Bluesman Walter Trout is a survivor. In 2014, he received a liver transplant and by 2015, he was performing at the Royal Albert Hall in London. His 2019 album, Survivor Blues, spent two weeks on the Billboard Blues Chart at number one and remained in the top 10 for 12 weeks. A lesser artist might have taken that acclaim and enjoyed it, but Trout is not content with what is. “I wanted to make Survivor Blues to show my blues pedigree and my history of playing this music,” he said. “But that’s not all I am. I’m also a songwriter. Of course, everything I do is based in the blues and I’ll never turn my back on it. (My album) Ordinary Madness is a blues-rock album, but it’s also an evolution of my songwriting. The artists I respect most are the ones who seem to be fearless and push the envelope.”
Trout began his journey as a musician in New Jersey, where the young guitarist was drawn to maverick songwriters like the Beatles, Dylan and Neil Young’s Crazy Horse. In 1974, he moved to California to be a sideman for greats like John Lee Hooker and Percy Mayfield and then became the lead guitarist for Canned Heat. From 1984-1989, he was the lead guitarist in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and then formed the Walter Trout Band. All along the way, he was crafting songs. Then came Ordinary Madness, which is not, he says, Survivor Blues Volume Two. “I dug in deep with regard to the craft of songwriting,” he said. “This album started because I was dealing with the flaws and weaknesses inside me, but it ended up being about everyone.”
The result was an acclaimed album that debuted at number two on The Billboard Blues Chart. Then COVID hit, and for a man with a liver transplant and compromised health, it meant virtual isolation. “I’ve been at this since 1969 when I started out in New Jersey bars,” he said. “Suddenly I’m on my ass for 16 months, although I did practice the guitar every day. My wife and manager, Marie, knew I needed to make music, so her present to me for my 70th birthday was a brand-new record deal she had negotiated.”
Trout began writing songs for what would become his album Ride two weeks before the sessions began. As the album took shape, memories of the past intruded. “This album is obviously what I was going through, mentally and emotionally,” he said. “All I did was express it. I spent a lot of time crying because I would dig down into my emotional core. I want my songs to have some sort of truth in them.”
As the pandemic burnt out, Trout got back to his career-long cycle of writing, touring, and resting. As Ride took center stage, Trout felt a new inspiration. Alternating between his homes in the remote Danish fishing village of Vorupør and Huntington Beach, California, or sometimes in the back of his van, still slick with sweat from that night’s gig, the 12 songs of the album that would be Broken, insisted that he give them life. “A lot of times I put on headphones, listen to music that gets me emotional, and then start just writing lyrics,” he said. “I think these songs are as honest as I can be.”
With gallows humor, Trout noted that the album starts with a track called “Broken,” and ends with one called “Falls Apart.” The album has some of the most personal, bruised songs of his career, but he still believes that as long as there is love and music, we’ll do all right. “That Sixties idealism still burns in me, and I want to make music that means something or helps somebody,” he said. “I may be naïve, but I’m okay with that. In the face of what’s happening in the world, I will stubbornly hold onto my idealism and hope. I want to make music that matters.”
The album may be Broken, but more than ½ a century after his career began, Walter Trout remains unbowed, still making music that matters.
