The Walls We Build, The Walls That Fall: Introducing The Limestone Cowboy
There are certain occupational hazards that come with working the land. Unpredictable weather. Stubborn machinery. Aching muscles. And, apparently, the occasional broken heart.
Meet Eric Lawrence: father, traditional drystone waller, and a singer known as the “Limestone Cowboy” to England's beautiful Peak District, where the landscape is stitched together by ancient stone boundaries and the rhythms of agricultural life.
Eric knows a thing or two about walls. Building them, maintaining them, and understanding what happens when they can no longer hold together. As it turns out, he also knows how to write a song about them.
His first release, aptly titled Walls, takes its inspiration not from the Derbyshire countryside, but from something rather closer to home: the painful unraveling of a marriage. It's a compelling bit of symmetry. A man who spends his days carefully fitting stones together, creating structures intended to withstand generations, finds himself writing about the collapse of something he once hoped would last just as long.
But that's the thing about a life lived close to the land. There's no shortage of material. Love, loss, endurance, disappointment, humour and hope are all part of the landscape. And sometimes, somewhere between driving a tractor and laying another course of stone, those experiences find their way into a melody. “Walls” is one of those songs.
Through Have Guitar Will Travel World, we're delighted to be working with Eric to produce his music and bring his songwriting to a wider audience. Because extraordinary musical stories don't always begin in recording studios or on concert stages. Often, they begin in a field, behind the wheel of a tractor, or even beside a fallen wall.
And sometimes, when the walls come crumbling down, something rather beautiful comes out of the rubble.
About Eric
Eric’s country credentials started long before he even stepped onto a stage. He began farming at 14, became a full-time dairy farmhand at 16, and spent years working on the farm before becoming self-employed. Since then, his working life has remained firmly rooted in the English countryside, from agricultural contracting and long days spent silaging and muck spreading to his principal trade as a traditional drystone waller.
It’s a background that gave rise to his moniker, Derbyshire’s “Limestone Cowboy.”
Since late 2025, Eric has been working closely with Have Guitar Will Travel World Productions, forming a unique transatlantic connection between the limestone hills of Derbyshire and the home of country music in Nashville. With Mark bringing his production experience, musical knowledge and Nashville pedigree to the project, the partnership lays the foundation for the next chapter of Eric’s career. Together they are developing Eric’s original songs into full-band country records — combining authentic Nashville musicianship and production with the stories, character and unmistakably English rural roots that inspired the songs in the first place.
It’s an unusual meeting of two country worlds: Nashville and rural Derbyshire, connected by a shared love of honest songs, real stories and country music.
Alongside his solo acoustic career, he is also the frontman of four-piece country rock band Roughstock Country.
About Have Guitar Will Travel World Productions
The Emmy®-nominated television series Have Guitar Will Travel World began with a simple idea: music gives us a way into people, places and cultures. That same idea now extends beyond the series through Have Guitar Will Travel World Productions to develop, produce and release music from artists and the stories we've discovered along the way.
As always, original music and emerging projects from artists whose songs have stories worth hearing: www.haveguitarwilltravel.world.
Media Contact:
Andrea Leigh Engleson
+1 (301) 768-5477 (WhatsApp)
