Walter Trout - The Exclusive Interview With American Blues Guitarist Extraordinaire

What can you say about a guy that's been laying down some sweet Blues licks for over 50 years that hasn't been said before? Walter Trout one of the preeminent Blues Guitarists of this decade and the last visited with The Trout about his career, his family, his guitars, his songwriting and much more during this exclusive interview. Trout's career began on the Jersey coast scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He then decided to relocate to Los Angeles where he became a sideman for John Lee Hooker, Percy Mayfield, Big Mama Thornton, Joe Tex, and many others. Now with decades of performing in multiple venues in many international cities behind his belt, Trout continues his journey of providing his tunes and especially his guitar playing for fans across the world. Learn more about Walter's musical life during this exclusive interview with The Trout.

https://www.waltertrout.com/
https://www.facebook.com/waltertroutband/
https://www.instagram.com/walter_trout/
https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaltertrout/featured

https://www.thetroutshow.com/

Transcript

0:01

Today's podcast is supported by David Smith of Edward Jones. Are you happy with your financial strategy or maybe like to see what other opportunities are out there? Or gave David a call at 46937 215 87. That's 46937 215 87. David is only concerned about one person that's you and your financial health. So check him out. David Smith, Edward Jones, 46937 215 87. Everybody. It's the trout. Hope you're having a great day. We have a great episode on The Trout Show. This time we have one of the most preeminent famous blues guitar players in the world international star Walter Trout. Walter sat down and talked to me about his career, his life story, the ups and downs, the equipment he plays, just about everything. What makes this guy a phenomenal blues player. I love talking to him because I'm a blues guy too. And if you want to know about the blues artistry of Walter Trout and his history and where he's going from this point on, he just keeps making records all the time and touring all the time. Stay tuned for this episode of The Trout Show. So up next, the guy that makes the blues sing mr. Walter Drought on The Trout Show. That's next. here's my first question for you. First off, I think you are the most tenacious human being on the planet as far as a musician because I look at your schedule. When I talked to John months ago, I looked at your schedule. Anytime I reach out to somebody of your caliber, I always look and see where they're turing. Dude, you never stop. But that's not my real question. I just look at it and go, he just keeps going. He's like the energizer bounty. But let's go back to the beginning because I can tell you what happened to me. But tell me when you first realized the blues was something that really what age were you when you went, oh, man, I think I'm into this. Or Where did you see, I noticed you played with some very major, well known players when you first started out. When did that hit you and go, this is something I want to do. I play the blues. You know, my guitar odyssey has sort of three phases. I was a kid, I took trumpet lessons. I was going to be a jazz trumpet player. I was a very good trumpet player. I played it actually all through high school in the band and the marching band, right. But when I was ten years old, my brother, I got to go back and say, I really love big band jazz and Mingus when I was ten years old, I even got to spend the day with Duke Ellington, hang out. Wow, that's cool. So that was my focus. But then I was ten years old and my older brother, who's five years older, came home and he said, he goes, there's something about this guy. I need you to hear this. This is very different than what you're into, but I want you to check this guy out. And it was the first album by Bob Dylan and something about it grabbed me in a way that nothing else really had up to that point. And I realized listening to it, because I'd been listening to very complex big band music and John Coltrane and Eric Dolphie and stuff, right? And here was these very simple three chord songs. But with all this feeling and messaging, all these things that needed to be said over just these simple musical progressions, but with these beautiful melodies, I was just taken by it. And it wasn't long after that, once again, my brother comes home and says, hey, this guy just gave me this guitar. I think you probably want it, don't you? And I said, sure. And I just got a chord book and started learning chords, the Mel Bay chord. I was going to say Mel Bay. Had to be Mel Bay because that's where we yeah, Mel Bay. I sat with Mel Bay and I started figuring out these Bob Dylan songs. And that was cool. That was like 1961 or 60 219 64.

