PAUL KIRBY | 1963-2011
Paul Kirby, who led Nashville rock band Walk The West and Music City country-rock outfit the Cactus Brothers to major-label record deals and national stages, died Sunday of cardiac arrest at his home at age 48.
The son of songwriter-musician Dave Kirby (“Is Anybody Goin’ To San Antone,” “Memories To Burn,” etc.), Mr. Kirby grew up in a home where Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard were frequent visitors.
In the early 1980s, Mr. Kirby and friends John and Will Goleman and Richard Ice grew enamored of the outlandish country-punk sounds of Nashville-based Jason & The Scorchers. Mr. Kirby, the Golemans and Ice formed Walk The West in 1984, and in 1986, they were label-mates with the Scorchers, releasing a self-titled album on Capitol/EMI Records. That album did not produce a commercial windfall, but Walk The West played major venues, opened a tour for The Smithereens and became a vital part of Nashville’s then-thriving rock scene.
In the 1990s, Walk The West morphed into the Cactus Brothers, a country-leaning but rock-informed combo that also included dulcimer player David Schnaufer, the multi-instrumentalist known as Tramp, steel guitarist Sam Poland and drummer Dave Kennedy. Signed to Capitol Nashville, the Cactus Brothers toured nationally and internationally, released two well-received albums and appeared in the George Strait movie vehicle Pure Country.
“It’s kind of weird for us in the country scene,” Mr. Kirby told Mike Boehm of the Los Angeles Times in 1993. “I don’t think anybody’s doing what we’re doing.”
What they were doing was an inspired amalgam.
“If a hard-rock fan, a bluegrass aficionado and someone who loved western swing were all living together, this is the one album that might be in all three of their collections,” wrote Richard Ross in the Los Angeles Reader in 1993.
By 1995, the Cactus Brothers were dropped from Capitol, and Mr. Kirby worked as an independent musician, writing, recording and performing.
This month, he and Walk The West’s original members reunited at the Exit/In and performed a set in honor of the club’s 40th anniversary.
Mr. Kirby’s survivors include companion Elizabeth Forsythe, mother Emma Lou Kirby, brother Wade Kirby and sister Janis Ross. Memorial details are incomplete at this time.