Artist: Trout, Walter
Label: Provogue Records
Released: 2009
Length: 39.25
Rating: 4/5
Walter Trout is a name music connoisseurs mostly link with blues icons like Canned Heat, Bo Diddley and John Lee Hooker, but he kicked up the most dust playing in the backing band of the godfather of British blues, the great John Mayall. It’s been 20 years this year since he split from the Bluesbreakers and set out to form his own band, the one that laid the groundwork for paving his own expressive path. To mark the occasion, the prolific guitarist pulled together a collection of never-before-released archive recordings, available since June under the fitting title Unspoiled By Progress.
Unspoiled by Progress: 20 Years of Hardcore Blues is a title that says plenty all by itself. Twenty years is a long stretch, and over that time enough material piled up for a thrilling retrospective flyover of Walter’s solo road. It’s made up entirely of the guitarist’s never-before-released gems, with room left for three freshly baked tracks that feel like a perfectly natural offshoot of top-shelf blues rock. The fantastic blues-rock stampede They Call Us The Working Class, the rural-leaning Two Sides To Every Story and the closer, the Hendrix-flavored So Afraid Of The Darkness, are the obvious favorites of the album, packed with inventive guitar sparks and emotional, often raw-sounding vocals. Like I said, there’s no shortage of jewels here. Walter Trout pays back part of his debt to the blues legends with Sweet As a Flower, which has more than obviously inherited the genes of Otis Rush’s All Your Love, the Guy-style She’s Out There Somewhere and a confident, maybe a tad too clenched take on Freddie King’s Going Down! Finally Gotten Over You and Going Back Home spoil us with a demonstration of Walter Trout’s sheer stage power. The first one comes off like a inspired jam and serves up not one but two solo spots, first a fun harmonica stroll, later a brilliant guitar improvisation. The aforementioned Going Back Home, just like Somebody’s Acting Like A Child, is marked by strong personality traits that remind you less of technical perfection and more of a colorful testosterone-fueled party. Which can of course only be a good thing!
Walter cultivates a trait that I’m sure some will find annoying: stretching his guitar solo excursions way out. There’s no point wasting words on the old guy’s astonishing technical chops, nor on the innovative moves that give the musician’s stylistic and thematic constants their shine. Walter is simply a representative of the modern blues-rock school, and you have to take that as a given. Still, the man’s unique vocabulary is full of moves that, with a contemporary performing approach, pull the threads of uncensored juiciness out of traditional recipes pretty successfully, which is a rare and therefore all the more admirable quality in modern blues guitarists. Walter Trout’s exuberant nature is further highlighted by the adrenaline coursing through the live recordings on the album, which, once the basic song structures wrap up, usually erupt into long, marathon improvised melodic exchanges. The other key strength of the sound of Walter’s blues circus is the steady and, above all, effectively used supply of juicy Hammond organ. Its constant presence creates an exceptionally vital sonic picture, one that isn’t thrown off its groove even by the more or less unlucky mixing of studio and live recordings.
Unspoiled By Progress is without a doubt a praiseworthy release, proof that blues rock as a genre won’t need to bury its head in the sand any time soon. With this collection of rarities, Walter Trout managed to convince us the genre is far from played out, still churning out great musicians year after year, proud torchbearers of the blues.
Lineup
Walter Trout: vocals, guitar
Rick Knapp: bass
Sammy Avila: Hammond B3
Richard Hayward: drums
Frank Cotinola: drums
Michael Leasure: drums
Production
Walter Trout
Tracklist
1.They Call Us The Working Class
2. Goin’ Down
3. Life In The Jungle
4. Long Tall Sally
5. Jimmy As Yoko
6. Somebody’s Acting Like A Child
7. Hey Barney
8. Sweet As A Flower
9. Two Sides To Every Story
10. Finally Gotten Over You
11. Goin’ Back Home
12. Marie’s Mood
13. She’s Out There Somewhere
14. So Afraid Of The Darkness
