Wally Lawder is a collector of stories. He discovers them in coffee shops and street corners, casual conversations, in the seemingly ordinary events of daily life. They have a way of spinning around his mind and wandering onto notepads. They feed his imagination, and sometimes end up in his songs... After performing a set at a music festival, someone came up to him and remarked “You are my favorite performer here, and I have to say, you write about some of the most unusual things!” He was the winner of the 2010 ACLU Southwest NM songwriting contest, a finalist in the 2009 Tucson Folk Festival Songwriting Contest and winner of the 2008 Gila River Songwriting Competition. Pulitzer Prize winning poet Stephen Dunn calls him "both a romantic and a social critic."
Wally is originally from Kansas, but grew up in Connecticut and lived several years in the Princeton, NJ area before moving to southern New Mexico in 2003. His eclectic life path has led him to work as a nonprofit catalyst, carpenter, alternative energy consultant/technician, holistic educator and cognitive therapist, not to mention a brief, but strangely memorable stint as a waiter in a Karaoke bar. All of these experiences and more have been inspiration for his muse. A musician for many years, he didn't start writing his own material until the later 1990's. "I really took a liking to performers like John Gorka, Ellis Paul, Patty Larkin, Susan Werner, Bruce Cockburn. I could relate so much to their songwriting and was inspired to write my own." Since that time he has been a prolific songwriter with 4 CDs of original music and another one on the way.
Wally often performs solo; recently he has also been performing as a duo with Martyn Pearson on percussion. On occasion he performs as part of the ensemble Papillon (either duo version with Brandie Thornburg or in expanded quartet form). On other occasions he has been known to perform with his most excellent band, The Raptured Coyotes.