Five years before this show, Walter Trout was fighting for his life. On this night, the anniversary of the liver transplant that saved him, that history hangs over every note he plays. Trout speaks openly about it from the stage, visibly emotional, but there is nothing sombre about the performance that follows. If anything, surviving has made him more voracious.
Material from Survivor Blues sits naturally beside songs from Battle Scars, the album that documented his illness and recovery. Trout attacks the heavier numbers with enormous force, then strips everything back when the music calls for it. His guitar playing is razor-sharp and technically exact without ever becoming clinical. Even when working through old blues material, he treats the source with respect without turning it into preservation work. Everything passes through that unmistakable Trout vocabulary before coming out the other side.
It’s astonishing to see a man of nearly seventy, after such a traumatic health scare, giving an audience so much. He doesn’t just play the blues with his fingers and his voice: he plays them with his whole body. The blues are at the core of every move he makes and inform everything about his performance. And how could it be otherwise? The blues saved his life. The blues are his life.
