About Walter Wolfman Washington's My Future Is My Past
“I’m used to playing with another person. To do something like that by myself, I was kind of nervous,” said New Orleans’ Walter “Wolfman” Washington of his intimate new record My Future Is My Past, available now.
Featuring Irma Thomas, Ivan Neville and Jon Cleary and produced by Ben Ellman of Galactic, this is the Wolfman’s first album with ANTI- Records.
“Oh man, it was really a thing,” he smiled and continued. “I had never done something like that. I had to really discipline myself where I couldn’t really underplay and really overplay, so I had to stay really in the middle which was a trick for me. I was amazed at my own self at how it turned out.”
74 years young, Walter “Wolfman” Washington has been a mainstay in the New Orleans music scene since the early 1960s. He cut his teeth backing up some of the best singers and performers in New Orleans history including Lee Dorsey, Johnny Adams, and Irma Thomas before putting together his long time band The Roadmasters, who have been burning down and burning up local and national stages since their first gigs in the 1980s. This new record confirms what fans have known for years: Walter “Wolfman Washington has soul to go along with that fire.
Washington has always embodied both the wildness and sophistication of New Orleans, but finally we have a set of songs that reflects the yin to Walter’s bring-the-party yang. This is the record that we all have known he has in him. This is the night after that party, or maybe just the after party. He’s been given free rein to express himself, and that’s special.