Eric Walker

Eric Walker
The first thing I remember musically was learning Harry Belafonte songs on the ukulele when I was about 10 years old. I followed the ukulele with piano, guitar and trumpet. By high school, I was in a Beatles cover band, the Condor Fesents. I've always been drawn to music with great vocal harmonies — the Beatles, Crowded House, Indigo Girls — just to name a few. I developed an interest in jazz when a friend of my parents gave me about 20 jazz albums they were getting rid of.
Through the 70s, 80s and 90s, I was in various bands in Toronto. The first band, Mentlbloc, started as a cover band but we wanted to start doing original music. My interest was in writing music so I sought out lyricists. I used this model until 1999 when I decided to get serious about songwriting and attended a songwriting course at Humber College. This was my initial motivation to start writing lyrics. Since that original course, I've taken a more intensive 7-day course at Humber College (with facilitators like Rik Emmet and Andy Kim) as well as other songwriting workshops with Ian Thomas and Sylvia Tyson. My most intense study was the Gordon Dalimont three-year music composition course studied under Andy Krehm.
In 2003, I released my first CD — Random — by the Eric Walker Band. I continue to perform with my band (renamed Random). I've also composed music for corporate videos, most recently for the Education Quality Advisory Office (EQAO) of Ontario. I would say my influences include Sting, Steely Dan and Billy Joel.
Kim Boyce
When I was 12 my father bought a guitar. He taught my sister and me to play one and two finger chords. “I Wanna be Free” by the Monkees is the first song I remember learning. And “Secret Agent Man”. This was a step up from the shindigs and hullabaloos held in our basement where I would use a clothes line and lipsynch to Elvis records.
From Gordon Lightfoot to Joni Mitchell. A thriving folk music scene at Smale’s Pace, later to be “Change of Pace” in London Ontario, where the likes of Jane Siberry, Willy P. Bennet, Mae Moore and Bruce Cockburn were to be seen, among many other wonderful players. All these, along with the pop and rock of the day, influenced my musical sensibilities and songwriting, which had begun shortly after learning those simple first chords.
Sweet harmonizing with my sister and others at the Cuckoo’s Nest Folk Club, singing traditional music. Performing at festivals… Home County in London, the Dawson City Music Festival , the Edmonton Folk Festival, Manitoulin Island. Singing in a jazz/pop band for a while and as backup for other performers on occasion. Playing at “Change of Pace” and many other clubs and venues around Ontario… This was all a part of my young adult life.
These days I find myself drinking at the “strange well” of inspiration, tinkering with the nuts and bolts of musical and poetic expression once again. Recently, I’ve performed my songs at such Toronto venues as The Free Times Café, the Renaissance Café, Graffiti’s, the Black Swan and others, and have been a featured artist on “Acoustic Routes” on CKLN.