Decatur street musician cuts CD

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Decatur street musician cuts CD

When Ben Rowell, a 36-year-old rock musician who founded a record label out of his Suwanee house, stood on a Decatur sidewalk about a year ago to watch Guitar Red play, he saw something he thought no longer existed: a real-deal bluesman.

Billy Christian "Guitar Red" Walls has a CD out thanks to a local record-label founder who about a year ago heard the bluesman playing on a town square sidewalk.

Walls is a fixture on the streets of the Decatur Square, and he's familiar with the inside of a jail. People who know the homeless musician give him odd jobs or money to stay at a hotel, and some open their homes to him.

"Lightnin' in a Bottle," a CD of 10 blues tunes written or co-written by Walls, was recorded over two days in Backspace Records' basement studio.

The CD hasn't changed his circumstances, he said, but it has made them more bearable.

"It's helped people start realizing I'm a human being," he said. "When they look at me now, they look at me as a musician; not just somebody playing for money on the street."

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Billy Christian "Guitar Red" Walls has a CD out thanks to a local record-label founder who about a year ago heard the bluesman playing on a town square sidewalk.

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