Walter Trout's passionate new Blues for the Modern Daze cuts right to the core of his art and his heart. His 21st album returns the contemporary guitar legend to his hard-core blues roots and finds his songwriting at a creative and personal zenith.
Trout's sixth recording for Provogue Records is his first pure blues album in 23 years as a bandleader, which is astounding given his heavy resume in the genre. Trout spent five years in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and was a member of Canned Heat, two of the style's supremely influential bands. He's also supported a slew of classic artists including John Lee Hooker, Big Mama Thornton and Joe Tex. Nonetheless, as a front man the six-string virtuoso developed a conflagrant approach to his instrument and a reputation for tornado-strength live shows that led famed BBC disc jockey Bob Harris to call him "the world's greatest rock guitarist" in his influential book The Whispering Years and won Trout the sixth spot on BBC Radio One's list of the Top 20 guitarists of all time.
"I thought it would be exciting to make a blues album now," Trout explains. "I liked the idea of capturing the energy of my touring band playing live in the studio, and in terms of subject matter, the state of the world is perfect for writing blues songs."
And Trout is at the height of his game as a songwriter. With 2010's Common Ground, he reached a new level of honesty and expression in numbers like the prayerful, plainspoken title track. Blues for the Modern Daze is electrified by that quality, bringing insight on the human condition to the yearning "Lonely," a song about isolation and estrangement in an age where personal relationships are replaced by virtual friendships on-line, and a perceptive sweep of the toll of climate change, conjuring visions of the Dust Bowl as well as the personal losses within today's crippled farm economy in the set's concluding number "Pray For Rain."
That finger picked solo acoustic performance gets directly to the bones of Blues for the Modern Daze. "My main inspiration for this album was the country bluesman Blind Willie Johnson," Trout explains. Johnson was an early blues innovator who recorded such timeless gospel informed blues numbers as "Soul of a Man" and "Nobody's Fault But Mine." "His music is so beautiful, primal, direct and deeply spiritual that I wanted to feel it at my back when we were cutting these songs."
The influence of old-school country blues also made its way into the tracks via the open and modal tunings Trout employed on several tunes. "I've never done that to such an extent before," he notes, "but it was another way for me to marry the contemporary subjects and modern electric guitar sounds in these songs with tradition. It was important for me to make an album that was contemporary and traditional at the same time."
The acoustic guitar track that kick starts the title tune chimes in an open E modal tuning until giving way to a crashing and wailing Hendrix-like charge, and "All I Want Is You," another example, uses a D modal tuning to establish its yearning tone.
Although Trout was interested in exploring the roots of country blues as a foundation for his new songs, his themes often dive into contemporary issues. "Money Rules the World" is especially telling with its opening lines, "Politicians bought and sold/And they're doing just what they're told/Pretending that they got our backs/But they belong to Exxon and Goldman Sachs." And "Brother's Keeper" - where Trout's moaning, anguished vocal performance is supported by his soaring, incendiary guitar - assails the hypocrisy of our times.
"I'm reluctant to be called a political songwriter or a protest singer, but things have gotten so far out of hand that it would be irresponsible to ignore them," Trout says. "These are simply the way I feel about things like our society's failure to take care of people and the way the teachings of Jesus are twisted to defend bigotry and ignorance. The cruelty in the world today is incomprehensible to me."
Trout also looks inward with the highly personal "Recovery" and "Saw My Mama Cryin'." The former is an unsparing autobiographical tale about his struggles with addiction. "I hope it might inspire people who are going through the same thing," he says. "Recovery lasts forever." The latter is a loving tribute to his mother, a sweet soul who struggled hard to raise Trout single-handedly during a difficult second marriage.
Blues for the Modern Daze was recorded at Entourage Studios in North Hollywood, California, with Trout and engineer Eric Corne producing. It's the fifth time Trout has collaborated with Corne, who contributed to the arrangements and sonic palette of the songs that Trout wrote and demoed on acoustic guitar during the year before the sessions.
Although Blues for the Modern Daze takes Trout's career to new creative heights, his musical sea level is 1965, when his brother brought the first album by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band into his family's New Jersey home. Trout's path was set by the magic of the twin guitars of Michael Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop, and Butterfield's gut-deep harmonica and vocal performances. His mother also played records by Ray Charles, Hank Williams, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, John Coltrane, Bo Diddley and other giants.
Trout's practical schooling in blues started when he arrived in Los Angeles in 1973 and got gigs behind Hooker, Big Mama Thornton, Finis Tasby, Pee Wee Crayton, Lowell Fulsom, Percy Mayfield and Joe Tex. In 1981 he joined the remaining original members of Canned Heat. But the real turning point was his tenure with British blues giant John Mayall. Trout became part of the Bluesbreakers' lineage of great guitarists along with Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor. Beginning in 1984 he shared six-string duties with Coco Montoya in Mayall's band, creating a flexible guitar dynamic that helped provide the Bluesbreakers a renaissance that returned the group to the apex of the international blues touring circuit.
Trout began leading his own group in 1989 and cut his debut album Life In the Jungle, rapidly becoming a star in Europe. His first Stateside release, 1998's critically heralded Walter Trout, made him start down the road towards becoming the fixture of the American blues-rock scene that he is today.
"Not only does Blues for the Modern Daze capture my interest in exploring a side of my music that's rooted in my first musical love, it reveals something about me, too," he explains. "It sums up the thoughts and attitudes of somebody who is getting a little older and is feeling a little like he's a part of another era, with different values and a different perspective on life than often seem to be prevalent today. And I stand behind those values, like compassion, authenticity and honesty, as strongly as I stand behind my music."
"Not only does Blues for the Modern Daze capture my interest in exploring a side of my music that's rooted in my first musical love, it reveals something about me, too," he explains. "It sums up the thoughts and attitudes of somebody who is getting a little older and is feeling a little like he's a part of another era, with different values and a different perspective on life than often seem to be prevalent today. And I stand behind those values, like compassion, authenticity and honesty, as strongly as I stand behind my music."
