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From The Desk Of Butch Walker: Finding A Cure For Pancreatic Cancer

Butch Walker built his reputation with hard-hitting, self-produced rock albums marked by a bright, polished sound. When he set out to make Afraid Of Ghosts, an LP partially inspired by the death of his father, he decided to forget about perfection and aim for a more visceral, acoustic feel. The songs on Afraid Of Ghosts were written over the course of a year, then recorded with Ryan Adams and his band in a four-day burst of creativity. It’s the first time Walker worked with an outside producer. Walker will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on him.

Walker: I know we’re ending this on a bit of a downer, but it needs to be done. It’s easy to roll through life, turning the other way if something tragic happening doesn’t affect you directly. But when it does, that is when the wake-up call usually hits. This is the case with cancer. It’s been in my periphery for years and years, and taken lives of many loved ones and relatives. My wife lost both of her parents to cancer not too long ago. Cancer has been getting worse and worse in the amount of diagnosed cases per year, and treatments for certain forms, like pancreatic, are not doing much good because it is too late and far too aggressive by the time someone finds out they have it. I lost my father more than a year ago. He was my best friend and biggest fan I have ever had. There had come a time when he sat me down to talk to me, with a quiver in his voice and tears in his eyes, about his declining health and that the outlook from doctors didn’t seem good. It was a combination of pulmonary fibrosis of the lungs, congestive heart failure and severe rhumatoid arthritis that was crippling my father and forcing him to breathe with an oxygen tube in his nose 24/7 for the rest of his days. He was such a hard-working man who couldn’t take these things lying down, so he stubbornly defied the doctors for five years later than they actually gave him to live. This, combined with some powerful, but questionable, drugs to help him deal might have been the thing that led to his end. He got pneumonia (again) and had to go into the hospital. I knew it wasn’t good. I flew home, and basically what the doctors found was aggressive pancreatic cancer and said he might have a day to live. If you’ve ever loved a parent or loved one and heard those words, then you know what it does to you. He passed with all of his family by his side, as peaceful as he could. I am starting The www.AutumnLeavesProject.org and plan to really raise some money, awareness and try to make a difference, through music and entertainment. I am so excited about this, and I am totally married to helping find a cure for this disease. It won’t be easy. I mean, it killed Steve Jobs, so it can kill anyone. More importantly, it killed my best friend. My dad.