WALTER TROUT IS TERUG MET EEN NIEUW STUDIO ALBUM ‘WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER’ SAMEN MET 14 VRIENDEN
Release datum 1 SEPTEMBER 2017.
Featuring John Mayall, Joe Bonamassa, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Sonny Landreth, Joe Louis Walker, Warren Haynes, Randy Bachman, Charlie Musselwhite, Edgar Winter, Eric Gales, Mike Zito, Robben Ford, John Nemeth, en z’n zoon Jon Trout.
Walter Trout is het kloppende hart van de moderne blues rock scene. Gerespecteerd door de oude garde, bewonderd door de jonge honden. Aanbeden door de fans die na elke show zijn hand schudden. Na vijf decennia in de blues bizz, is Trout de lijm die de blues community samen houdt, in een tijd waar de wereld nog nooit zo verdeeld is geweest. Ook is hij de enige artiest met de visie, het talent en het, adresboek om een project als We’re All In This Together te kunnen doen. “Het was een pittige klus ja om deze plaat bij elkaar te krijgen,” geeft hij toe. “Maar ik denk dat ik gewoon een boel vrienden heb, snap je….?”
Walter Trout – We’re All In This Together. Album trailer:
Voordat je überhaupt een noot hebt gehoord, heeft ‘We’re All In This Together’ je aandacht al te pakken. In samenwerking met veertien wereld sterren – waaronder Joe Bonamassa, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, John Mayall en Randy Bachman – heeft Trout het meest bewonderenswaardige album van het jaar geschreven. Deze plaat bood Trout troost na een aantal soloplaten die het verhaal vertelden van zijn bijna fatale leverziekte in 2014. “Nu was het goede moment voor deze plaat,” zegt hij. “Battle Scars [2015] was zo’n intens stuk werk, geschreven terwijl de tranen over mijn gezicht rolden. Ik had echt even een pauze nodig, ik moest iets leuks en lichtvoetigs doen. Dit album was echt een en al plezier om te maken.”
Als je de aftiteling van “We’re All In This Together” nakijkt zie je het bewijs van Trout’s ongelooflijke carrière. Toetsenist en oude vriend Skip Edwards bijvoorbeeld, groeide op in hetzelfde New Jersey circuit als Trout in de vroege jaren 70, waar hij nog de ver-ontwikkelde leadgitarist voor Wilmont Mews was. Ook orgel tovenaar Deacon Jones, de West Coast bandleader wie een twintig-nog-wat jarige Trout onder zn hoede nam en hem introduceerde in de blues wereld. Trout heeft op deze manier gespeeld met titanen zoals John Lee Hooker en Big Mama Thornton. “Deacon heeft mij een soort van ontdekt toen ik naar LA verhuisde in de zeventiger jaren,” reflecteert Trout. “Dus ik sta bij hem in het krijt.”
John Mayall, Eric Corne, Walter Trout // Photography by Marie Trout
Trout verwelkomt ook een handvol vrienden uit het recente all-star project The Supersonic Blues Machine, een samenwerking tussen Warren Haynes, Robben Ford en Eric Gales. Dan heb je ook nog John Mayall, de leeftijdloze Britse blues-boom godfather. John huurde Trout in voor the Bluesbreakers in 1985 en speelt nu mee op Blues For Jimmy T. “Ben ik trots dat ik mezelf een voormalig Bluesbreaker mag noemen?” Reflecteert Trout. “Ja tuurlijk! Wat een referentie. Dat is een heel exclusief clubje en ik weet zeker dat wanneer ik er niet meer ben, dat dat hetgeen is waarvoor ze me zullen herinneren. Dat ik 5 jaar lang een Bluesbreaker was.
Vanaf het moment dat hij voor voor zichzelf is begonnen in 1989, is Trout zijn solo carrière een succes. Met eindeloos touren en klassieke albums zoals zijn vlaggenschip Life in the Jungle (1990), zijn doorbraak Walter Trout (1998) en het politiek getinte Blues For The Modern Daze, won hij internationale steun en heeft hij – nog steeds groeiende – verkopen.
Jaren ‘on the road’ hebben hem ook hele hechte vriendschappen opgeleverd. Zoals bewezen op zijn plaat Full Circle (2006). “Het nieuwe album zou eigenlijk Full Circle Volume 2 gaan heten, maar ik wilde een positieve titel in deze gekke tijden.”
