Country star Clay
Walker thriving despite multiple sclerosis diagnosis
By Colorado News Portal -July 10, 2022
A young Clay Walker was a fresh, hot face on the country
music scene when multiple sclerosis came along and tried to steal his thunder.
Country giant George Jones hired the singer and guitarist
from Beaumont, Texas, then 17, to perform at Jones Country Music Park, his
country music theme park in Colmesneil, Texas. After hearing his sound check,
Jones told him “you’re going to make it in this business.”
At 22, Walker proved Jones right and scored his first record
deal. His self-titled debut album dropped in 1993, containing the No. 1 hits
“What’s It to You” and “Live Until I Die.”
At 26, several records into his career, he began to
experience strange numbness in his limbs, facial spasms and double vision.
Doctors delivered the diagnosis: multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that
affects the brain and spinal cord. And a grim prognosis: probably a wheelchair
in a few years, and death a few years after that. He was understandably
devastated.
Walker refused to give up, though, and embarked on a drastic
life change, including a diet overhaul, medication, stress management and
stretches and exercises to help strengthen his legs and upper extremities. That
was more than 25 years ago.
In 2003, he founded Band Against MS, a nonprofit dedicated to
helping those with the disease and funding programs researching a cure.
“It’s different degrees of struggle every day,” Walker said
from a recent tour stop. “Some days are pretty hard, others are kind of light.
I never know how it’s going to be until I wake up. But I’ve been blessed. I can
still walk and ride horses and be active and do the stuff that makes me happy.”
“It didn’t affect me negatively,” he said. “It made me more
aware of what was really important in life. I don’t take a lot of things for
granted anymore. If one of my kids or my wife says, ‘Daddy, come look at the
sunset,’ I’m going to get off the couch and go to the porch and look at the
sunset with them.”
His 11th album, “Texas to Tennessee,” dropped last year, and
he’s got a new single on the radio, “Catching Up With an Old Memory.” He wrote
it during the endless stretches of the pandemic, and calls it a
nostalgic-feeling tune about returning to a place where you once spent time
with someone special, but instead of letting it make you sad, it’s only
reuniting with an old memory.
These days he’s more consumed with the melody of a song than
the lyrics: “To me the melody is what has most of the emotion in it. The words
flow on top of the melody. I don’t try to force things anymore. I used to count
syllables and I’d want an exact rhyme, and now it’s like, ‘let the song tell
you what it wants.’ ”
And what the song always wants is to be country. His
predilection for the genre stems from two things, he says: his inherent
soulfulness and an affinity for blues music. Meld those two together, and you
have country blues.
“When I find those kinds of songs, that’s what I’d call my
wheelhouse,” he said. “Country music is the people’s music. It’s not about
being cool. It’s about, ‘can I see myself in that song, and can the fans see
themselves in that song?’”
It’s all about telling the truth on stage, being transparent,
much as he’s been about his diagnosis and health all these years.
“It’s what has sustained my career,” Walker said. “People in
general have what I call a tuning fork in their soul. When you hit the tuning
fork the wrong way, they know and don’t forget. When you hit it right, it
resonates. Nobody’s perfect, but letting people know that piece of it, that
you’re not perfect, is refreshing.”
“It’s different degrees of struggle every day. Some days are
pretty hard, others are kind of light. I never know how it’s going to be until
I wake up. But I’ve been blessed.” Country star Clay Walker
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