“Culture is a precious, living thing,” Tricia says. “It has to be nurtured if it’s going to survive. Any artist or creative thinker has a responsibility to help chronicle his or her own time, place and people. That’s the surest way to keep a culture from disappearing.”
Tricia Walker is a singer and songwriter whose songs are steeped in the passion, pain and grace of the American South. Born and raised in Mississippi, Tricia has become one of the clearest voices of her own time and place. Her music has been recorded by Faith Hill, Patty Loveless and Alison Krauss, whose performance of Tricia’s Looking in the Eyes of Love earned a GRAMMY® award. A recording artist herself, Tricia’s CD, “The Heart of Dixie,” thoughtfully captures the songwriter’s view of the South with well-placed lyrics and music reflecting her folk, R & B and storytelling influences.
Before moving to Nashville in the 1980s, Tricia earned an A.A. degree from Copiah-Lincoln Community College and a bachelor’s degree in Music Education from Delta State University. While working on her Master’s degree, she performed at clubs and festivals in Mississippi and Louisiana. She won American Song Festival and Mississippi Song Festival awards and moved to Music City to sign with giant gospel music publisher Word, Inc. As her songs were recorded on GRAMMY-nominated discs by Kathy Troccoli, Debby Boone, and The Imperials, her reputation as a songwriter spread. Well-respected producer Jerry Kennedy signed Tricia to his Polygram Group stable of writers, further solidifying her credibility.
Tricia’s instrumental skills earned her a spot backing Grand Ole Opry star Connie Smith, with whom she played for six years. She also toured extensively with Shania Twain and Paul Overstreet as a keyboard player and vocalist. Along with Pam Tillis, Karen Staley and Ashley Cleveland, Tricia was a founding member of Women in the Round, one of the most celebrated foursomes at Nashville’s prestigious Bluebird Café.
She has performed at the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Tin Pan South Songwriting Festival in Nashville, was a New Folk Winner at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas and featured at Austin’s South by Southwest Music Festival. Additional musical highlights included performing for Robert Redford’s Christmas Cantata at Sundance Resort as well as a choreographed work for the Nashville Ballet entitled All the Way Home, named for a song by the same title co-written by Tricia and Kate Campbell.
Tricia returned to her native Mississippi in 2006 to become director of the Delta Music Institute, an entertainment industry studies program at her alma mater, Delta State University. After retiring from DSU in the summer of 2019, she was awarded the title of Director Emerita and Professor of the Practice Emerita, Entertainment Industry Studies. Tricia was also honored in 2019 with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Mississippi Writer’s Guild.
Tricia is currently serving as Music Ambassador for the City of Cleveland, Mississippi, where she manages Deep Roots, a music and cultural tourism initiative focused on promoting various genres of roots music using a roster of local musicians. She serves on the boards of the Cleveland Development Foundation, the DSU Wesley Foundation, and the Cleveland Tourism Council. She is a member of the Mississippi Chapter of the International Women’s Forum and is a voting member of the Recording Academy. She is a founding board member emeritus of the Cleveland Music Foundation, which oversees GRAMMY Museum® Mississippi, and she attends St. Luke United Methodist Church in Cleveland where she serves as pianist and as the congregation’s Lay Delegate to the Mississippi Annual Conference.
Tricia Walker offers an entertaining slice of her places and times, delivered with a beautiful voice, strong musicianship and the ease of a veteran entertainer. Southern style never had it so good.
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Big Front Porch Productions, based in the Mississippi Delta, is a production company offering unique musical and ‘edutainment’ opportunities in the areas of live performance, songwriting, and audio recordings. Our mission is to present musical works and opportunities for learning that both entertain and enrich audiences while challenging them to examine their own lives and “tell their own story.” We purpose for our work to have integrity by creating our products with honesty, thoughtfulness, and courage, presenting the truth with love.
