Chris Walz/Photo: David Spector
Folk music is ancient music. Fairly straight lines to the folk tradition can be drawn from the anonymous Mycenaean rhapsodes and their epics—stories sustained by memory and recitation in 1500 B.C., when literacy was reserved for the highest aristocratic intelligentsia—to whiteboards marked by the acrid pens of English teachers in 2025. Folk music, in that same tradition, tells the stories of unknown soldiers, grieving fathers and mothers, alcoholics, drifters, politicians and murderers from the past two or three centuries—often originally by unknown and sometimes illiterate but astoundingly poetic musicians—canonizing these anonymous narratives and celebrating the eternality of storytelling as a craft above all else.
Chris Walz, an educator at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music for more than thirty years, has been a custodian of this tradition since he was a teenager. Now the esteemed guitar educator, performer and local folk preservationist is releasing his first solo studio album, “All I Got and Gone,” on March 14, and hosting an album-release show on April 11 at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
That ancient lyrical tradition of orally transferring lore from one bard to the next reached Walz through upstate New York radio waves as a kid, where he fell in love with fingerpicking folk guitar. He cites the music of Mississippi John Hurt—a sharecropper who became a country folk and blues recording artist—as a key influence in his earliest forays into folk. Hurt’s legend is a fascinating microcosm of early twentieth-century folk and Americana, and is worth further mention. His records sold modestly well in the 1920s, garnering moderate notoriety. When his record label went out of business at the onset of the Great Depression, Hurt’s music receded into obscurity, and he returned to sharecropping and anonymity. Twenty-odd years later, a physical copy of Hurt’s version of the murder ballad “Frankie and Johnny” (with no known author) was discovered by musicologist Harry Smith, who added it to a curated three-volume album, “Anthology of American Folk Music” (1952).
This inclusion generated considerable interest in Hurt and sparked a search for the long-lost artist, who had disappeared. Author and musical catalogist Dick Spottswood located Hurt in 1952 after listening to Hurt’s original “Avalon Blues,” a song expressing his appreciation for his hometown of Avalon, Mississippi. At Spottswood’s urging, Hurt moved north, resumed performing, and recorded “Folk Songs and Blues” (1963), a record that helped drive the American folk revival of the 1960s—eventually reaching the ears of Chris Walz, and linking the distinctly Black fingerpicking tradition of the Mississippi Delta to Walz’s “All I Got and Gone.” Thirty years after Walz was first exposed to Mississippi fingerpicking, a sublime rendition of “See See Rider,” one of Hurt’s most well-known performances, appears on Walz’s record.
I had the chance to listen to “All I Got and Gone” and catch up with Walz ahead of its release. He mentioned to me, “Michael Cooney once wrote something interesting about the distinction between a folk song and folk music: A folk song is a folk song when you don’t know who wrote it. It’s just been around. Folk music is people taking a song that already exists and saying, ‘We’re going to do it this way now.’ It evolves. In that sense, even sampling old beats or rhythms in a hip-hop track is, in some way, a folk exercise.”
From the hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the seafarers of the British Isles, to the Moorish-derived Spanish fandango, Black vaudeville circuits, and at least five more locales and histories, the album catalogs a kaleidoscopic panorama of folk influences, meticulously made Walz’s own through more than thirty years of performance and education experience. Of the eleven tracks on “All I Got and Gone,” I find “Delia”—a song previously covered (and, in many circles, rescued) by Bob Dylan, chronicling the Christmas Eve 1900 murder of fourteen-year-old Delia Green—to be a particularly engaging rendition. Walz’s voice is a soothing juxtaposition to his virtuosic fingerpicking. His version is a calm song that will break your heart as it cradles it.
Our conversation on folk, Chris’ story, and his latest work can be found below.
To start, I’d love to hear about your journey—when did you first pick up a guitar, and what happened next?
I was about sixteen, growing up in upstate New York, and I started exploring creative outlets. There was seven hours of acoustic music programming on the radio every Saturday night, and I’d tape all of it. One late-night show, “Good Time Folk Church Jug Bands and Blues,” devoted an hour to Mississippi John Hurt. I had never heard anyone play like that before—his fingerstyle was mesmerizing. His thumb and fingers created this rolling, intricate rhythm that sounded like two guitars at once. I was hooked. I knew instantly that was the direction I wanted to go, and I’ve been chasing it ever since.
Did you take lessons, or were you self-taught?
Completely self-taught at first. I’d slow down records, trying to catch every note. I’d rewind my cassette tapes over and over, playing along until I got it right. It was obsessive. My first real guitar was this old, beat-up thing that barely stayed in tune, but I didn’t care—I was just trying to unlock the mystery of how those old blues players made their guitars sing. Later, I started playing with others—learning from jam sessions, picking up techniques from different musicians. That’s when I really started understanding the feel of the music, beyond just the notes.
