How do retired Delta State University employees spend their time? If you’re Tricia Walker, former director of the Delta Music Institute (DMI), you give back through your craft, especially in a time of crisis.
Walker, who spent 26 years in Nashville as a performer, music publisher, and music producer before coming to Delta State in 2006 to develop the DMI program, co-created a new album about hospice professionals, The World Around the Bed: Songs of hope and healing. Proceeds from it will support the purchase of personal protective equipment (PPE) for them in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The album features 11 original songs written and performed by various Nashville artists and based on reflections from hospice workers. The album is an initiative of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO).
“I was part of this special project last fall and earlier this year, writing songs with some of their members and doing a studio recording,” said Walker, who earned a bachelor of music education from Delta State in 1974. “I wanted to share this during this time of pandemic. It’s another great connection with how ‘music heals.’”
Walker, an acclaimed singer/songwriter, co-wrote the popular single, “Looking in the Eyes of Love,” with Kostas Lazarides in 1990. Country music star Patty Loveless recorded it, and Allison Krauss earned a 1997 Grammy Award for Best Performance for her cover. Debby Boone and The Imperials also recorded Walker’s material. Her eighth and most recent CD, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter Eye, came out in 2019 and was recorded at Fighting Okra Studios at Delta State.
Early credits also include being a backing musician with Connie Smith, Paul Overstreet, and a young Shania Twain. Walker performed at Robert Redford’s Christmas Cantata at his Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah. In 1988, Walker started Women in the Round at the renowned Bluebird Cafe in Nashville with fellow songwriters Karen Staley, Ashley Cleveland, and Pam Tillis; a version of the show headlines downtown Cleveland each year. Walker retired from DSU last June. Last July, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mississippi Writers Guild.