In tegenstelling tot vroeger, waar Full Circle alle gasten gewoon naar de studio kwamen om hun partijen op te nemen, zijn de ontwikkelingen in de opname technologie inmiddels zo ontwikkeld dat de gasten op We’re All In This Together hun steentje op afstand konden bijdragen. “In de studio was het de basis van de band. Die bestond uit mijzelf, Sammy Avila [keys], Mike Leasure [drums] en Johnny Griparic [bass] met Eric Corne die produceerde,” legt hij uit, “en toen konden de meeste mensen hun tracks gewoon opsturen. Maar het is echt lastig te horen dat we niet samen in de studio staan. Als je naar de Warren Haynes track luistert, waar we dat gitaar gesprek voeren op het einde, klinkt het alsof we elkaar gewoon in de ogen aankijken, snap je?”
Sammy Avila, Johnny Griparic, Joe Bonamassa, Walter Trout, Eric Corne, Michael Leasure // Photography by Marie Trout
Ze zeggen dat je een man kan beoordelen door het gezelschap om hem heen. Als dat het geval is, is We’re All In This Together het bewijs van Trout zijn positie in de blues scene. Dit is niet het geluid van een artiest die het maar net red met hulp van zijn vrienden, maar van iemand die zich in positieve zin ontwikkeld op een album wat zijn laat-ontwikkelde carrière zeker nog een flinke boost geeft. “Ik ben 66 jaar oud”, vertelt Trout, “maar ik heb het gevoel alsof ik in de beste jaren van mijn leven zit op het moment. Ik voel me fysiek beter dan dat ik in jaren heb gedaan. Ik heb meer energie. Ik heb een hele andere waardering gekregen voor het leven, de wereld en mijn carrière. Ik wil dat het leven spannend is en gevierd word. Ik wil het leven bij de ballen pakken en niet meer los laten, snap je?
Do You Still See Me At All feat. Jon Trout
Free Download: http://smarturl.it/Walter-FreeTrack
Walter Trout – We’re All In This Together
Release date: USA: August 25, 2017 | Europe: September 1, 2017
Available formats: 2LP+MP3 | CD | Digital
Label: Provogue Records
Track List
1. Gonna Hurt Like Hell – feat. Kenny Wayne Shepherd
2. Ain’t Goin’ Back – feat. Sonny Landreth
3. The Other Side of The Pillow – feat. Charlie Musselwhite
4. She Listens To The Blackbird Sing – feat. Mike Zito
5. Mr. Davis – feat. Robben Ford
6. The Sky Is Crying – feat. Warren Haynes
7. Somebody Goin’ Down – feat. Eric Gales
8. She Steals My Heart Away – feat. Edgar Winter
9. Crash And Burn – feat. Joe Louis Walker
10. Too Much to Carry – feat. John Németh
11. Do You Still See Me At All – feat. Jon Trout
12. Got Nothin’ Left – feat. Randy Bachman
13. Blues For Jimmy T. – feat. John Mayall
14. We’re All In This Together – feat. Joe Bonamassa
Walter Trout – In Concert
01 November 2017 – Metropool – Hengelo, NL
Walter Trout // Photography by Austin Hargave
WALTER TROUT RETURNS WITH BRAND NEW STUDIO ALBUM FEATURING 14 FRIENDS AND A-LIST STARS.
TO BE RELEASED AUGUST 25, 2017 IN US AND SEPTEMBER 1, 2017 IN EUROPE.
Guests include: John Mayall, Joe Bonamassa, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Sonny Landreth, Joe Louis Walker and Warren Haynes.
Walter Trout is the beating heart of the modern blues rock scene. Respected by the old guard. Revered by the young guns. 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 the glue that bonds the blues community together, at a time when the wider world has never been so divided. He’s also the only artist with the vision, talent and star-studded address book to pull off a project on the scale of We’re All In This Together. “It was quite a piece of work to get this record together,” he admits. “But I guess I have a lot of friends, y’know…?”
Before you even hear a note, We’re All In This Together has your attention. Drafting fourteen A-list stars – including Joe Bonamassa, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, John Mayall and Randy Bachman – and writing an original song for each, Trout has made the most tantalising album of the year, and found solace after a run of solo albums that chronicled his near-fatal liver disease of 2014. “Now was the right time for this record,” he says. “Battle Scars [2015] was such an intense piece of work, written with tears coming down my face. I needed a break from that, to do something fun and light-hearted. This album was joyous for me.”
