Walter Trout - The Blues Came Callin’ & Battle Scars

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 2^nd.  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.