Okay, so from the middle of nowhere in New York to here for over thirty years. How did you end up moving to Chicago and finding your way to the Old Town School of Folk Music?
I studied theater at Syracuse University and moved to Chicago because it wasn’t New York or Los Angeles. I had visited one summer and felt an immediate connection to the city—it was affordable, had a working-class energy, and as an artist, you could hit the ground running. My first job was valet parking at a couple of restaurants, and between my wages and tips, I could cover rent and still have time to pursue theater and music. That freedom was everything in my twenties.
One day, riding the Red Line, I saw a sign for the Old Town School of Folk Music through the bare branches of a tree. I remember literally pointing at it from the train window and thinking, ‘What is that?’ A couple of years later, in 1990, I started just hanging out there, going to First Friday events, playing square dances, and getting to know the community. I never took classes, but I always hoped I could teach there one day.
How did you finally get your foot in the door as an instructor?
It was total luck. In 1996, I was at the school buying guitar strings when Michael Miles, the education director, rushed up to me. They had an overflow of students in Guitar 1 and needed a teacher that night. I said yes immediately. He made me swear I could commit for eight weeks, no exceptions. I wasn’t working much at the time, so it was easy to say yes. I called my girlfriend—now my wife—and said, I’m teaching at the Old Town School! That was almost thirty years ago. I started with that one class, but over time, I built up a full schedule, working with both beginners and advanced students.
Tell me about music education. What is the hardest part in teaching the art?
Teaching absolute beginners is both the hardest and most rewarding part. You have to be patient, go slow and repeat yourself a lot. But it’s invigorating because you never make as big a leap as when you go from zero to playing your first song. There’s also a lot of fear—fear of failure, of being graded—but part of our job is to give people permission to enjoy learning music.
One of my students, a young girl named Sarah, started off hesitant, almost reluctant. Her parents had encouraged her to take lessons, but she wasn’t fully engaged. Then, about a year later, she came back transformed—new guitar, organized binder, talking about making music with friends. The switch had flipped. She had taken full ownership of her playing, and I had nothing to do with it. That’s the most rewarding part.
Love it. So let’s move to your latest. Tell me about your upcoming album—what’s the concept behind it?
It’s my first solo record, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I kept thinking back to the recordings that influenced me—solo guitar and solo voice albums by Norman Blake, Doc Watson and Etta Baker. They were raw, immediate, and had nothing to hide behind. I wanted to capture that same feel: one take, no overdubs, just me and the guitar.
I recorded it with John Abbey at Kingsize Soundlabs. If I made a mistake in a take, I didn’t stop—I’d just pick it back up, and we’d splice out the error. That was my only concession to digital technology. There are rough edges, but that’s part of what makes it real.
You mentioned scouring obscure versions of old songs. How did that shape the album and where does that show up?
That was a huge part of it. I wanted these songs to have complete through-lines—beginnings, middles and ends. Take “Diamond Joe” for example. It was originally recorded a cappella by a prisoner named Charlie Butler in the 1930s. Every time he sang it, he changed the lyrics slightly. His wife, Ruby Lomax, wrote down every variation. I pieced together those forgotten verses, creating something both old and new.
Another example is “Hard Times Come Again No More” by Stephen Foster. I had been playing it as part of a flat-picking medley for years, but as I worked on the album, I decided to do it as a standalone piece with vocals. It became something completely different—more introspective, more personal.
How do you see folk music evolving today?
Folk music is people’s music—it evolves. Historically, it’s associated with artists like Bob Dylan or the Carter Family, but it’s more than that. It’s not just guitars and earnest lyrics; it’s anything where people take a song and make it their own. Sampling, electronic music, reinterpreting traditional songs—it’s all folk.
There’s an idea from folk musician Michael Cooney: a folk song is a song where you don’t know who wrote it, but folk music is when people take a song and make it theirs. That’s what keeps it alive.
Did you see Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Bob Dylan yet?
I did. I loved it. It could have been three or four hours longer and still focused on the period it did. My two gripes are: Edward Norton’s left hand looks great on his guitar, like he actually knows how to play—because he does. But his right hand isn’t doing the right things. And there could be a lot more color on Dylan’s first girlfriend, her story is really fascinating. But that’s just me being picky. I thought it was excellent.
Any upcoming performances to celebrate the release?
We’re doing a release show at the Old Town School of Folk Music on April 11. The album officially drops March 14. I’m excited to finally share it.
I’ll be there. Thanks, Chris.
Likewise! Keep the faith.
The album release performance of Chris Walz’s upcoming album “All I Got and Gone” is on April 11 at Old Town School of Folk Music, The Myron R. Szold Music and Dance Hall, 4545 North Lincoln. Performance begins at 8pm. Tickets are $28, available at oldtownschool.org.