When Gregg Allman, David Bowie, and Warren
Zevon each found out the end of their lives was near, each decided to make one
final album [Southern Blood, Blackstar, and The Wind
respectively]. There’s nothing quite
like impending death to motivate one into doing excellent work. So too it seemed for bluesman Walter
Trout. I had the opportunity to see
Walter Trout open for Gregg Allman in Sacramento in 1998. He was one of those opening acts that didn’t
suck. In fact, I liked what I heard but
I hadn’t bought any of his work until recently.
A few years ago, I heard that he was in dire need of a liver transplant. Hard living between 1974 [when he moved from
New Jersey to LA in search of a music career] and 1987 [when Carlos Santana got
through to him to clean up his act] had finally caught up with him. In 2013 Hepatitis C began to take its toll on
him and he was becoming progressively ill.
He recorded songs when he wasn’t touring until his illness prevented him
from doing so. He decided he would make
one final musical statement before he was “called home”. For Walter Trout, that album would be The
Blues Came Callin’.
Walter Trout addresses the elephant in the
room immediately on the first track, Wastin’ Away. He knows something isn’t quite right as his
body is turning against him. He doesn’t recognize who he sees in the mirror,
but he isn’t going away quietly. His
soloing is as I remember from that night in 1998 – scorching. The World is
Goin' Crazy (And So Am I) is Walter addressing the issues of the day that
drive him batshit crazy – “Don’t believe our leaders ‘cause all they do is
lie”, poor people fighting rich men’s wars, people dying in the streets,
etc. But he lets slip that the crazy
stuff going on in the world of 2013-2014 is enough to make him want to get
high. The Bottom of the River is
a metaphor for drowning in a river current, but he’s fighting for life because
he’s not ready to die yet. Willie
is Walter Trout’s take on managers in the music business. It’s about the many times he’s been ripped
off by many different people in the music business in the past. The title track tells of how one gets gripped
tightly by the music we call “the blues” and how “you’ll never be the man you
used to be” once the blues gets its grip on you. His former boss John Mayall takes a turn on
Hammond B-3. Born in the City
talks of Trout’s preference for city life, that country life may be good for
some but not for him. Unlike the other
songs, this one is a slow burner, but no less intense. On Hard Time, he
compares one’s lover leaving you to doing hard time in solitary. He said “this
solitary is all in your mind and in your heart; an invisible psychological cage.”
The only cover here is The Whale Have Swallowed Me by J.B. Lenoir. As one might surmise, it’s the Biblical story
of Jonah. This is heavy music without
being morose. If it was Walter Trout’s
intention to go out in a blaze of glory, he’s doing a pretty good job so far.
Not all is doom and gloom on The Blues
Came Callin’. Take A Little Time
is Walter Trout as Chuck Berry. He said
of all the songs he’s done in the Chuck Berry style, this one probably comes
closest to having an authentic Chess Records feel. This one smokes! Trout includes two instrumentals. The first is Mayall's Piano Boogie,
with Mayall himself on the piano. Tight
Shoes is the other that’s done like Freddie King. Trout shows his sense of humor here. He explained the origin of the song’s title:
“The title comes from my father, Ed
Trout, Sr. When I was a kid, he took the
family out to dinner at a very swanky restaurant in Atlantic City. It was very quiet and somber in there. As he got up to leave, he inadvertently cut
loose with a massive, thunderous, earth-shaking fart. The whole place stopped and looked at him in
horror. He just turned to the room,
looked at everybody there, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Tight shoes.” His humor and sense of confidence has left a
lasting impression on me.”
The only bit of sentimentality on The
Blues Came Callin’ is saved for his wife on the last song, an acoustic
piece called Nobody Moves Me Like You Do. It is an honest, real
expression of the love that he has for her without sounding maudlin. The music
is intense from the beginning to end - it doesn’t let up. This album is nearly
perfect. It is focused, it is intense,
and it is Walter Trout at the top of his game. If you didn’t know any better,
you wouldn’t think this album was made by a dying man, and that it was meant as
a sort of valedictory statement. One
could say that The Blues Came Callin' was
Walter Trout's last great act of defiance. There is not a dull moment to be
found here, and the playing of all concerned is spectacular.
