BluesWax Sittin' In With

 Walter Trout

 Part One

 By Phil Reser

 

Walter Trout

Photo by Scott Allen

www.vividpix.com

It's been a long 35-year musical road for Walter Trout, who counts Roy Buchanan, Michael Bloomfield, and Buddy Guy as his biggest influences. Trout started his career as a sideman in 1973 after moving to Los Angeles from New Jersey. He started out as one of the token "white boy" players in several predominately black Blues clubs, backing people like Pee Wee Crayton, Percy Mayfield, John Lee Hooker, and Big Mama Thornton. In 1981, he stepped out of the clubs and into the bigger venues when he was asked to replace the late Bob Hite and join the legendary 1960s boogie band Canned Heat. He was with them until 1984, when he joined up with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers.  

In 1989, sixteen years after starting out professionally in the clubs in Los Angeles, Trout stepped out from behind the incredible players he had been supporting and decided to stand in the center spotlight. Although he has released fourteen albums, nine of them have only been available in Europe. This is partially being rectified by his record label, Ruf Records, who is domestically releasing a compilation of selections from those albums. They  are also behind his recent recordings, including his new CD Full Circle.  On the album he plays a range of Blues styles and reunites with old friends and musical comrades from his past, including John Mayall, Coco Montoya, Bernard Allison, Jeff Healey, Joe Bonamassa, Eric Sardinas, Guitar Shorty, Finis Tasby, Junior Watson, James Harman, and Deacon Jones. 

Phil Reser for BluesWax: So, after three decades as a Blues rocker, do you think you might make a career out of this? 

Walter Trout: You know, I'm still hoping to. People come up and say, "You played great tonight," and I say, "I'm still working on it and trying to figure out how to do this."   

BW: Out of all the legends you played with as a sideman, what were some of the most important things you recall having learned from someone you backed-up? 

WT: I think I learned a little from each of them in various things. Some of them, it always wasn't from music. With some of them, it was about how to be on the road and how to handle those long stretches you have to do. People like John Mayall; I can tell you exactly what I learned from him and that was spontaneity in playing. Like, on my new album, I did a lot of looking at the guy calling the key and counting to four. With John, he does that every night. He has a set list and you go up there and play, and we did shows at places like the Royal Festival Hall, where there are four thousand people and it's seated and it's very formal. John's up there and he turns around and goes, "Slow Blues in C-Minor" and he counts to four and off you go. That was something that when it first started happening it scared me and then I eventually really got into it. I got into the fun of it and the joy of it. Kind of the "here we go into the breach." It's like guys going into battle and we're going to jump into the edge of this ditch and see what happens. And getting up in front of large audiences and doing that is something I learned from John in a major degree. That's kind of old-school Blues playing, so I really learned how to be put on the spot and how to come through it just fine.   

BW: Was it difficult for a guitarist like yourself, who plays so fast, to adjust to the different paces and styles of the musicians you worked with? 

WT: Well, that was another thing. When I would get hired as a sideman by some of these people, I would spend some time immersing myself in what they do. I'd get their records and I'd sit down and try to really get into their approach. And I took it very serious to try and fit in, not just show up. For example, I'm playing with Big Mama Thornton and I'm not going to get up in the middle of "Ball and Chain" and start playing like Jimi Hendrix solos. It didn't fit. I tried to always grasp the vision of someone's music. One of the reasons that I finally went solo was that I kind of had my own ideas, too. And as much fun as I had being a sideman and I got to play with a lot of the greats, I would come home after my tours and go and play at the corner bars with my friends and that's when I would really get into the guitar. And I started thinking, "You know, I'm playing my best stuff at the corner bar at the beach for a hundred people." That's when I decided I've got to do my own band, make my own music, and play the way I want to; what I feel is me. So I took being a sideman seriously. That's why I was successful at it and got passed around from act to act and was never out of work. When Mayall hired me I got the old Bluesbreaker's records and studied every one of them, even though I had heard all of the stuff. John came to me one night and said, "Hey, when your playing that song you don't have to try and play like Eric Clapton on there. I hired you to be Walter, so I'm giving you the freedom to play your own stuff on there." And that was one thing with John, he did give me the freedom. I could go as far out on the guitar with him as I was capable of doing.  He loved it and he was behind me. Always complemented and supported me. But, with everybody else, I just tried to get into their thing. 

BW: How did the idea to put together an album like Full Circle come together? And what was your objective? 

