City Limits
City Limits
by Jason Jones
August 1, 2024
“City Limits” is a song of pain and redemption, of running down the road and coming home, of changing everything and somehow staying much the same. It’s written by Foster Burton and Mountain Walrus and it’s set to premier on their debut album release on October 25, 2024. The City Salt had a chance to interview the band before a recent Mountain Walrus rehearsal, during which Foster explained the story behind “City Limits.” But before we get into the song and dance, I feel obliged to pay homage and to reminisce about Foster Burton, specifically what he means to music in the Roanoke Valley.
My earliest memories of Foster are not music, but sports related. Once upon a time, Foster played center and I played nose guard on the same sandlot football team, practicing every afternoon face mask to face mask. We also played on the same basketball team, and his dad, the late Matthew Burton, was one of our coaches. Even back then, Foster knew the game forward and backward before the rest of us. I was supposed to be the point guard on the basketball team—the kid who dribbles the ball up the floor to start the offense—but, being wide-eyed and absentminded, I’d run down the court and forget to take the inbound pass most of the time: thankfully, Foster never forgot, making him the first point center that I can remember. He plays a similar position in our local music ecosystem today.
After high school, Foster and his brother Daniel started the band Mad Iguanas, which is still in existence today. I’ve been requesting “Tudelu” at their live shows going on two decades now. It’s still one of my favorite feel good songs. Foster has also fronted many other regional bands, including GOTE, Stadanko, The Soul Searchers, and The Dead Reckoning, not to mention playing a dizzying number of solo gigs and sit ins. Every time I get into talking music with Foster, unsolicited, he puts respect on another musician’s name who helped him along the way, adding to the oral history of our Roanoke Valley music heritage; paying his dues, if you will, and oftentimes taking a little piece of their story for a part in one of his own songs. If not for Foster, I wouldn’t know the true gravity of important regional figures like Gary Wimmer, Brian Gray, Dave McDonald, Brach Rauchle, Jay Gladden, Henry Lazenby, Gary Jackson, Robby Carden, Texas Gladden, Matty Leonard, Isaac Hadden, PJ George, Ron Holloway, Marshall Hicks, Jake Dempsey, John McBroom, King George, Brian Mesko, and Paul Tressell. In fact, The City Salt would not exist without Foster Burton. He was the first person I asked to interview when I started the magazine. I never considered another candidate: it was Foster’s spirit I wanted to emulate, with an open-mind, a grateful heart, an eye for a thing well-made, an ear for the uncanny, with genuine curiosity and depth of humility.
Listen to the exclusive early release of “City Limits” by Mountain Walrus now, available only at The City Salt. Tickets are available to see the Mountain Walrus album release party at 5 Points Music Sanctuary on October 25, 2024. If you’re reading this, count yourself lucky to be acquainted with one of the great emerging music scenes in the United States—I know I do. Centered just a day trip from a dozen other incredible local scenes, the Roanoke Valley is itself an emerging destination for music lovers, top-tier artists, and producers of indelible shows. <>
Photo credit: Kimble Creative