{"id":163,"date":"2010-10-28T06:09:44","date_gmt":"2010-10-28T06:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theduanewells.com\/?p=163"},"modified":"2018-07-29T03:09:39","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T03:09:39","slug":"i-am-changing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/i-am-changing\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am Changing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n
\"\"I am changing
\nI\u2019m not who I used to be
\nAnd I\u2019m not afraid to fight
\nFor what I feel is right
\nFor me<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u201cI Am Changing\u201d Jason Walker<\/p>\n

Jason Walker began singing at the age of four. At first he mimicked the vocals of the iconic divas whose music filled his mother\u2019s rather extensive and eclectic collection of 45s, but by the time he got to high school and began singing in the school choir he had learned to flex his burgeoning vocal prowess on even the strictest of Catholic hymns.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sang in the choir for years and the teacher \u2026 took an interest in me,\u201d Jason recalled during a recent interview. \u201cI actually took voice for a few weeks but it didn\u2019t last because the voice instructor I went to wanted me to sing opera and I didn\u2019t want to. I remember taking a Patti Labelle song to her \u2026 I believe it was \u201cOn My Own\u201d \u2026 and saying, \u2018This is what I want to sing.\u2019 But she was not having it!\u201d He says with a chuckle. \u201cNeedless to say I got back from the class and told my mom I didn\u2019t want to go [to voice lessons] anymore and she said I didn\u2019t have to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason Walker may not have gone back to that voice class, but he never stopped singing. Instead he evolved his sound over the years and developed the stealth vocals with which his name has become synonymous all on his own.<\/p>\n

Like the club-ready title track from his latest album,\u00a0Leave It All Behind<\/em>, the lyrics to \u201cI Am Changing,\u201d the opening salvo from Jason Walker\u2019s third musical collection, are strangely prophetic about how the Pittsburgh native with the slight build and mega diva voice feels about his career and music at the moment.<\/p>\n

Since his debut in 2004, under the tutelage of legendary DJ Junior Vasquez, Walker has scored two number one Billboard Hot Dance Music\/Club Play singles and racked up another three Top 10 hits from his first musical entry,\u00a0This Is My Life<\/em>, alone. He\u2019s also recorded a sophomore album entitled\u00a0Flexible<\/em>\u00a0which, despite failing to catch fire like his previous effort, still managed to yield the supremely dancilicious lead single \u201cI Can\u2019t Get You Off My Mind.\u201d Now the singer, whose piercing range and penchant for soul-stirring vocal acrobatics rivals that of his idols Patti Labelle, Aretha Franklin and Chaka Khan, is back with his latest project, which may well be his most intimate and personal recording to date.<\/p>\n

\"\"The soulful, stratospheric signature trills that first earned Walker favor among the notably critical audiences of the television show\u00a0It\u2019s Showtime At The Apollo<\/em>\u00a0and helped to define his previous two albums are without question present and accounted for on his new release. However, this time around, rather than couching his vocals exclusively in hard-driving dance beats, Walker veers into new territory with more ballads, a few acoustic tracks and even a little smooth Latin jazz. The result is an album that unequivocally demonstrates that Jason Walker is anything but a one-trick pony. In fact, if anything, it reveals that he is what other recording artists describe as a \u2018singer\u2019s singer.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what I wanted to do next,\u201d Walker says of his new album. \u201cI wanted to do something where the songs and the voice would speak for themselves. I don\u2019t feel like I can just do one thing. There\u2019s too much music inside me to just say \u2018Oh I\u2019m only going to do this.\u2019 And that may be my downfall, but I can\u2019t help it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That said, don\u2019t think that Jason has turned his back on dance music altogether.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll always do club music \u2026 I love it too much,\u201d Jason reassures. \u201cBut this is where I want to go now. It\u2019s time for something a little different and I feel that I can appeal to everyone. It doesn\u2019t just have to be one style or one type of music for one audience. I feel like I would be doing myself a disservice if I said I was only going to do club music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if he worries about how his new music will be received by increasingly fickle music buyers, Walker responds with the same categorical defiance that, at the start of his career, gave him the courage to get up in front of primarily African-American audiences from Pittsburgh to New York City and sing his face off until they were cheering in the aisles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like this is what I\u2019m supposed to do,\u201d Jason responds flatly. \u201cMaybe this new album is more adult contemporary or maybe it\u2019s more singer\/songwriter oriented, which is fine with me. I mean I wasn\u2019t trying to target Justin Bieber\u2019s audience. This record is for anyone who likes good music.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the future, Jason says he\u2019s happy with his latest release and that he achieved what he set out to do with it. \u201cAs far as being happy with the total package, yes I am,\u201d he says. \u201c[Now] I\u2019d just like to see it reach as many people as possible and I\u2019m willing to do the work, I just think I have to have some prayers answered.\u201d<\/p>\n

God, are you listening?<\/p>\n

Jason Walker\u2019s new album Leave It All Behind is available for download at iTunes. For more on Jason Walker, visit\u00a0JasonWalker.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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I am changing I\u2019m not who I used to be And I\u2019m not afraid to fight For what I feel is right For me \u2014 \u201cI Am Changing\u201d Jason Walker Jason Walker began singing at the age of four. At first he mimicked the vocals of the iconic divas whose music filled his mother\u2019s rather […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88889,"featured_media":658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1590,1588],"tags":[1591,1133,1147],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","category-culture","tag-lgbtq","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5584,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions\/5584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}