Ethan Walker III is a 50-something ex-rock and roll musician who currently lives in the woods near Norman, Oklahoma. His recently released CD, Tears of Joy, is the culmination of a lifetime of music and a pursuit of the spiritual way of living. Listen to the entire album and purchase it at: www.devipress.com

The Musical Journey
      
       In his teens Ethan began his music career as a drummer in local rock and roll bands. At the same time he began learning guitar, taking lessons and picking up strums and licks from his band mates. His percussion career peaked in The Fat Sow band a locally popular group who also moved to Denver, Colorado. The band and friends lived communally in a two story brick house near the corner of Colfax and Steele streets. When Fat Sow scattered to the winds, he joined the Fire Wind band as lead guitarist and flautist as he had also taken up the flute. Fire Wind and friends shared an old frame farm house set among rolling wheat fields near Piedmont, Oklahoma (another hippie commune). With this band he performed at the Celebration of Life, a 3-day outdoor rock concert in Louisiana. Picture playing to 100,000 people a la Woodstock. Visualize an army of long-haired counter-culture hippies bathing, splashing and playing nude on the banks of the Atchafalaya River to the amusement of locals who cruised up and down the river in their bass boats. That was an extraordinary time and Ethan was in the middle of it.
        Fire Wind then signed a recording contract with producer Gabriel Meckler who was operating as Lizard Records in Hollywood, California. The offices were above the Whiskey A Go Go club on Sunset Boulevard. The band moved to California to record an album at the Sound Factory and also play live gigs in the area. Gabriel Meckler had previously produced Janis Joplin, Three Dog Night and Steppenwolf with ABC Dunhill. Eventually Fire Wind disappeared over the musical horizon.

       Ethan then spent many years playing in local bands doing weekend gigs providing vocals, lead guitar, flute and pedal steel guitar. Having been interested in meditation and the mystical reality from the age of 18, he eventually became absorbed in the musical expression of this path and began to write and record spiritual and devotional music. However his music is not new age and it is not religious. It is traditional folk-rock-acoustic with a spiritual attitude. Ethan performs most all instruments on his CD.

The Spiritual Journey       

    The journey began in the late 60's when Walker moved from Oklahoma to the Los Angeles area after reading an interview in Playboy magazine with Timothy Leary .. tune in, turn on and drop out. Certain experiences of cosmic consciousness followed leading Walker to take up the study of eastern philosophies such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism. At the age of 20 he began to study with the Rosicrucians. A few years later he became a renunciate living on staff with the Summit Lighthouse, an eclectic mixture of eastern and western spirituality. After several years of this, he devoted himself to the practice of the Vedic philosophy of advaita or non-duality. He regarded Ramana Maharshi as his teacher.

This practice involved meditation on the source of the I or the universal consciousness and continued for about 10 years. In 1988 he met his current teacher Amma. She advised him that practicing non-duality without devotion is like eating stones. She recommended that he learn to cry to God with tears of love and longing. Walker began this practice (bhakti) meditating on God in the form of the Divine Mother which continues to this day. He has come to understand that the obstacle is the ego and the antidote is love. Ethan embraces all religions as paths to God. If asked, he will say his own religion is love. In addition to being a musician, he is an author and a poet having published three books with www.devipress.com : The Mystic Christ unifies the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Krishna and the world's great mystical paths. Finding God's Love is a how-to book regarding the practice of bhakti or spiritual devotion. Soft Moon Shining is a book of Ethan's devotional poetry dedicated to the Divine Mother.