Everyone was tight on cash there were no shows. But I was out of a record contract, and nobody was taking anyone on because there was this traumatic and fucked-up pandemic happening. I'm from Illinois I didn't know anything about Vermont. I'm one of those New York transplants that everyone up here just seems to love, buying up all the houses. The banks of Vermont have my money and my information, so I definitely feel welcomed. SEVEN DAYS: I'm sure I'm not the first to say so, but welcome to Vermont. 'I think I've found something more original and pure.' Ryley Walker tweet this Seven Days recently sat down with Walker at his Calais home to talk about his new album, moving to the Green Mountains and his upcoming solo gig on Friday, July 2, at Backside 405 in Burlington. He also traded New York City for the quiet life in Vermont. In the last two years, the singer has embraced sobriety and started his own label, Husky Pants.

It also documents Walker's changing life. Released in April, the album is a warm, complex, generous work that surprisingly leans into progressive rock. With each subsequent record, Walker has broadened his horizons both as a songwriter and guitarist, leading to Course in Fable.

He started pulling on his sound like taffy with 2016's Golden Sings That Have Been Sung. Yet to Walker, and some critics, his early work was 'a pastiche,' too devotional to early Van Morrison and Pentangle's Bert Jansch, particularly when it came to his vocal delivery. The singer-songwriter and guitarist had burst from the Chicago indie scene with 2015's Primrose Green, a record so in line with the modern folk world that Pitchfork claimed it placed Walker above other such luminaries as Sharon Van Etten and Hiss Golden Messenger. There was a time, not long ago, when Ryley Walker was anointed as the new king of drunken folk artists.

Ryley walker 2016 tour