Back with a brand new album, Walter Trout has dedicated his unique skill sin service of shining a light on the unsung heroes of the blues. Survivor blues is a very special set of covers that dips into a world of blues that is less frequently visited by contemporary artists, and whilst the album is still very much a Walter Trout record, the underlying theme is about redeeming those pieces and artists who have become lost.
Shortly before the album’s release, we were lucky enough to speak to Walter about the enduring legacy of the songs he chose, the resonance of the lyrical themes and the excitement of sharing this music with a whole new audience. Over the course of the interview, the most enduring element of our conversation is Walter’s absolute love of the blues, of life and of his family. Always an interesting narrator, you get the feeling that a day with Walter would be a day spent exploring the wonderfully human qualities of the music to which he has dedicated his life and he gives wonderful insight into one of his purest blues releases to date.
Hi, is that Walter?
It is
This is Phil from SonicAbuse…
Hi Phil! How are you doing?
Fantastic, thank you – it’s a pleasure to speak to you.
Cool! Let’s proceed…
One of the thing that always interests me when it comes to covers, and I know that some of this is covered in the press release, is that difficulty that comes from choosing a song that not only means something to you, but which is also something that other people haven’t done to death – so, when you went through the process of working through these songs, was it all stuff that you wanted to do, or was there a discussion with the band and with Eric Corn?
No, this was strictly me. I can tell you that the idea for this album has been in my mind for a while and it’s because I drive around and I listen to… there’s blues stations in the States and there’re blues stations online… and if somebody has a new album and they’re covering “got my mojo working!” and I’m thinking ”well, there’s 85,000 versions of that song!”
And the blues has this rich history of amazing artists with amazing music and so much of it seems to be overlooked and I never understood it, you know? It just felt like the right time for that, so I’m the one who picked the songs, but I have to say that at one point I had over fifty songs and I had to narrow it down.
But no, it was all me and then I brought the twelve songs to the band and Eric and, yeah, it was a labour of love, I have to say. It was a lot of fun.
I think that one of the things that can be very challenging with covers is that you need to be faithful to the spirit of the original, but you also need to make it your own, or it’s pretty much redundant…. And what’s really cool about survivor blues is that, from start to finish, it feels like a Walter Trout album. It has that vibe that I’d expect to you, and yet it pays tribute to the originals – how do you approach the covers so that you start to inhabit them in that way?
Well, for one thing, you try to give in to the essence of the original but you try to then… for me, I would take the tune and I would think to myself “how does this song relate to me?”
If I’m going to sing the song, I kind of have to live the song as a I sing it or I feel like I’m an actor and not a musician – does that make sense? If I’m singing something that I don’t feel and which, to me, feels dishonest, then I’m just quoting a script or something and I don’t want to do that. So, I took the tunes and I thought about them and I was not at all interested in trying to imitate the originals. As a matter of fact, I wanted to put my own stamp on them. Then there were a couple of the tunes that just kind of played themselves out with the band and there were others we did a couple of different ways like “let’s try this real slow; let’s do this in a different key…”
We’d do a couple of versions and then pick the versions we like. It was very important to me that it be a Walter trout album and not just an imitation of these guys.
I can give you an example. The Song ‘Sadie’ by Hound Dog Taylor – There was only one cover version I could find and it was a guy in Belgium and he was trying to do it exactly like Hound Dog Taylor. He was playing the guitar exactly the same, with the same tone, he had the vibrato on the guitar, he was imitating Hound Dog and I figured that if I was going to listen to this, I might as well just listen to the original. You know – I’m kinda not interested in impressionists.
You know, some guy comes out and does this impersonation of Sammy Davis Jr or some shit –No! It’s got to be your own thing. I mean, when Joe Cocker sings ‘Just like a woman’, he’s not trying to imitate the Bob Dylan version – he owns that song. Or when he does ‘With a little help from my friends’ he owns that song, because he makes it his own and that’s part of my inspiration when I come to do covers – people who take a great song and make it their own.
When you approach guitar playing, I’ve seen guitarists talking about how the guitar imitates the human voice in the way that it can rise, fall; cry out and sing and when I hear you play, I get that same emotional resonance and I wondered if that was something you thought about while playing?