WT: If I go back to the spontaneity and jamming tradition among Blues players, this idea for this album really started with the thoughts about knowing all of these great musicians and why don't I see who I can get into the studio and let's just jam. And we might come up with something really cool or something we don't want to release, but let's see what happens. As I started calling up everybody they were all into the idea and wanted to be part of it. It kind of evolved into, "Yeah, let's jam, but how about if we sit down and write a song to jam on." Instead of my initial thought that we would go into the studio and do old Blues songs, but do them our way. But that got thrown out as people started coming in and we started putting tunes together. I began to get excited about the prospect of, say, Mayall coming in for example, instead of picking an old Bluesbreakers' song and jamming on it, he and I are going to sit down and put some material together and although it will be put together quickly; it will still have the spontaneity with it. That really became the fun part of the whole thing. There's a couple of artists that I knew I wasn't going to have the time to write with in the studio, so what I did with those guys was I did the old immersing-in-their-styles-type of thing. I knew with Jeff Healey, for instance, that he was really busy, so I decided to go to Toronto and record with him and his band. I knew even at that we only would have about three hours total, so I listened to a bunch of his records and sat down with my wife, Marie, and we wrote that song with Jeff Healey in mind. I did the same with Guitar Shorty. I knew he was not going to have enough time. He was coming in for one day; he had a gig and had a couple of hours to work with me at night. I knew, I couldn't say, "Hey, why don't you hang around a little longer." He had to go. So I sat down and listened to a bunch of his music and came up with a tune that I thought he could get into. So with both of those guys, those songs were written by me with those guys in mind. Everything else was put together with each person, right there in the studio.

Walter Trout's Full Circle

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BW: Was it a challenge to get all of this done and how long did it take? 

WT: You know it went really quick. For instance, both of the Mayall and the Joe Bonamassa cuts were done on the same day. With Joe, we were sitting around talking and I said to him, "You know, I only have one really slow Blues tune on this record so far" and that was the Mayall one. And then the two of us started talking about the way the Blues purists have accused both of us as having sort of gone over the top and being tasteless at times. We're not their favorites. And Joe looked at me and said, "Well, why don't we give them the reason they hate us." So we sort of sat down and put that tune together for us to just really go over the top and set each other off musically. We sat up in a semi-circle with Richie Hayward and Rick Knapp and we talked the song out; we didn't play it, here's the lick, here's the lyrics, we're going to play this progression, we're in E, we're going to go D to A, and do the walk back to the one and after a couple of verses, we're going to stay on the one chord and we duel it out. We stood there two feet from each other staring at each other in the face. It was a duel, but it was done with a lot of respect and love and we had a blast. We only played that song once, there's no fixes, there's no overdubs, and we played it once. Matter of fact, my bass player said after that, "OK, are we going to record it now?" And I said, we just did. 

BW: Did you ever think about filming all of this recording and interaction between everyone? 

WT: It's funny, my wife, who is also my manager, videotaped all of it. Her thought was that she was going to put together a little DVD on how this thing was recorded. But we started thinking about getting permission from 25 different musicians. It just started seeming like we might not be able to do that, so we haven't pursued it yet, but it's there. All of it, she has it on video. When Bonamassa and I were standing there in each other's face going at it, my wife was six feet away filming it. With the Jeff Healey cut, I was in Toronto, but I took my video camera and sat it on the Hammond B3 and faced Jeff and I and got that on video. The Mayall, Guitar Shorty, James Harman, Junior Watson, all of those cuts are on video. We're just not sure how to go about it; it seems like a logistics nightmare to put it together at this point. 

BW: Did you personally ask all of these musicians if they would like to play with you on this project? 

WT: Everybody on there, I asked. Some of them, like I called James Harman, I had played a festival in Holland with him and we were talking and I told him that I was going to do the CD and would love to have him as part of it. He's also a neighbor of mine, lives right down the street. He said, "Yeah, man, I'll come over to your place with some tunes and we'll try and find out what we're going to do." We just decided that we would use his band. I got really excited about that because the drummer, Steven Hodges, I'm a big fan of him. I've done shows with him when he was playing with John Hammond and I've seen him play with Tom Waits. So when he said that Hodges played in his band, too, I jumped at it. He was somebody that I hadn't played music with yet and to have him come in on that song, it was so good. But the other guys...Jonny Ray Bartel is another good friend of mine, he's another Huntington Beach guy. He was in the Red Devils and recorded with people like Mick Jagger and Johnny Cash. I met him at the church my wife and I attend down the street from our house. They had this amazing band at the church and Jonny Ray was the bass player. It was really a fun church to go to because the band just rocked out. They used to want me to play in the band, but I kind of liked to sit in the church with my wife; I'll play gigs on Saturday night, but I like to take Sunday off with my family and go back to music on Mondays. So Jonny and I have been friends for years and he has sat in with my band many times. I was really excited to get him and his upright and Bill Bateman on the album with me because I have a blast with those guys. Their energy, Watson, Bartel, and Bateman, is incredible. We played that tune one time and I almost fell over. They were looking at me and wondering what was wrong. I just couldn't catch my breath. Those guys just beat me up with their energy, but it was really a lot of fun. 

BW: Do you think by putting this kind of musical project together you got something really special and personal from it all? 

WT: You know, I did. I felt like all these people, a lot of whom I've known for a long time and have some history with and some of whom I have known for a while and have never had the opportunity to play with, I felt like for all these people to come in and be on my CD it was very moving for me. It was like they were giving me a little respect. They were saying, "Hey Walter, we like what you're doing, we're here." It was kind of a stamp of approval, there's some real rockers and some Blues purists on there and they were all making music with me. When that thing was done it was very fulfilling and satisfying. Sometimes I put that CD on and just start crying.   

To be continued...

 Phil Reser is a contributing editor at BluesWax. You may contact Phil at blueswax@visnat.com