Trout til Notodden

Foto: Tove Andersson

Det er når Walter Trout spiller de blå tonene han er på sitt beste, når tonene forvrenger ansiktet, når mannen blir tonen, og det er nok derfor han siste album Luther’s Blues er nominert til Best Blues Rock Album of the Year i Memphis (Blues Foundation).

På 2013 Classic Rock Awards presenterte Walter Trout ingen ringere enn John Mayall som han var knyttet til gjennom John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers fra 1985. I 1989 gikk han solo med Walter Trout Band, senere Walter Trout and The Radicals.

Han har spilt i Canned Heat (1981) og vært hovedgitarist for John Lee Hooker og Big Mama Thornton.

Trout hevder at solokarrieren startet i Danmark. Kone og manager Marie Brændegard Trout har oppsummert 2013 Classic Rock Awards med sin egen hyllest til bluesen:

«At the end of the line, every Classic Rock tune ever written is indebted to the blues. The nuts and bolts that hold them together are there because the blues was there first; tellin’ and playing’ it like it is. Every rock tune thus has an umbilical cord that ties it directly to the blues players that invented and re-invented this music: the genius of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, who according to Sam Philips gave voice to where the soul of humankind begins. The screaming emotion of Son House and Blind Lemon Jefferson, the flashy, yet tormented, performances of Charley Patton. This of course goes all the way back to when W.C. Handy synthesized, named, and formalized the blues out of the sounds of what was sizzling and bubbling from the African-American people in the fields and streets around the American Delta region in the early part of the twentieth century. Another part of the blues is the reckless and sense of self-destruction exemplified by Robert Johnson…»

Et gjensyn med Walter Trout får man på Notodden Bluesfestival 31. juli – 3. august 2014.