Sunday Music: “Boat Show Girl” Is A Poetic Masterpiece

Joshua Ray Walker can get Hank-y, Prine-y, and even country/punk-y. He’s been simmering on the Texas scene for a while but his latest album, Glad You Made It, is an uncontainable monster. We’ll focus on a single song in a moment, but just to give you a flavor about what I’m personally obsessing over – his lyrics.

The album opener is about a failed romance turned to suicide (“I might put this truck in neutral / let it roll into the lake / first, I’ll finish off this bottle / so it looks like a mistake”) and follows with the next song dismissively telling us “true love was meant to fade.” Those are just the first two tracks and he keeps rolling from there.

Every song is brutally honest, the band is killer, and Walker’s got a familiar yet distinctive voice on him. The songs are so visual they feel like movies. I haven’t been this excited over a country record since the last Sarah Shook and The Disarmers.

“Boat Show Girl” is the clear masterpiece after the first few listens. We’ve got a John Prine level character analysis alongside a perspective flip from the judged to the judge in the most non-judgmental way. While the verses address the tale of whoa that is our boat show girl’s life, the chorus is directed at the perspective of the boat show attendee (and beyond, as we’ll see). Walker narrates from somewhere in the middle on purpose, keeping the metaphor broad.

Taken from the verse:

And then the chorus:

Ok, now we’re into pure editorialization, but I think the whole song hinges on “you can take this beauty home / and treat her like you should.” In one line, Walker is supporting the rest of the song with two questions: What is true beauty and how should we treat it, both compared to how we actually do?

Our boat show girl hides bruises with a spray tan Walker reminds us fades quickly. The boat show attendees are told they can buy happiness for less than they pay for cigarettes in week (don’t let the cigarette/death metaphor miss you either). Read every line of the song and read them close, they are seething with characterizations of the beauty within life and how we treat it.

Walker is holding up a mirror to how indebted we can become over marketing displays for beauty-proxies while missing true beauty and treating it well along the way. We want freedom, love and beauty, we instead enslave ourselves to buy cigarettes, boats, and spray tanned-bruises. It’s a heartbreaker and it’s just part of the human condition. Walker nails it in this song, and I really do think this is a masterpiece.

There’s so much Glad You Made It has to offer. Spend some time with it, it’s worth it. Thank you Joshua Ray Walker. Here’s the full lyrics and then the song: