PORTLAND — Award-winning guitar slinger, vocalist and songwriter Joe Louis Walker, celebrating the release of his Alligator Records debut, “Hellfire,” will perform at The Big Easy on Sunday, Feb. 12.

Walker has been releasing groundbreaking music since 1986 and has toured, and continues to tour, worldwide. He has won four Blues Music Awards and has been nominated for 44 more, including a nomination for a 2012 BMA for Contemporary Blues Male Artist Of The Year.

Walker has also recorded as a guest with some of the blues world’s best-known artists, including appearances on Grammy-winning records by B.B. King and James Cotton.

The New York Times writes, “Walker is a singer with a Cadillac of a voice. He delivers no-nonsense, gutsy blues. His guitar solos are fast, wiry and incisive, moaning with bluesy despair.” Rolling Stone simply calls him “ferocious.”

Walker, who wrote or co-wrote seven of the CD’s eleven tracks, describes “Hellfire” as the hardest rocking and most deeply soulful album of his career.

Born in San Francisco on Christmas Day of 1949,Walker picked up the guitar as a child, and by the time he was 16 was regularly backing touring blues artists. As a 16-year-old, he was the house guitarist at San Francisco’s famed musical playground, The Matrix, where he played with or opened shows for everyone from Lightnin’ Hopkins to Jimi Hendrix to Thelonious Monk.

Walker met guitarist Michael Bloomfield in 1968 and the two became friends. Bloomfield helped push Walker’s blues in a more rock-fueled direction, and he became the single biggest influence on Walker’s sound.

Walker has played major European festivals as well as festivals in Japan, Australia, Taiwan, Ireland, Turkey and Brazil; and has appeared on national television.

The concert will be at 7 p.m. For tickets, $20, call 775-2266 or visit www.bigeasyportland.com. The Big Easy is at 55 Market St.

Award-winning guitarist and singer-songwriter Joe Louis Walker will perform at The Big Easy in Portland on Sunday, Feb. 12.