Joshua Ray Walker finally gets his spotlight as he performs on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show according to a Rollingstone article from February 2. In it they say,
Joshua Ray Walker, the 29-year-old Texas songwriter who’s turned heads with his sharp wordcraft and pliable falsetto voice, made his late-night TV debut on Tuesday, performing with his band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Backed by a three-piece horn section, Walker and his group played the buoyant “Sexy After Dark” off his latest album See You Next Time. It’s an empowering slice of country-funk about turning on the swagger when the sun goes down and the neon buzzes to life. On the Tonight Show stage, Walker didn’t need much to flip the switch, shooting coy glances at the camera and nonchalantly adjusting his eyeglasses while holding a sky-high note.
“There’s a deep history of sexy-crooner country songs played by dudes who were pretty unsexy by all accounts but still had so much swagger,” Walker told Rolling Stone last summer. “‘Sexy After Dark’ was my attempt at writing a song like that.”
The appearance in the famous night show was a dream come true that was held back after a band member fell positive to COVID-19 according to a Dallas Morning News article from February 1 which reports,
“It’s a dream come true,” Walker said. “I remember staying up and watching Johnny Carson reruns with my grandpa as a kid. To me, the Tonight Show is the biggest thing you can do, not just for late-night television — on television, period.”
His appearance had one slight twist. Walker was not in New York for the performance like he was on Jan. 11 when he learned that a band member had tested positive for COVID-19.
Instead, when it came to the musical guest spot, Fallon introduced Walker, and did a “lead-in like I’m actually there,” before throwing the segment to a prerecorded Dallas-produced music video of Walker and his band performing “Sexy After Dark.”
Before the televised segment and to get his fans warmed up locally, Walker staged a pop-up concert at Double Wide in Deep Ellum, performing an hour before The Tonight Show aired nationally.”
Joshua Ray Mark is incredibly thankful for the shot given to him by the people and Jimmy Fallon as he believed that he was just an underdog who had a small platform.
