(click on any song title to get more information on that song, and to download it individually)

--for a physical CD, contact the artist directly.

South of the Wall is the 17th solo album from ex-Austin, Texas musical adventurer and multi-instrumentalist Walter Ehresman, and the second since his early 2015 move to San Miguel de Allende in Central Mexico. More than any of his past solo releases (excluding 2007’s dark ambient The A.D.G. Project), this new album focuses on one goal. As Ehresman gleefully tells us, “This is a rock record, and I couldn’t be happier about it…….After 2016’s Pinches Topes album, I was really feeling the urge to play some rock guitar, and so I made the conscious decision to sit down and write that type of material.”

In the past, Ehresman’s real barn-burner rock songs were largely saved for his band projects with Snipe Hunt, and later Delphi Rising. But the new material here ranks as his most compelling and fully-realized rock and roll to date. As long-time fans know, an Ehresman solo album typically travels across a wide range of styles, where you might find world music hybrid protest songs sharing the same disc with melancholy piano ballads and experimental spoken-word. But on South of the Wall, the farthest things stray from the (albeit loose) confines of a rock album are the Dylanesque acoustic “You Must Get Down”, the beguine/tango hybrid of “Dead Man’s Dance”, and the mandocello/bagpipes dirge “The Last Spark of Kindness” (which Ehresman wrote the week of the hideous Trump election).

The album makes its intentions clear right off the bat with a concise shot across the bow. “Can’t You Shoot Straight?” features Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano pounding from Ehresman and an early break reminiscent of The Who, circa Quadrophenia. This cut leaps straight into the joyful classic rock romp of “You Can Take It to the Bank,” buoyed by the dynamite background vocals of the supremely-talented Mexican singer Ana Karen Aboytes. Then a quick segue into the southern rock bounce of “Midnight Situation,” complete with Ehresman on Duane Allman-inspired slide capped off by gospel choir vocals for the big finish.

These three songs make up the strongest 1-2-3 opening punch of any Ehresman album so far. After this salvo, things take a breather with the laid back, jazzy “It’s Schmendrick Time (and That’s OK)”, which was written as a tribute to Steely Dan’s Walter Becker, who passed away in 2017. The sophisticated arrangement flavored with tasty guitar and electric sitar acts as a palate cleanser before the onslaught of the tribute song to the late Lou Reed, “It Just Happens That Way.” According to Ehresman, he wrote this song to capture the flavor of Reed’s work around the time of 1983’s ferocious “Live in Italy”, which featured the manic guitar work of Robert Quine along with usual Reed cohort, fretless bass monster Fernando Saunders. Here, we get Ehresman handling all those instruments himself, to great effect, singing with unbridled gusto in this best Lou voice with scalpel-wielding lyrics that you have to think would make Reed smile (or at least smirk). A seven-plus minute punk rock throwdown that will leave you wrung out.

Which is unfortunate, because you’ll need all your wind intact for the title track that follows, “South of the Wall (Cabeza Naranja).”

Here is where you can really hear the impact of Ehresman’s time in Mexico, with fast and furious Latin rhythms from countries all points south of the ludicrous wall-to-be, and lyrics alternating freely between English and Spanish as they propose an answer to Trump’s relentless racist insults aimed southward. Creamy, thick Santana-worthy guitar drives the point home throughout. You’ll be breathless when it all comes screeching to a halt in a rapid-fire Brazilian percussive barrage.

At this point in the album, you’ve barely had a chance to take a breath, and so Ehresman kindly gives the listener some respite with the cool breeze that is “Dead Man’s Dance.” The song unrolls with a languid tempo that is equal parts beguine and tango, clever double entendre lyrics supported by Ehresman’s archtop acoustic guitar, trading wonderful solos with San Miguel’s own vaunted jazz guitarist Rolando Gotes, here playing nylon-string.

“Capture Mercury” brings back the prominent piano, although here it’s decidedly more subtle and enveloping, accentuated by vintage Mellotron sounds. Lyrically, the song is a plea for truth and good faith in a world that seems to have abandoned both.

In a long musical career that has tipped its hat to Bob Dylan with some frequency, we see in “You Must Get Down” a distillation of that influence to its very essence. One man, one acoustic guitar, and scathing yet poetic social commentary delivered with conviction. A push-back against hypocrisy and mean streaks.

Ehresman tells us that he wrote “The Last Spark of Kindness” that week of the appalling, dispiriting Trump election. The depth of his despair at that time is evident in what can only be called a dirge, with mandocello, bagpipes and bassoon overlaying funereal organ and lyrics which cry from the spectacle of the worst traits of the American character celebrated and ascendant.

So as not to end the proceedings on that note, Ehresman gives us two bonus tracks that take things in very different directions.

“The Machines That Raise Them” is all experimental post-rock, led by highly-processed electric mandola over a haunting, synthetic percussion track. The song posits the idea of the various computerized devices parents use to babysit their children becoming sentient and, at the same time, feeling a real paternal love for their charges and lamenting the state of the world the adults will leave them with.

The second bonus track is an instrumental mix of the Walter Becker tribute, “It’s Schmendrick Time (And That’s OK), which gives the listener the chance to hear all the little details that make the track so special.

And as he often does, Ehresman hides an Easter egg in the proceedings by way of a hidden track. This time, he tells us, the piece is "the second or third song I ever wrote, and was titled “100 Heavy Plastic Poker Chips” (as it read on the box)……it was for an assignment in my Humanities class my senior year of high school, 1979…..since no recorded version of the song survives to this day, I thought it would be fun to whip one up on the six-string banjo……if nothing else, it’s painless and short.”

And that brings things to a close for South of the Wall, an album that is more accessible than some of Ehresman’s past work while making no calculated concessions to be so. It is the sound of a man who has been doing this for over 30 years and still enjoys it, striving for new ground and an ongoing perfection of his craft. And always with something heartfelt to say.


Discography (available on this website)
--solo albums: "Honor in the Swine?" ('89); "In the Path of the Cat Chasers" ('90); "Split Brain Theory" ('91); "The Blue Shoat Special" ('96); the spoken-word "The Rants" ('97); "Handwedge from the Trap" ('99); “Le Cafard“ (’01); "The Feral Rugby Team Must GO!" ('03); "No Unifying Theme" ('04); "March, Scream or Cry" ('07); "The ADG Project" ('07); "Monkey Paw Situation" ('09); “Well…..Let‘s Look at Your Track Record, Shall We?” (’10); “Life Outside the Tent“ (’12); “Blue-Eyed Devils” (’14); “Pinches Topes” (’16); and "South of the Wall" ('18).

--with Snipe Hunt: "We'll Be Right Back!" ('99); "Dirty Ditties and Cover Tunes" ('00); and "I Saw the Future (But the Damn Train Hit Me Just the Same)" ('02).

--with Los Platos: “Oh, No” EP (’08).

--with Delphi Rising: “For Granted” (‘10)

--compilations (various artists):
(with Swine Patrol) “The Austin Cassette Compendium” (‘86);
(solo) "Monkey Boy Sampler" ('01, '05); and "Several Famous Orchestras" ('03).

--Nine-volume “Best of……”series, celebrating 30 years of writing and recording (1987-2017): "The Best of.......Singer/Songwriter"; "The Best of........World Music"; "The Best of.......Party Mix"; "The Best of......Hard Rockers"; "The Best of.......Electronic Rockers"; "The Best of......Chill"; "The Best of.......Blue Mood"; "The Best of.......the Weird Ones"; and "The Best of......Songs of Possibilities".