The Blues Came Callin’ was originally thought to be Walter Trout’s last musical statement,
but it didn’t quite work out that way. Close
to death’s door, but not quite ready to cross the threshold, Walter Trout got
the liver transplant he needed on May 26, 2014.
He finally got to go home on September 2nd. He’d lost 120 pounds. He told NPR that while he was been in
physical therapy and speech therapy, he had to learn how to walk again, and how
to talk again. He spent hours every day
learning how to play guitar again. If
anyone expected Walter Trout to follow-up The Blues Came Callin’ with a collection of shiny, happy songs,
they were mistaken. The follow-up is Battle
Scars, and it is every bit as harrowing as The Blues Came Callin’. Battle Scars picks up where The Blues Came Callin’ and continues the story
of staring down death and recovering his health. I think of The Blues Came Callin’ and Battle
Scars as a single piece as they tell the same story.
Almost Gone starts the proceedings. He knows something’s wrong, can feel his body
shutting down and he knows he won’t last much longer. He sees what is coming. Knowing what he knows, he wishes he could go
back and have a do-over. He compares
himself to a broken toy. Omaha is where things begin to get very
dark. Omaha is where he received his new
liver. He told to NPR that while he was waiting for his liver, he saw people on
the waiting list who didn’t make it. You
can feel his angst of not knowing whether he’ll get his liver. He debates with himself the merits of
painkilling meds (“I need something for the pain, but I don’t wanna get strung
out again”). With Tomorrow Seems So
Far Away, he continues what he started on Omaha. He relays the uncertainty of waiting, minute
by minute, for the call that “somebody gave all”, that an organ was available
for him. So we’ve got three ferocious
blues rockers right out of the gate. Please
Take Me Home, a mostly acoustic ballad, slows things down. Walter is sick of hospitals and just wants to
go home to be with his wife. Once we’ve
caught our breath with Please Take Me Home, it’s back to the ferocity of
what came before with Playin’ Hideaway.
This one has nothing to do with illness or recovery, but is a poison pen
letter to some unknown female. One is
reminded of Like a Rolling Stone, only done ZZ Top-style.
Haunted By The Night gets back to the illness and
recovery narrative. Walter captures what it’s like to be alone with your own
thoughts, unable to sleep and plagued by your deepest
fears. Before Walter got sick, his
record company had planned a big celebration of 25 years of him being a
recording artist in his own right, rather than as part of someone else’s
band. There was going to be a complete
re-issuing of his catalog on vinyl, the publishing of his autobiography, and a
worldwide tour. His illness mooted that celebration, as Walter laments in My Ship Came In. Fly
Away had a peculiar inspiration.
Before he went into the hospital, he was lying in bed, feeling very sick
when he says he was visited by spirits.
He said these spirits took him away for an out-of-body experience to
“the other side”. He said these spirits
offered him the chance to go live there, but that meant he would die. He told them ‘no’ because he wanted to see
his kids grow up. On Move On, Walter sings another piece
about wanting to get away from the pain he endured. In Cold,
Cold Ground, Walter hears the angels singing, but he doesn’t like the
sound. He thinks he’s got much more to
do, and he’s not ready to go. The blues
rarely provide a happy ending, but we listeners get that with Gonna Live Again. He was just days away from death when he got
the call he was afraid would never come and he received his liver transplant. An acoustic song, he lists all the things
he’s done that he isn’t proud of – lying, cheating, etc – but he’s been given a
second chance. He’s having a
conversation with God and he asks why he’s gotten this second chance. He says he has a chance to be a better man,
and that means be a better husband, to be a better father, or be a better
musician, but he also believes that now it’s up to him to be an advocate to get
people to sign up to be an organ donor. After
Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead went through the same thing about 20 years ago,
he dedicated himself to spreading the organ donation message at each show he
played. This is now Walter Trout’s
mission as well.
If anyone tells you a white man can’t sing
the blues, lay these two albums on them.
I can’t recommend these two albums highly enough. They are great works.