Scan the credits of We’re All In This Together and you’ll find nods to every twist and turn of Trout’s electrifying backstory. There’s keys man and long-time friend Skip Edwards, who came up on the same early-’70s New Jersey circuit where Trout cut his teeth as the precocious lead guitarist for Wilmont Mews. There’s organ wizard Deacon Jones, the West Coast bandleader who brought a twenty-something Trout into the orbit of blues titans like John Lee Hooker and Big Mama Thornton. “Deacon sorta discovered me when I moved to LA in the ’70s,” reflects Trout. “So I owe him.”
Trout also welcomes a fistful of compadres from recent all-star project The Supersonic Blues Machine, in the form of Warren Haynes, Robben Ford and Eric Gales. Then there’s John Mayall: the ageless British blues-boom godfather who hired a troubled Trout for the Bluesbreakers in 1985 and now blows harp on Blues For Jimmy T. “Am I proud to call myself a former Bluesbreaker?” Trout reflects. “Yeah, of course. What a credential. That is a very exclusive club, and I know that when I’m gone, that’s gonna be one of the big things that they’ll remember me for: that I was a Bluesbreaker for five years.”
Since he struck out alone in 1989, Trout’s solo career has been every bit as celebrated. Touring tirelessly and spitting out classic albums that include 1990’s flag-planting Life In The Jungle, 1998’s breakthrough Walter Trout and 2012’s politically barbed Blues For The Modern Daze, he’s won international acclaim and enjoyed ever-growing sales in a notoriously fickle industry. Years on the road have also brought him tight friendships, as evidenced by 2006’s cameo-fuelled Full Circle album and this year’s unofficial sequel, We’re All In This Together. “The new album was originally gonna be called Full Circle Volume 2,” notes Trout, “but I wanted to make the title a positive statement in this time of madness.”
In another departure, whereas Full Circle saw each guest visit the studio to track their part, the advance of recording technology in the intervening decade meant Trout’s collaborators on We’re All In This Together were able to supply their contributions from afar. “In the studio, it was the core band of me, Sammy Avila [keys], Mike Leasure [drums] and Johnny Griparic [bass] on every cut, with Eric Corne producing,” he explains, “and then, for most of the tracks, people sent us their parts. But it’s very hard to tell we’re not in the studio together. If you listen to the Warren Haynes track, when we get into that guitar conversation on the end – it sounds like we’re looking each other right in the face, y’know?”
They say you can judge a man by the company he keeps. If that’s the case, then We’re All In This Together is further proof of Walter Trout’s position at the hub of the blues scene. This is the sound of an artist not just getting by with a little help from his friends, but positively thriving, on an album that is sure to light another rocket under his blooming late career. “I’m 66 years old,” considers Trout, “but I feel like I’m in the best years of my life right now. I feel better than I have in years physically. I have more energy. I have a whole different appreciation of being alive, of the world, of my family, of my career. I want life to be exciting and celebratory. I want to dig in. I want to grab life by the balls and not let go, y’know…?”
Walter Trout // Photography by Austin Hargave
It’s true: this is an album where the chemistry fizzes, right from the first track. “I played Carnegie Hall with Kenny Wayne Shepherd and we talked about recording together,” explains Trout of the story behind opener Gonna Hurt Like Hell. “So I said to myself, ‘OK, I need to write a song for Kenny, and it needs to be an uptempo bluesy shuffle’. The lyrics could be about many different things. Say you’re a drug addict. It’s gonna feel good for a while, but as soon as you run out of drugs, it’s gonna hurt like hell. You could cheat on your wife and it’ll feel good for those ten minutes, then it’s gonna hurt like hell. I thought that Kenny played great on there. Especially the ending, when we’re trading back and forth. It’s hard to tell who’s who.”
One listen to Ain’t Goin’ Back announces the presence of Louisiana slide-guitar maestro Sonny Landreth. “He’s the greatest slide guitarist in the history of the world,” states Trout. “There’s nobody that can touch him, I don’t care who you bring up. He’s really a New Orleans musician, so I messed around with different grooves and came up with an almost ’50s-esque Americana song with lyrics about the stupid things I did in my youth. Sonny sent me his track, then called me and said, ‘I don’t know if it’s any good. If you want me to do it over, I won’t be insulted’. I’m like, ‘what are you talking about, man – it’s f*cking great!’”
On a track listing where guitar heroes dominate the credits, a curveball arrives with The Other Side Of The Pillow, driven by South Side harp pioneer Charlie Musselwhite. “I’ve known Charlie since I was with Mayall,” says Trout, “but I grew up listening to his records in high school. He’s one of the originators, along with Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop: the guys who started going into Chicago’s black clubs in the ’60s and playing blues on their own. I have a friend named Richard T. Bear – one of the top studio keyboard players – who came up with that line, ‘I’m gonna make love to another woman, because you made love to another man’. So I took his verse, and I came up with my own groove.”
