Eddie Walker is of one of the Folk Circuit’s leading singer/guitar pickers! He plays plays old blues, rags, hillbilly country, British and American folk and original songs and guitar instrumentals. He is touring throughout Britain over the next few months and here are his confirmed dates at 15/01/2002.

News for those interested in Eddie’s choice of guitars. He is just about to take delivery of two new instruments. These last 17 years he’s played a Ralph Bown made replica of a late 1920’s Martin Herringbone ‘00028’ 12 frets clear to the body. He’s just getting another Ralph Bown instrument, this time something a bit bigger and with a 14 fret neck. The principle was to get close to one of the bigger bodied instruments around in the 1930’s made by the Larson Bros. of Chicago and often called ‘Prairie State’ or ‘Euphonon’. These guys came from Sweden and started working for Robert Maurer initially in the 1890’s but had some ideas about applying scientific principals to the construction of steel strung rather than gut strung guitars and what they produced were some unusual instruments. Ralph has made some of these from original blueprints using the technique of laminating the braces and fixing tone bars between the heel and end blocks.

Eddie’s new guitar doesn’t go this far. It’s a big body, tho’ not massive, but tightly waisted, dark-stained mahogany back and sides with a sunburst spruce top. The headstock is very unusual and took Ralph ‘forever’ to get finished, faced in tortoiseshell and bound with antique ivoroid it is a scaled-down Epiphone Emperor style. It is very light for its size and very tasty. The audience are going to be talking about this beauty.

And Eddie has at last acquired a steel bodied resonator ‘National’ style ‘0’. Now he has never been known as a slide player but of course he can do that stuff. But he has an idea apart from developing some new material, of giving some of those old favourites a run-out on this great-sounding and great looking (gold resonator cover and engraved body!) instrument. While others stand still just going over the old ground Eddie Walker is always looking for interesting little angles to entertain his audience. New guitars, new material, interesting old stuff (hear him do his versions of Panama Ltd. and Vestapol on the ‘National’) and a great new sound system to play through as well. (his old kit is for sale if you interested in some well-priced PA stuff).