that I can’t talk about, but there’s a lot of people who have reached out.

One of the bands that reached out—Nickelback, who I was talking about before—they wanted to do a song with me. And I was like, “Fuck Nickelback.” So I wrote a song called “Fuck Nickelback,” and thought it would be cool to have a song called “Fuck Nickelback” featuring Nickelback, which was a song about how much they suck. I sent it to them to sing it with me and I guess they didn’t get the joke because they told me they passed on it.

I said, “Don’t come to me—don’t come to Wheeler Walker Jr. looking for a duet and expect me to kiss your fucking ass. It just ain’t happening.” That’s why collaborations with me are hard because I don’t have time for any fucking bullshit. I’m not going to pretend I like Nickelback to get a song with them.

AskMen: Even though they were the initial outreach, at least they gave you the decency to pass. Sometimes you don’t hear anything from these folks.

Wheeler Walker Jr.: I agree with that. If they’d just kept quiet, it would have been annoying. The song must have been good if they heard it and immediately said “no.”

AskMen: What’s one of the driving forces behind your success up until this point?

Wheeler Walker Jr.: I think the success of any artist is being yourself. If you want to listen to Wheeler Walker Jr, there ain’t any other Wheeler Walker Jr. You want to listen to Snoop Dogg, there ain’t no other Snoop Dogg. You want to listen to Waylon, there ain’t no other Waylon. There ain’t no other Willie. I’m not comparing myself to these people, but there ain’t no other Bob Dylan. You want Bob Dylan, you don’t go “Well, there’s something kind of close.”

You don’t go, “I want to listen to Guns N’ Roses, so what’s kind of like Guns N’ Roses?” If you’re just true to yourself, you’re not going to sound like anybody else, you know?

Even for a fucking shitty band. My issue with a Greta Van Fleet is, just listen to Zeppelin. There’s another Greta Van Fleet that was better. You just have to be unique, and the way to be unique is to just be yourself. No one wants a watered-down version of a classic rock band. I don’t know hip-hop that well, but I’m sure there’s a lot of watered-down artists trying to be Snoop Doggs that people don’t listen to. It doesn’t work because they’re just doing an imitation.

Like I said, if you want to see or listen to Wheeler, there ain’t nobody else. I think I’ve got my own lane and the artists I love have their own lanes, too.

Follow @wheelerwalkerjr and check out https://www.wheelerwalkerjr.com for tickets and tour dates

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