KIIM-FM Fest Headliner
Walker on top of the world
By Cathalena E. Burch
cburch@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.18.2008
Texas country star Clay Walker turned 39 last month not long after his second wife delivered their son.
William Clayton Walker is his third child, so you would think Walker would be used to the euphoria of a baby's arrival.
But to hear him gush, he is as thrilled with the third child's arrival as he was with his first, who turns 13 in January.
"You just realize God made your heart big enough to hold all the love," Walker reveled during a phone call from Texas two days after his birthday.
Little William joins big sisters MaClay DaLayne and Skylor ClayAnne, 9, from his first marriage. The girls live with their mother 2 1/2 hours from Walker. On this August day, he was driving to pick them up from school, a trip he makes several times a week.
"That was the one thing I promised myself," he said. "Divorce is not easy for people, and it's really some place that I never pictured myself. But things are settled down now, and the wound is healed up mostly."
Walker is settling into the new dimensions of his fatherhood — changing diapers one moment, counseling 'tweens the next.
He's not sure he's prepared for the teen years.
"They are at the age right now where they think they know everything. You have to balance it with 'OK, they're going to have their own faults and their own ways of doing things. . . . I guess I take it issue by issue," he said, interrupting to laugh, as if a vision of a scene with his oldest was playing in his head.
The issue of boyfriends, he said, has taken him by surprise. When MaClay asks if she can have a boyfriend, daddy shoots her down.
"They're already starting to develop their little crushes," he bemoaned. "They think the boys are cute. Not cute, excuse me. They're hot. I'm like, OK, this is pretty scary. But I'll deal with it."
Walker returns to Tucson Saturday to headline KIIM-FM's Country Music Festival, a daylong event that he headlined last year. It returns him to the sweet spot in his professional life, center stage, with thousands of screaming fans that feed his soul and energize him to a point of near frenzy.
"I've always been about loving doing the concerts and seeing people get into the songs live, in person," he said, and anyone who has seen him in his numerous Tucson shows knows what he means. His shows inspire folks to abandon their seats and dance in the aisles.
Walker has sold multiplatinum albums and scored 11 No. 1 country hits in his 15-year career. But topping the charts and selling albums has been his secondary goal; his primary love is performing live.
"There's nothing like the live show. It gives a heartbeat to your music," he said, and the tone in his voice etched up one notch on the excitement scale. "I walk out onto stage, every single time is different. It's like every audience has its own fingerprint. . . . I love the mystery of it. I embrace it."
He brings to Saturday's show a catalog of memorable hits, including "Live, Laugh, Love," "If I Could Make a Living," "What's It to You," "Then What," "Live Until I Die," "Fall" and "Hypnotize the Moon." He also may preview material from his 10th album, which he hopes to release early next year.
"With each record, you have to beat the last one. It is so hard," he lamented. "The better records you make, the tougher your job is. It can be excruciating trying to find the best songs."
The first single is an uptempo rocker that Walker describes as a cross "between Alan Jackson and Brooks & Dunn."
He plans to return to the studio this month to wrap up the project, in between changing diapers and that long drive to see his "beautiful daughters."
"I'm more at peace now than I've ever been. I have a beautiful baby, two beautiful girls," he said, calling his life nearly perfect.
"I went through a stretch for a while where it was very hard for me to write. I was wrestling emotional demons. Now, I write songs almost every single day. That's what I'm supposed to do. It feels good to sit down with your pen and guitar and things flow out of you. Songs about life. And some of it is not all good. But it's good that I feel the way I do now. I feel I'm in the best place in my life."
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