After receiving a serious Cancer diagnosis in 2023, it could have been the end of the road for Joshua Ray Walker’s life and music. We still would have cherished the trilogy of albums he released to commence his country music career: Wish You Were Here (2019), Glad You Made It (2020), and See You Next Time (2021). But Walker fans hoped this would just be the beginning of a great catalog of country, not the end.
Lucky for us, Joshua Ray Walker has received the all-clear, even if it came with a very dire misdiagnosis in-between. But even amid Cancer treatment and terminal diagnoses, Walker did everything he could to squeeze out as much music as possible, just in case his time left was finite. This has now resulted in a second trilogy of albums, all that are intertwined with Walker’s health journey, and coming to grips with mortality.
The first was the surprisingly fun and light-hearted Tropicana (June 2025) that still has us singing the chorus to the ultra-catchy “Keys To The Tacoma.” Then there was the much more solemn, sparse, and avant-garde Stuff (October 2025) that envisioned the world from the perspective of the inanimate objects we leave behind us.
Now Joshua Ray Walker is readying the release of the more serious album he was working on before, during, and after his Cancer battle, appropriately titled Ain’t Dead Yet. A strong country work with Walker’s dedication to involved songwriting and stellar vocal ability on display, it will be released on May 29th via East Dallas Records/Thirty Tigers.
Walker started writing songs for the album the year before his Cancer diagnosis. “That whole year I just felt awful and like I was dying. I didn’t feel right, and mentally I was off, like there really was something wrong the whole time,” Walker says. “So I think the reason some of these songs feel the way they do is because I felt that way, even though I didn’t know something was wrong yet.”
But before he headed into the studio, he re-worked and re-wrote most of the songs. He then set out to record them before, during, and after his treatment for Cancer at studios in Dallas, including Audio Dallas, Modern Electric, and his producer John Pedigo’s home studio.
“I’m really grateful to have a second chance, and I’m also grateful to have lived through thinking I was going to die. It gives you perspective in a way you really can’t fake until you’ve actually done it; in a way, it was kind of a gift,” Walker says. “I’m very intentional with my time, and I’m a lot happier, even though things have been hard, I genuinely do think I’m happier. It’s been a pretty wild transformation.”
Ahead of the new album, Joshua Ray Walker has released the song “Capital Letters” (listen below). Ain’t Dead Yet out May 29th is now available for pre-order and pre-save.
TRACK LIST:
1. Ain’t Dead Yet
2. Shoot Me Straight
3. Chasing Sunsets
4. Outlaw
5. Capital Letters
6. Texas Sober
7. Blue Genes
8. Stepping Stone
9. Some People
10. Thank You For Listening
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source savingcountrymusic.com ’
