Walter Trout's 20th album is called Common Ground, but for the visionary roots singer, songwriter and guitarist that's more than a title.

It's where Trout's compelling music resides — in a territory that unites the worlds of blues, rock and pure sonic adventurism, where inspiration and technique meet to create a unique, soulful language. In a sense, the title also describes Trout's personal geography. Although he lives in California, he spends much of his life on the road bridging the U.S and Europe, where he's so well-known and respected that the United Kingdom's BBC Radio One placed the Stratocaster master at number six on their list of the Top 20 guitarists of all time. Legendary BBC disc jockey, Bob Harris, in his book "The Whispering Years" calls Trout: "The world's greatest rock guitarist." (p. 186)

But the title track of Trout's new release is also a prayer. "If there's a place where the truth can still be found,' he sings, "Lord, lead us to the common ground."

"I am blown away by the polarization and cruelty in the world today," Trout explains. "It goes beyond my understanding. I wrote the lyrics to that song as an attempt to come to terms with that, and as a wish that somehow — regardless of our faiths and nationalities and politics — we can find a place where truth and compassion can take us beyond our differences."

Trout's soaring warm guitar matches the plainspoken tenderness of the lyrics of Common Ground for a performance that sounds truly inspired, especially in the song's concluding solo where Trout makes his six-string speak with the eloquence of a traveling tent revival preacher.

"I am a spiritual guy," Trout offers. "I believe in a higher power as a force in the world and that playing music can be a religious experience. Music gives you an opportunity to speak directly to people's hearts — it goes beyond words. And I know that there are times when I'm playing my guitar when I enter a state where I'm not consciously aware of what I'm playing. It's like a signal coming through me."

Trout enjoyed a more earthy kind of inspiration while making Common Ground, thanks to his supporting cast of drum great Kenny Aronoff (John Mellencamp, John Fogerty, Elton John, etc.), bassist Hutch Hutchinson and pianist Jon Cleary (both of Bonnie Raitt's band), and famed producer John Porter, whose credits span from Brit-pop legends the Smiths to John Lee Hooker and B.B. King to Santana.

Porter and Hutchinson are longtime friends, Cleary and Aronoff newer ones, but Trout and his players developed a close-knit band chemistry recording his previous CD, 2008's The Outsider that reignited the moment they entered the House of Blues Studio in Encino, California to begin recording Common Ground. "I'd play each song for the guys on acoustic guitar, and then everybody would pitch in ideas and we'd cut the tracks while the excitement level was high," Trout explains.

The fever pitch of their creativity leaps out on numbers like "Her Other Man," with its molten guitar solos, and the autobiographical "Open Book." Both songs blend acoustic and electric textures — one of the strengths of Common Ground's arrangements, along with the poetic turns of its melodies, the honey and dust flavor of Trout's elegantly tailored vocal performances, and the artful twists of its overall compositional sensibilities, which hit a very high mark.