One of the album’s most radio-ready moments, meanwhile, is She Listens To The Blackbird Sing, featuring ex-Royal Southern Brotherhood guitarist Mike Zito. “That was a gas to record,” remembers Trout. “I was getting ready to drive to the studio and I sat down with my acoustic guitar and that melody just came out. Mike and I go way back: he credits me with sobering him up, and I’m happy to have been a part of that. What Skip Edwards did to that song is remarkable. We gave him the raw track and he took it out to the stratosphere.”
Having bonded with Robben Ford in The Supersonic Blues Machine, Trout enlisted the jazz-blues great for the “Freddie King-esque guitar instrumental piece” that is Mr Davis. Elsewhere, the album’s sole cover – a mighty rendition of Elmore James’ The Sky Is Crying alongside Warren Haynes – was sparked by a live hook-up. “Warren invited me to play with him a few years ago at the New Orleans Jazz Festival,” recalls Trout, “and he wanted to do The Sky Is Crying. We did that song and it stopped the show. So I was talking to him at the Ramblin’ Man Fair in the UK and I said to him, ‘What do you think, maybe we should record that?’”
Writing the funk-flavoured Somebody Goin’ Down for Memphis virtuoso Eric Gales was a challenge that paid off (“He just completely blazed on that song”) while She Steals My Heart Away built bridges with Texas bandleader Edgar Winter. “There’s a bit of history there,” laughs Trout. “Twenty years, I hired Edgar’s drummer, a guy named Bernie Pershey. And then, eight years ago, I hired another drummer from him – Michael Leasure. But when I saw Edgar at Carnegie Hall, he said, ‘Oh man, don’t worry about it!’ We really hit it off and I happened to mention this record. He was methodical with his part. He’s a perfectionist.”
Crash And Burn is decorated by a star turn from electric-blues great Joe Louis Walker (“He’s got some great humour in his playing”) while Idaho soul man John Németh saved the day on Too Much To Carry. “Curtis Salgado was all set to do some harmonica and vocals,” recalls Trout, “but right before he was supposed to record, he had a heart attack and a bypass operation. So we got in touch with John, and he was gracious enough to jump in.”
Joining Trout Senior on Do You Still See Me At All is eldest son, Jon. “We sat down with guitars in the kitchen and wrote that tune together,” recalls the Trout paterfamilias. “I think Jon has my musical DNA, and that’s understandable – he’s been hearing me play since he was in the womb. What’s really moving to me is that Jon played guitar from the time he was a little kid, but he liked different styles of music and never tried to play leads or blues. Then I got sick and he felt like he was going to lose me. He made the decision that he needed to carry this stuff on. And that’s when he dug in and began teaching himself how to solo.”
Randy Bachman’s contribution to Got Nothin’ Left, meanwhile, was sparked by an encounter at last year’s Jeff Healey 50th Celebration Show in Toronto. “Randy tapped me on the shoulder and goes, ‘Man, I was driving, and this guitar solo came on the radio, and it got so intense I had to pull over. I called up the radio station – and it was you, man!’ We became friends, started emailing back and forth, and I wrote something for him that was ’50s rock ‘n’ roll. When his vocal comes in, I started laughing, because I just heard Takin’ Care Of Business by BTO. His voice hasn’t changed!”
Nor has the hand-in-glove relationship between Trout and Mayall, who delivers a harp masterclass on Blues For Jimmy T. “That was pretty awesome,” nods Trout. “Even though John has been on three of my records, it’s still the biggest honour for me. This time, I wanted to do something different with him. That’s why I came up with the idea of doing an acoustic song, kinda like a Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee type of thing, with lyrics about my old bass player and best friend Jimmy Trapp. It’s really emotional for me to hear that.”
Last – but most assuredly not least – is the title track, which saw the formidable Joe Bonamassa hit the studio in person to go head-to-head with Trout’s band. “That track, we did live,” reflects the bandleader. “Joe specifically requested that he played with the band. He told me: ‘I really want to be on this record, but I want to come in and play live with you, I don’t want to just overdub. I have one day in March and I have three hours – and that’s it’. It was awesome. We were sitting three feet away from each other, just going at it.”
Walter Trout // Photography by Austin Hargave
Walter Trout Online: http://www.waltertrout.com
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