Career
Walters’ first standing gig was at a Chicago bar owned by Don Gibb, who played Ogre in the 1984 film Revenge of the Nerds. It was Gibb himself who auditioned Walters and chose to feature her several nights a week. Her first demo was recorded in the bathroom of her Wrigleyville apartment on a BR-1180. These songs would later become tracks on Maggie Walters and Midwestern Hurricane.
In 2004, Walters was invited to perform at the Campus Greens Convention in Austin, Texas. In addition, a local radio DJ from KLBJ's The Dudley and Bob Show, had seen Walters play at Gibb's bar in Chicago and invited her to be a guest on his show while she was visiting. Soon after her performances at Campus Greens, Walters returned to Austin to collaborate with one of the musicians she had met on her first trip. Before her first album was complete, a few demos made it into the hands of a KGSR DJ, who began playing a rough mix of "Fingerprints" on the station regularly.
In 2005, Walters released her self-titled debut album, Maggie Walters. To mark the album's release, she played a CD release show at Austin's renowned Cactus Café. She received a four-star review from the Austin American-Statesman and gathered praise from Texas Music Magazine, the Austin Chronicle and others. Soon after, Walters was chosen as a South by Southwest showcasing act, at which time she also made appearances on such shows as KGSR's Live from the Four Seasons, KUT's Ekletikos and The Bob Edwards Show. The independent release sold out and garnered more attention from the industry. Later that year, engineer and producer Dan Workman, co-owner of Houston's SugarHill Recording Studios, approached Walters and the two recorded an EP early in 2006, in time for a second SXSW showcase. It was at this showcase where she was signed to a record label. They wished to use four of the songs from Maggie Walters on the new album, thus the original self-titled album was removed from retail and digital distributors.
To produce the new album, Walters chose the Butthole Surfers guitarist and Sublime producer Paul Leary. Walters again received support from notable musicians, including John Hagan (Lyle Lovett), Ian McLagan, and Ray Wylie Hubbard. Midwestern Hurricane was mastered by Howie Weinberg at Masterdisk in New York City. In 2008 Walters parted ways with her record label but retained the rights to the album.
In 2008, Midwestern Hurricane was released. Soon after, the other tracks from her debut album were re-released.
In 2010, Walters made an appearance on a Ray Wylie Hubbard album and announced that she would be contributing to a new album by East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedys.
Walters has again teamed up with Leary and is currently working on her third album. The first single ("No Sex", featuring Guðrið Hansdóttir of the Faroe Islands) was released in advance on iTunes on Oct. 19, 2010. A video for the song was released on YouTube on Feb. 22, 2011. The video was featured on the front page of the SXSW 2011 website.
In early 2011, Walters announced that she would be an official showcasing act of SXSW 2011. Later that year, Walters made appearances on several tracks on Sublime with Rome's debut album.
Read more about this topic: Maggie Walters
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)