Walter Trout
“Blues Rock’s Resilient Icon”

– Live and Onstage @ World Records Friday March 6, 2026

Great artists take the pulse of their times. In his half-century as a street-level social observer and scaldingly honest songwriter, blues-rock’s resilient icon Walter Trout has never told his fans what to think, how to feel, where to stand politically, or what to scrawl on their protest placards. But in an era when his home nation – and the wider world – is ripping at the seams over the battlelines of modern life, the iconic US bluesman’s hard-rocking new album, Sign Of The Times, is the primal scream and pressure valve we all desperately need.

“I wanted to convey the anger and angst going on in the world,” explains the 74-year-old. “For me, writing these songs is therapy. They’re not just about what’s happening out there, but how it affects you in your head. Sign Of The Times just became the obvious title…”.

“I Remember”  Walter Trout song from the new album “Sign Of TheTimes“

With ten new songs written and arranged, Trout was ready to call up his studio band – longtime drummer Michael Leasure, bassist John Avila and keys man Teddy ‘Zig Zag’ Andreadis – for sessions at producer Thomas Ross Johansen’s Strawhorse Studios in Los Angeles. Immediately, the tinderbox subject matter sparked one of the toughest-sounding records in his catalogue.

“Let me put it this way,” considers Trout, “after we finished recording the title track, my keys player Teddy said, ‘Well, you won’t be winning a blues award this year’. But I really felt like rocking on this album. We had heavy things to talk about, and we went for it musically too.”

Right now, it feels like the amps have barely cooled from 2024’s Broken (“That record debuted on Billboard at #1 – I was very, very pleased with that”). But the era-chronicling songs from Sign Of The Times wouldn’t wait, these urgent riffs flying off the guitarist’s fingers, assisted once again by Dr Marie Trout, Walter’s wife, manager and latterly co-writer, whose eloquent lyrics struck each subject on the head. “This album flowed pretty easily,” he reflects of the writing process. “I had so many song ideas and pages of lyrics from Marie. We could have kept going and made a triple album.”

As a lifelong road warrior, Trout will be taking the Sign Of The Times material to global audiences throughout 2025. And for those glorious two hours of playing to audiences, political divides and culture wars will crumble as a crowd with little else common melts into a communion of souls. “I could be on social media, writing very explicit posts,” he considers. “But I don’t want to contribute to the division…

…When I’m up onstage playing a minor-key blues, and I look down at the front row and there’s a burly biker – and he’s crying – at that moment, I’m hitting him in our common humanity, and it doesn’t matter who he voted for. At that moment, we are all in this together…”

We have enjoyed Walter Trout shows many times here at World Records.
We are looking forward to Walter Trout and his band again!

Walter Trout
– Live and Onstage
@ World Records – Friday March 6, 2026!