Bradley Walker   -  Biography

Bradley Walker grew up in Athens, Ala., raised in a family that loved music. When he was 3 years old, his parents took him to a local Oak Ridge Boys concert. Backstage, he sang "Elvira" to the quartet. When he was 10, his family brought him to the Oak Ridge Boys' fan club party. This time, he sang "Elvira" with the quartet. The group was so impressed that the following year he was invited to appear on the national cable show Nashville Now with the Oaks. Walker was born with muscular dystrophy and has been in a wheelchair his whole life. The Muscular Dystrophy Association heard about Walker's appearance on Nashville Nowand spotlighted him the following year on the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon. After graduating from high school, Walker started playing dance halls with a band. One of his bandmates, Ray Edwards, turned him onto bluegrass music and Walker quickly became a fan of the genre. They formed the Trinity Mountain Boys with brothers Tim, Scotty and Kirk Terry, the nephews of fiddler Gordon Terry. The band debuted at a bluegrass festival staged in Pulaski, Tenn., in 1998. Former Sawyer Brown member Bobby Randall spotted Walker at a bluegrass festival and asked him to come to Nashville to sing song demos. This was his introduction to the recording studio. In 1999, the Trinity Mountain Boys self-produced their album, Breaking New Ground. The Atlanta-based bluegrass group Lost Horizon invited Walker to become its lead singer in 2001, so he began commuting to Georgia for rehearsals. The group took second place at a bluegrass convention in Nashville that year, and Lost Horizon was invited to appear on the Jerry Lewis telethon. Walker believes his performance of "Big Spike Hammer" was the first time bluegrass music was presented on the long-running annual telecast. In 2002, IIIrd Tyme Out invited him to appear with them at the Grand Ole Opry where he sang the Jimmy Martin classic "Drink Up and Go Home" and drew a standing ovation. He has since been on the Opry several more times as the guest of close friend and fellow bluegrass singer Alecia Nugent and country artists Vince Gill and Mark Wills. In 2002, Walker went to work at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in northern Alabama. He is a material analyst there, supporting warehouse inventory and purchasing. In 2006, he released his debut on Rounder Records, Highway of Dreams, produced by Carl Jackson.