Walter Trout
Part 119 of the No Stinkin’ Service Charge Blues Series!
Saturday March 9, 2024
Walter Trout – Live and Onstage @ World Records Saturday March 9, 2024
This Is A Record Release Party!
Walter Trout
“Blues Rock’s Resilient Icon”
– Live and Onstage @ World Records Saturday March 9, 2024
All of us are broken. But no one is beyond repair. It’s a philosophy that Walter Trout has lived by during seven volatile decades at the heart of America’s society and blues-rock scene. Even now, with the world more fractured than ever – by politics, economics, social media and culture wars – the fabled US bluesman’s latest album, Broken, chronicles the bitter schisms of modern life but refuses to succumb to them.
If he were a less questing artist, Trout could mark time and dine out on those past glories, leaving the polemics and calls-to-arms to a younger generation. But that’s not enough, considers the still-hungry veteran. “I have to grow. I want to be a vital contributing artist. I don’t want to come out every night and play my first hit, Life In The Jungle. I feel young. I know I’m not. But in my head, I’m still 25, still wanting to get better and do something I haven’t before. I have more to say.”
New Album at World Records!
(Releasing on March 1st, 2024)
Walter Trout
BROKEN
Blues-rock icon Walter Trout is riding a creatively formidable wave and heading into 2024 with an album raucous, wild and poignant in Broken. The album features guest appearances from powerhouse singer Beth Hart, Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider and Harmonica virtuoso Will Wilde.
“I’ve always tried to write positive songs, and this album is not quite that,” considers the 72-year-old of an all-original tracklisting that rages and soothes. “But I always hold on to hope. I think that’s why I wrote this album.”
For the last half-century, however rocky his path, hope and resilience has always lit the way. The beat of Trout’s unbelievable story are well-known.
The traumatic childhood in Ocean City, New Jersey; the audacious move to the West Coast in ’74; the
auspicious but chaotic sideman shifts with John Lee Hooker and Big Mama Thornton; the raging addictions that somehow never stopped the boogie when he was with Canned Heat in the early-’80s. Even now, some will point to Trout’s mid-’80s guitar pyrotechnics in the lineup of John Mayall’s legendary Bluesbreakers as his career high point. But for a far greater majority of fans, the blood, heart and soul of his solo career since 1989 is the main event, the bluesman’s songcraft always reaching for some greater truth, forever surging forward, never shrinking back.
It’s a peerless creative streak underlined by the guitarist’s regular triumphs at ceremonies, including the Blues Music Awards, SENA European Guitar Awards, British Blues Awards and Blues Blast Music Awards. The iconic British DJ ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris spoke for millions when he declared Trout “the world’s greatest rock guitarist” in his 2001 autobiography, The Whispering Years.
As the pandemic burnt out, Trout got back to business: the career-long cycle of writing, touring and resting still as natural to him as breathing. But scarcely had the world’s turntable needles dropped on his latest album, 2022’s Ride, when Trout felt the first tingles of incoming inspiration. Alternating between his homes in the remote Danish fishing village of Vorupør and Huntington Beach, California – or sometimes even in the back of the van, still slick with sweat after that night’s gig – the twelve songs of Broken demanded to be born.
“A lot of times I put on headphones, listen to music that gets me emotional, and then start just writing lyrics,” explains Trout of a process that still fascinates him. “I think these songs are as honest as I can be. The band came down to my house for rehearsals so we could just go in the studio and blow through this stuff.”
Kingsize Soundlabs in LA was the scene of the crime – a familiar Trout Band haunt that also hosted 2019’s Survivor Blues – and producer Eric Corne once again the man behind the glass. “This is our 15th album together,” calculates the bluesman. “Eric and I just have a way of working, man. A friend who came into the studio and watched us and said, ‘Man, you guys are like a machine’. It’s unspoken.”
Walter Trout is the beating heart of the modern blues rock scene, respected by the old guard, revered by the young guns, and adored by the fans who shake his hand after the show each night. After five decades in the game, Trout is a talismanic figure and part of the glue that bonds the blues community together, at a time when the wider world has never been so divided.
Walter Trout
– Live and Onstage
@ World Records Saturday March 9, 2024!
Buy your tickets at World Records
during business hours:
Wednesday – Friday 11 AM to 5 PM
Saturday 10 AM to 2 PM
• In Person
2815 ‘F’ Street Bakersfield, CA
• By Phone
661-325-1982
WORLD RECORDS – 2815 ‘F’ Street Bakersfield, CA 93301 – 661-325-1982
Where Music Matters Most since 1982