The Walter Trout albums you should definitely own

Battle Scars (Provogue, 2015)

Tempted to write a post-op album of “smell-the-roses bullshit”, Trout ultimately came up with something far darker, imagining himself back in the Nebraska Medical Center circa April 2014, and capturing the maddening terror of waiting for a donor organ. 

Try Almost Gone: a gale-force Zeppelin-style rocker about “the depths of hopelessness” when it seemed the call would never come. Or Omaha: a glowering rocker about Trout’s attempts to walk the hospital hall on wasted legs, preceded by ambulance sirens and the frantic shouts of medics. It’s harrowing stuff, but you’d choose this over hearts and flowers any day of the week.

Blues For The Modern Daze (Provogue, 2012)

Trout sounded hopping-mad on Modern Daze’s blistering polemic, surveying a wounded America in the grip of recession, oily hard-right politicians, Bible Belt bigots, environmental disaster and brain-drain TV. 

Moments like Money Rules The World, The Sky Is Fallin’ Down and Lifestyle Of The Rich And Famous were moments to rival the most eloquent protest singer, but Trout also found space for the personal on the beautifully observed Saw My Mama Cryin’. “That was my most political album by far,” he says. “I really had some stuff to get off my chest there. And I don’t know if I’ll ever match the statement I made with that album.”

Positively Beale Street (Provogue, 1997)

By the late 90s, Trout was a titan in Europe but a pipsqueak on his home turf, the bluesman bemoaning a long line of US record labels who bluntly told him: “We don’t give a shit, leave us alone”. 

Positively Beale Street changed everything. Recorded in Memphis, at the fabled Beale Street Studios, this was a whistle-stop tour of all Uncle Sam’s most seminal genres, from the late-night blues of Marie’s Mood to the falsetto-led R&B of Song For A Wanderer – and it was fitting when this became the bluesman’s first album to infiltrate Stateside record shops (retitled as Walter Trout).

The Outsider (Provogue, 2008)

From the start, his high-velocity fretwork made Trout a target for buttoned-up blues connoisseurs (“They’re like the fucking Taliban”). But on The Outsider, he embraced that black-sheep status, Welcome To The Human Race proudly proclaiming that ‘I’ve been loved and hated, praised and vilified, accused and vindicated’. 

With moments like the opentuned acoustic strum of Turn Your Eyes To Heaven and The Restless Age – a Rolling Stones groove decorated with what even Trout admitted were “pseudo-Keef licks” – the rebel fringes of the blues scene seemed like a much more fun place to be than the po-faced inner sanctum.

We’re All In This Together (Provogue, 2017)

Trout had previously corralled the cream of the blues brigade for 2006’s Full Circle, but We’re All In This Together added yet more stardust and guitar steroids. Cutting heads with Warren Haynes on The Sky Is Crying and Joe Bonamassa on the slow-burn title track, Trout didn’t give his celebrity guests an easy ride. 

But the best moments came when he deviated from the blues-rock shapes, particularly on the radio-ready strum of She Listens To The Blackbird Sing, featuring Mike Zito. It all confirmed Trout as the axis around which the modern blues scene rotates: “I guess I have a lot of friends, y’know?”

Common Ground (Provogue, 2010)

With an election-season America bitterly split along Democrat and Republican battle lines, Common Ground saw Trout appeal for unity using the only tools at his disposal: a whip-smart lyric sheet and the beat-to-hell Fender Strat that positively strafes the tracklisting. 

“These songs were written amidst all the yelling and the screaming from the left and right,” he said of standouts like Loaded Gun. “It just felt like there was this inability amongst our politicians to be civilised and meet in the middle. That album was really a call for people to be more forgiving to each other.”

Prisoner Of A Dream (Provogue, 1990) 

Teed up by hit single, Love That We Once Knew, Trout’s second solo album was a monster seller across Europe (in Holland, it pipped Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams to the top spot). Tougher moments like False Alarm and rug-cutters like the irrepressible Victor The Cajun still endure, but for Trout, this breakthrough release ultimately left a sour taste. 

“Six weeks after the album came out, I go to see the original label – which was called Bozz Of Electra – at their offices in Copenhagen, to get a cheque. And they’ve gone. They’d absconded with everything. To this day, I’ve never received a cent…”

The Blues Came Callin’ (Provogue, 2014)

Recorded in the midst of his illness – with sessions interrupted by seizures and tremors so extreme he couldn’t hold a fork to his lips – The Blues Came Callin’ is the album that many assumed would be Trout’s swansong. 

At times, his voice sounds parched, but there’s an urgency to his guitar performances, and a starkness to his writing, with Wastin’ Away riffing on his drastic weight loss and the title track personifying the blues as a parasite that creeps through his bedroom window to syphon his life-force. “It’s blues-rock at its most raw and elemental,” noted Trout. “Real balls-out, primal scream kinda stuff.”

Luther’s Blues (Provogue, 2013)

Trout’s first covers album saluted the Chicago bluesman and old friend Luther Allison, who should have been a contender – but died just a few weeks after his 1997 cancer diagnosis. This was a revved-up, grittier take on Allison’s songbook – just check out I’m Back and Chicago – that dug deep into some of the lesser-known corners of the catalogue, and Trout has rarely played a sweeter lead than on the emotional fulcrum of Cherry Red Wine. 

“I kinda feel like Luther has been forgotten by the press and blues radio,” noted Trout. “I wanted people to go back and check out the master. That was the whole point of the album.”

Transition (Provogue, 1992) 

It was a transition alright, but definitely not the one that Trout had hoped for. The problem wasn’t the songs themselves – moments like Running In Place and Face The Night were worthy of the Trout brand – but the bone-headed production, which buried the emotional honesty at work beneath a sickly sheen. 

“If you listen to that album, the way the guitars are done makes Def Leppard sound like Muddy Waters,” says the bandleader. “These guys tried to turn me into some insipid pop act. It was like they’d taken away the essence of who I am. That album hurt my career. It was a setback."