Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
Walt Winston’s Walteria Records–released EP, All I Do (Is Daydream), is credited to two people: Walter Gaal and Walt Winston. The four songs on the record, including the title track, were written before he took his stage name. After the record’s release in 1985, the singer-songwriter had an epiphany during his duties as porter at the Billie Goat Hill Saloon, where he worked as he put himself through broadcasting school. The liner notes tell the story: “Walt felt he needed to change his name to do well in broadcasting, and/or in music…when he was sweeping a floor, Walt found a pack of cigarettes laying there, picked them up and saw the pack was named Winston, and thus called himself Walt Winston…the name stuck with him, and everyone agreed that this should be his stage name in honor of John Winston Lennon, his favorite Beatle.” (It did have a nice ring to it, with its Lennon allusion and its alliteration and its near-mimicry of poet Walt Whitman’s name.)
Those songs were published by Winston’s own Wally Goat Music—“Wally Goat” was his nickname at the Billie Goat—and issued by his independent record company, Walteria. He records all of his own CDs in his South Side apartment, using his $80 guitar, his laptop, and Acoustica Mixcraft sound-editing software. Some of the CDs are reissues of old songs recorded in the studio, like “I’m Sailing Away,” which Winston regards as his best song; others, like “Someday, I’ll Be Somebody,” “Fountain of Hope,” and “Ferret in the Closet,” are newer. Since 2007, he’s released his songs through websites like the Los Angeles–based BETA Records (betarecords.com), and based on the Internet charts, he has actually had more No. 1 hits than The Beatles, his favorite band, or even George Strait, who’s got 57 to Winston’s 70. “I have made music history by capturing the top six singles on a weekly published chart,” he adds, predicting Internet charts will one day outshine Billboard, because they’re based on the number of plays, versus the number of sales. It is true that a certain kind of music fan has been clicking quite a bit on his MP3s, lured by an echoey, jangly sound that recalls the mid-1960s, with lyrics pulled from Winston’s own experiences.
Winston was, in his words, “born and raised in a tavern in the ghetto of South St. Louis.” He grew up on Walsh Street, where actress Susan Heinkel once lived. (The house “nearly looks as it did back in 1963, when the old Globe-Democrat did a story on the house and my family at that time,” he says. “I wasn’t born until December of 1964, though, with ‘I Feel Fine’ playing in the delivery room, according to my mother.”) And that cosmic Beatles influence, arriving in the form of incidental delivery-ward music, worked its magic. Winston taught himself piano at age 6 (though music runs in his family: His sister is Linda Gaal of The UltraViolets, and his brother Dave was in a heavy-metal band called Ax Minister). He started writing songs at 16, and he credits music with pretty much getting him through his painful high-school years, which he spent in Affton.
Though one of his earliest bands was Walt Winston & The Cigarettes (he is not, by the way, a smoker), he’s best known for The Waltles, a Beatles-inspired trio he formed in 1992 with drummer Scott Eastabrook and guitarist/bassist Chris Noblin. Winston has always released music as a solo artist, but there has pretty much always been a Waltles, too. After moving to King City, Calif., to work for KRKC-FM, he put together a new lineup, and the band opened for Denny Laine at the Salinas Valley Fair. More recently, Winston lived in Chadron, Neb., and worked as a truck driver, a job he was not able to continue due to his epilepsy.
That job did, however, provide him with one of his most important songs, “Truck Drivers Aren’t Supposed to Cry,” which he wrote on the road after learning of his older sister’s death. It was also the song that helped him ace the auditions for America’s Got Talent; he performed it for 15 million television viewers on June 8.
It was not a cakewalk. Winston auditioned for the 2008 and 2009 seasons and didn’t make it (for the former, he played “I’m Sailing Away”; for the latter, a cover of The Beatles’ “Yesterday”). The producers continued to call him back, though, and he traveled to Chicago last November to perform his truck-driving song.
“When I played that song, the camera crews were like, ‘We’ve got to follow this guy,’” he says. “My turn came around, and they got a camera, and of course they have this X where we all have to stand. I took my chair, slung it across the room, and that got me noticed. I just felt it, and I just belted out ‘Truck Drivers Aren’t Supposed to Cry,’ and I’m moving here, I’m moving there, moving everywhere, and I owned that X. I wasn’t going to give that X up to nobody. People were bobbing their heads, and the producer knew, ‘We’ve got something here.”
Winston didn’t win a million dollars. But, for just a few moments, he did have the ears of millions of American television viewers. In the clip (which you can still find on YouTube), Howie Mandel asks him how long he’s been playing music. “Thirty years,” Winston says. “And how many albums have you recorded?” “Twenty-eight.” “Twenty-eight? That’s more than The Beatles, you know.” Though a churlish Piers Morgan hit his buzzer immediately, Sharon Osbourne and Howie Mandel seemed more forgiving. Osbourne just said she didn’t think he was a million-dollar act. Host Nick Cannon ran out on stage after Winston got three X’s. “I am flabbergasted you would treat my man like this!” he cried, and talked the judges into letting Winston finish his song (the audience agreed with Cannon). Winston was appreciative—and in retrospect, a little flabbergasted, too: “I did not know he was married to Mariah Carey.”
Back in South City, Winston often performs solo at the Chippewa Chapel Traveling Guitar Circle & Open Mic on Thursday nights. He played there, in fact, not long after NBC had run his performance on AGT, dressed in the same slightly Beatles-ish suit he wore on TV. He says his co-workers at Xentel Call Center brought TVs to the office. “People were going nuts around here when I was on the program,” he says. “The reception I got on Thursday morning was incredible and more than I ever expected. It’s been a heck of a roller-coaster ride.” His teenage son, Andy Gaal, is learning percussion, and one day, Winston says, he’ll re-form The Waltles with Andy on drums. (For now, you can hear Andy’s drumming on “Happiness Alley,” “These Times Are Trying,” and “Roanoke Island.”) Winston says if he gets called back for yet another audition of AGT this fall, he’s bringing Andy along with him—if Andy wants to, that is.
For now, Winston’s rewritten “Truck Drivers Aren’t Supposed to Cry” as a public-service message of sorts, “Drunk Drivers Aren’t Supposed to Drive,” which he test-ran at Chippewa Chapel. He says he’s hoping maybe Missouri Department of Transportation will use “Drunk Drivers” as a television PSA, and he’s already recorded the song in his home studio and burned the single onto CD. The cover features a photo by Andy (who’s credited by his stage name, Matthias Beat).
Winston’s TV appearance has opened some doors. Last year, he requested to be added to the iTunes Store and was turned down. But this August, he signed a deal with Apple, and his album A Brand New Start appeared on the site last month. His friends baked him a congratulations cake. Perhaps Osbourne is right—maybe Winston isn’t a million-dollar act—or maybe it’s just that America hasn’t quite caught up with the kind of talent he has to offer.
For more info, visit Walteria Records at wix.com/walteriarecords/walteria-records, or search for Walt Winston at betarecords.com or on YouTube.
