Featured Artist - Walter Trout

Walter Trout

(born March 6, 1951, Ocean City, New Jersey, United States)

Blues-rocker Walter Trout spent decades as an ace sideman, playing guitar behind the likes of John Lee Hooker, Big Mama Thornton and Joe Tex. In 1981, he was also tapped to replace the late Bob Hite in Canned Heat, remaining with the venerable group through the middle of the decade.
While filling in one night for an ailing John Mayall, Trout (also a Bluesbreaker for some five years) was spotted by a Danish concert promoter who agreed to finance a solo tour. Assembling his own backing band, in 1990 he released his debut LP, “Life In The Jungle”, trailed a year later by “Prisoner Of A Dream”
As a front man the six-string virtuoso developed a conflagrant approach to his instrument and a reputation for tornado-strength live shows that led famed BBC disc jockey Bob Harris to call him "the world's greatest rock guitarist" in his influential book 'The Whispering Years'.
Albums including 1992's “Live (No More Fish Jokes)”, 1994's “Tellin' Stories”, and 1997's “Positively Beale Street” followed. Trout continued a steady release schedule, issuing “Livin' Every Day” in 1999, a live album the following year (recorded at the Tampa Bay Blues Fest), the 2001 studio album “Go The Distance”, 2003's “Relentless” -- which Trout and his band, The Radicals, recorded in front of a live audience -- and 2005's “Deep Trout”, a compilation of early and unreleased recordings.
On the 2006 release “Full Circle”, Trout realized his dream of creating an album with some of his most admired musicians, including John Mayall, Coco Montoya, and Joe Bonamassa, among others.
Talking about his latest release “Blues for the Modern Daze” Trout says "My main inspiration for this album was the country bluesman Blind Willie Johnson".
Johnson was an early blues innovator who recorded such timeless gospel informed blues numbers as 'Soul of a Man' and 'Nobody's Fault But Mine'. "His music is so beautiful, primal, direct and deeply spiritual that I wanted to feel it at my back when we were cutting these songs”.