Well yeah – there’s something in the blues genre especially. That’s really the tradition – the tradition of blues singer / guitarists is that he sings a line and then the guitar answers and the guitar is supposed to be kind of an imitation of the human voice and vocal. Like B. B. King, you know, he never played rhythm guitar; he never played chords. He’d sing a line, then he’d answer with the guitar and it’s almost like a conversation.
The guitar does become a voice and you’re having a conversation with this instrument which, in some ways, is the voice of your heart. You’re expressing things with your guitar you can’t express with words, you know. It is a voice – it’s your other voice. Like I said, it’s the voice of your heart – the voice of your soul.
I think that a really good solo can take your breath away and there are a lot of those moments on this record.
Well, one of those things I wanted to do was to play ‘blues guitar’ on this album. I’ve had a lot of critics over the years saying “is he blues or is he rock?!” Or “there’s too much rock!” and I don’t know what… but with my pedigree – John Lee Hooker, Canned Heat, John Mayall, Percy Mayfield um… Bo Diddley, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, Pee wee Crayton… all these people I played with in my youth, I was playing the blues. Sure, on my own records I play a lot of rock ‘n’ roll because I love it, but you know, think about Eric Clapton. Just because he puts out ‘Layla’, doesn’t mean he can’t play the blues, right?
So, my goal on this album, among other things, one of my goals was to play some blues guitar to the best of my ability and with as much emotional impact as I could do. And that was another aspect of taking the songs – which songs would give me a good vehicle for playing with some heart and soul.
One song that really stood out for me – you mentioned John Mayall – is nature’s disappearing. It really stands out, it sits at the heart of the album and it’s a really pertinent theme right now, lyrically.
Well, you know, when I was looking through the tunes, I thought to myself that, from the time I was a teenager, I thought that John Mayall was one of the greatest blues song writers in history. He’s been overlooked as a song writer and I mean, this is back when I was in high school and I was learning the guitar and I had John Mayall albums. USA Union, which is the album that song was on, that album came out in 1970 when I was 19 years old – I was still living at home – and the songs on there spoke to me. Nature’s disappearing, the laws must change… and John was a trailblazer and he still is… A trailblazer at writing songs with topical themes, not just relationship tunes, but songs about things that are happening in the world.
I think that song is even more relevant today than it was in 197p with the leadership… I use that word loosely… in the United States getting rid of all our environmental regulations, subsidising coal, getting rid of all the clean air and water acts. Letting coal companies dump their waste back into the public water ways, opening up national parks for fracking. It’s incredible. Getting rid of all environmental regulations. We’re subsidising coal while the rest of the world marches forward. We’re marching back to the eighteenth century here I just thought that song could have been written today as opposed to fifty years ago, right, and I think John made a really powerful statement there.
He did, and it’s tragic that it is so pertinent, and it’s really important, more now than ever, that artists speak out. The other track that stands out is be careful how you vote, which is not necessarily partisan, but it takes on very relevant overtones not just in America, but in Europe as well…
Yeah, I think so too. That song is by Sunnyland Slim and he did two versions – a kind of up-tempo version and a slow blues version and I’ve been a fan of that song for many years and I kind of always wanted to cover it and this just seemed that the time is right. We’re now in the period of ‘here comes the presidential election in the United States and more and more people are announcing that they’re running for it and we’re getting back into that insanity and, you know, I love that song.
I love some of the lines where it says “but when he gets in, it’s just the other way “He says he’ll be your best friend, help you anyway he can, but when he gets in, it’s just the other way” and then the line that sums up the whole song “you can’t do no more – he’s rich, you’re poor!” That song just slays me.
That song is so cool as well, it’s got a real groove to it and I love to listen to that song.
I have to clue you in to something. You know I was in Canned Heat for five years, and in Canned Heat we used to do ‘Dust My Broom’ and Canned Heat had a specific guitar intro that I had to play for ‘Dust my broom’ and I played it on my song. That’s Canned Heat – the guitar intro before the band comes in – that’s from my years in Canned Heat, that’s what I used to play on ‘Dust my broom’. I thought, “Well, why not? It’s going to fit on my song – let’s do it!”
