a flower growin wild

bailey@aflowergrowinwild.com | +1 (913) 735-0524 | @aflowergrowinwild

Bailey Walton is an emerging artist from Kansas City, Missouri. Locals may recognize her as a Rural Grit staple performing roots and folk music on many Monday evenings, from backing bands like Dimension Bill Edwards and Sass-a-Brass as a live session musician, or from performing as a duet with experimental artist Les Izmore. After years of supporting music and culture primarily behind the scenes, she has only recently began to record and perform her own music publicly.

Bailey’s songs document the surrealism of surviving in a failing empire, reflecting a range of emotion from a rational, righteous rage to incredulity, to joyful rebellion. Her comfort with critiquing power is informed by her experience as a community organizer and research ethicist, and is evident in her thoughtful and oft-witty writing on contemporary (and yet evergreen) topics like the patriarchy, settler-colonialism and relational challenges. Her eclectic, rhythmic banjo style reflects her wide range of sonic influences — from pre-war blues to early punk to Northern soul and mid-century Ethiopian Jazz — and most importantly, a belief that there is no wrong way to play a banjo.

In addition to playing music, she organizes music and arts programming through the Kansas City Mutual Aid Free Skool she founded in 2023, and is a multidisciplinary artist/craftsperson.