Album Reviews

Veteran blues guitarist Walter Trout is obviously well known within blues circles and among blues fans I asked, but the name doesn’t elicit much of a response outside the blues core.

Trout has been playing professionally for 35 years, working first with John Lee Hooker, then Canned Heat and finally as a Bluesbreaker with John Mayall. He’s spent the last 17 years as a solo headliner, playing, based on what’s on this album, a rock-oriented version of the blues that should be able to break out of the insular blues scene to reach the bigger rock audience.

On his first solo album in five years, Trout is joined by John Mayall, Jeff Healy, Coco Montoya, James Harman, Guitar Shorty and many other blues luminaries in a set that every rock guitar-god loving aficionado should check out. This guy is awesome! He's nimble without being a showoff, and he's got a deep emotional commitment beneath the obvious chops. His lines are fluid and he doesn't always try to cram as many notes into a bar as will fit, though on the opener he lets you know just what he's capable of doing.

You’ll hear whiffs of Clapton and Derek and The Dominoes on the mournful opener “She Gives More Than She Takes,” on which Trout trades licks with Mayall and is backed by Little Feat’s great drummer Richie Hayward, who plays on many of the tunes.

Next up, Trout, who is also a really fine, understated singer, jousts with Jeff Healy on the Cream-y “Workin’ Overtime.” They’ve got Trout on the left and guest on the right throughout the album to avoid confusion.

There are country acoustic blues, swing-style blues, rock-blues, Chicago blues, shuffle blues, Hammond B-3 drenched blues (with Deacon Jones on keyboards—I could have done without panning the organ across the soundstage though),an Allman Brothers-like jam, and some sub-genres I don’t know enough about the blues to identify.

I’ll tell you the truth, my tolerance for blues is limited. The form is constricting and the bitching and moaning subject matter wears thin. As Trout moans about his chick problems I find myself saying “Divorce the bitch already and stop whining to me about it,” but of course that and the predictable chord progressions are what the blues form is all about, so either you put up with it or enjoy it, or you move on.

In the case of this energetic and highly entertaining album, you put up with it gladly. Sonically, it’s a decent, honest-sounding studio job that’s distinguished by a really tasteful mix. The engineer/mixer keeps the drums centered in one place where they’d be if you were watching live, and he’s panned the guitarists to help you distinguish Trout from his collaborator-friends. The equalization is also well done and studio reverb has been added tastefully. One reason may be the German-owned label. They care more about sound in Germany than here, and people actually sit and listen to music in large numbers.

So, while this music is not much like Stevie Ray Vaughan’s, if you’re a fan of his, you will probably enjoy this disc very much. I did. And I really enjoyed hearing Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward playing so joyfully in another context.