That’s so cool – one of the things I really like about this record is it’s like the listener is working their way through your history alongside you, dusting off the vinyl and just enjoying all these little call-backs that make it something really special.
Yeah – me too! That’s what I’m saying – this record was a lot of fun, you know. The whole band, we had a ball doing this record and it was really easy. I mean, I’d come in with some of these tunes and a lot of what you hear on there is just first take. A lot of it is done live. I might have gone back, for instance… when we’re playing it live in the studio and we’re set up in a big circle, there’s a good chance I may have to go back and do some fixes on the vocal. You know, but a lot of it – that’s what it is. Just us playing.
The decision to leave some of the spontaneous call outs and stuff in there, adds really nicely to the vibe.
Yeah – I think so too – thank you Phil!
One of the big moments in there, I think, is that you got Robby Krieger to play on one of the tracks as well – it’s his studio, right?
It’s his studio and he’s got a private studio in LA and it’s a great, great studio. It’s full of vintage gear and it’s got an entire wall of vintage amps and drums and he’s got every kind of keyboard imaginable – it’s a whole closet full of guitars and it’s covered with gold and platinum Doors’ albums and it’s just a great place to play and it’s got a great vibe and, you know, when you’re tracking, he comes in and hangs out and listens and has meals with us, so one day I was like “Man! Let’s play something!”
Because he and I sat and bonded over our love of country blues. He told me that his favourite artist of all time was Reverend Gary Davis. So, really, that’s the music he loves – old country blues. So, one day, I went to him and said “let’s do a country blues!” And he was like “yeah, cool, let’s do it!” So, we picked the tune, arranged it and that’s us playing it live – that’s what you hear!
At the end of it all, when you were looking at the title, I think it was your wife who stepped in with the great concept of your all being survivors…
Yeah! The whole band, you know. Everybody in the band is lucky to be alive! But also, there’s a really great aspect to it, as she said, the songs themselves are survivors. They may have fallen by the wayside, they may have been forgotten, but they survived in their beauty. They survive in their relevance and, hopefully… well, my hope is that people will listen to some of these tunes and think that they want to hear the original. They’ll go out and seek out the original and, once again, Sunnyland Slim will have people listening to him and people like that that I chose on this record.
She came up with the title and she’s right, it’s not just the players, it’s the songs themselves. The whole concept is that these are songs that have not returned a lot. They’ve been forgotten and somebody needs to shine a spotlight on them and on the incredible, rich history and catalogue of the blues over all the years and not just the same twenty songs. I love ‘Stormy Monday’, but we don’t need another version.
It’s one of those things that I really like about the whole community aspect of the blues and the way modern players keep that spirit alive. I think it’s great that it opens up people’s eyes to stuff that’s out there and gives them an opportunity to explore more deeply into things they may not have come across. It’s a very exciting album in that way.
Well thank you man. That’s great. I haven’t really done a lot of interviews yet, so I haven’t got a lot of feedback about the album, so I’m glad to get your feedback on it.
I only have one last question – I think you’re touring the UK in a few months with the Rockin’ the blues tour…
Yea I am. I’ll be coming back with Johnny Lang and Kris Barras.
That will be amazing – that’s a killer line-up!
It should be a lot of fun. Especially at the end of the night, when the three of us come out and jam. I think that’s going to be pretty epic.
Are you going to be predominantly focusing on the new album on this tour?
I’m going to be looking across the catalogue. It’s important to me, every night, to do at least one song off of ‘battle scars’ and to tell the story of my liver transplant because, at the end of my show, every night, I do a little talk about people needing to sign up to be a donor. It’s really important to me that I get to do that because, somewhere in mid-America, there was a stranger who signed up to be a donor. They made that one little gesture and they have no idea, but they saved my life. I’m on a mission now to spread the word about that.
So, I will be doing stuff form across my catalogue. I know I’ll do at least one song off of ‘battle scars’ and probably a song or two off ‘we’re all in this together’; a couple of tunes off the new album; maybe some stuff form the old days, like my first or second album. I like to go back over the years too and take a look at my career.
