Walker County is about half Faulkner and half Springsteen's "Your Home Town" and has the great resonance of the former and the subdued power of the latter, plaintive but not whiney. In the parlance: it's a sip of moonshine with quality taste.

Carle V.P. Groome
The EYE

This LP poses big trouble for anyone trying to write a better country album this year, or for many years down the road.

Edward McKeon
Folk Roots

One of the finer folkie efforts in recent memory, if only because his roots do run deep and he's not afraid to stretch them, either. Lawrence flaunts his twang while staying just this side of sticky sentimentality, and he offers some telling thoughts on the small pleasures and large limitations in Southern life.

John Morthland
Music & Sound Output

Here's a fine debut by a transplanted Alabaman who recently moved to New York. Lawrence is an excellent guitar and mandolin picker and his tales of rural southern life ring true. The title track, for example, is a capsule history of "Walker County," starting with its discovery by Jubal Ross and closing with the replacement of a farm by a trailer park and a church by a strip mine.

Ken Roseman
Included in his ten best folk albums of 1986
The New Haven Advocate

Walker County è totalmente acustico e si presenta quasi come un lavoro a concetto contenendo una sequenza di canzoni che, richiamando talora alla mente il Randy Newman di "Good Old Boys," ritraggono frammenti di vita sudista o descrivono sensazioni personali con grande chiarezza e semplicità. Una volta tanto, dunque, un disco country cond dei testi intelligenti e soprattutto un lavoro che, se deve far sorgere dei paragoni è più vicino allo spirito di Hank Williams (citato fra l'altro insieme a Johnny Cash in Sid's Blues) che a quello di Bob Dylan.

Massimo Ferro
Hi, Folks!