February the 9th, Sunday night, 08: 6:56

00, Channel Two in Philadelphia. You know what I'm going to say? The Beatles aren't Sullivan. Yes, sir. And and it was like my world changed at that point and I'm like, I've got to get an electric guitar now and I've got to start learning these kind of songs and I've got to be in a band because I looked at them on TV and it was almost like they were one person. It was so weird, the impact they had when they came out. It's hard to explain to people now, but I know it is hard, very hard. They don't understand. And I'm like, okay, I know what I want to do. So I got an electric guitar, a cheap Japanese guitar. Actually, the first one I had, you'll know, it exactly was the Silver Tone with the speaker in the case, Sears real buck and co. Yeah. And it was cool. And then once again in 1965, when I've been listening to guitar solos by George Harrison and Keith Richards, great players, but that's what I'm thinking are guitar solos. My brother brings home another album and says, I'm going to play this for you, but you need to sit down because when you hear this guitar player, you might fall over. Wow. And it was Michael Bloomfield. It was the first Paul Butterfield album which weren't in Chicago. And at that point I went to my mother and I said, I know what I want to do now. And I said, you hear that sound that this album has? I want to make that sound. And I had found my calling at that point. So there was three phases there and all of them really were my brother was instrumental, he was a music fan, loved everything, and he was always bringing home records. Check this out. for a while. I hate to say a blues purist because I think a lot of the purists probably hated what Bloomfield was doing because he was playing blues, but with rock and roll aggression and fire and energy. Right. He was aggressive, man. He was right in your face and he was playing his fan. It was unbelievable at that point. If you listen to that album now and you realize that when he was playing those solos, the solos we were hearing were like on Can't Buy Me Love and this could be the last time he was ahead of his time back then, that pointed me in a direction. I think it's interesting. I can remember when I got exposed to it by the Rolling Stones because they did Little Red Rooster on whatever album it was. And I said, what is this? And they're telling me it's all American blues. And I went, oh, wait a minute, I kind of like this. Yeah. And I remember being a couple of years younger you but I started playing when I was twelve and like you, I wanted to get in the band right away, which I did. Of course, back then, none of us were probably very good, I imagine very good. But it really hit me when BB. King brought out. The thrill is gone. And I got into it then and I started then studying as I got a little bit older, the whole history of it, robert Johnson and all that stuff. And I'd sit there and listen to the old stuff. And then the Stones put out a couple of other things that they did. Well, other stuff was kind of three court blue stuff and now that's what you do for a living. And the questions I have when I talk to musicians, I try to ask them something different that you get asked all the time. What's your favorite key to play in? Everybody has a favorite key. If I said, let's do a jam and what key would you play them? I would probably call E or a I'm an a guy. So you'd be the one. Another thing that happened also with us is I would get magazines where there would be interviews with people like the Stones and people like Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield and they would talk about where they got the music. They'd mention Hallenwolf Chesterburn, they'd mention Muddy Waters and they'd mention these people. And then I would go out and seek people out. Now, I do have to preface this by saying that my father, who was a music lover back in the late 50s in New Jersey, in the suburbs, he had records by BB. King and John Lee Hooker. And my mother had all the Ray Charles Atlantic stuff. What? Ray Charles was basically doing blues, R and B stuff before his kids. So my dad had a bunch of T Bone Walker stuff. But I was hearing that as a kid, but it wasn't getting me. It was when I heard that music played by Bloomfield with that rock and roll energy. That's what knocked me over. I think the album that I have is I used to I don't have any more Super Sessions. Isn't that the one that Bloomville played on without Cooper Otis? I always wondered what happened to Sugar Otis. I don't know. I never did know what happened to it. It's funny you mentioned that because I decided in my senior year of high school that I had to go get a really good guitar. And on the back of the the Butterfield album, there was a picture of Mike Bloomfield with a Telecaster. Okay. I thought he thought he played last. Paul in Philadelphia. And I could get a Telecaster back then for, like, $180. So I got an after school job and was saving my money to get a Telecaster. And then when I just about had enough, out came Super Session on the COVID He had a less fall. I was going to say he ate a less tall. So I'm like, oh, boy, I want to see a less fall. And it was like $50 more expensive. So I had to work another couple of weeks and then I went out and got myself a less fall. That's what I started on. So what was your first amp, though, you had to place? I had a Fender Super reverb. Actually, no. It was a pro reverb. What speakers does that have? It's like a super, but it only has two tents. Two tents, okay. Yeah, but it's a legendary amp in South Jersey because our cat climbed into the back of the amp and gave birth and the little cats, the little kittens and the mom kind of lived in the back of the amp and all the bodily fluids and all went into the amp. And I finally got him out of the amp, but I never cleaned it. And when the amp would get hot, it would start to sink. And I sold it to a guy back there and he still has it. And it's known among all my friends and musicians back there as the cat shit. Am. You probably crank that baby up to try to get some distortion out. If you had to. You wanted to get past that Fender sound. There were no pedals back then. We didn't have any pedals. No pedals didn't exist. It's funny, there's a photographer in Las Vegas, a very fine photographer, Denise Trucello, and she's taken album covers for people like Celine Dion, but she gave me she had a 1949 little Fender amp that's about this big, and it's tweed, and it was built handbuilt by Leo Fender. And it's all original. It's got the original speaker. She gave that to me, and I'm scared to use it because if I blow up that original speaker, what do you do? And I've had guys say, well, bring it in the studio, man. Let's. And I'm like, no, I have it actually locked up safe. I was going to say, it's worth a lot of money for a collector. I wouldn't want to play it. I mean, that's one of those pieces that you look at and it's like an antique. I mean, it's an antique, but it's like a Monet painting. You just kind of look at it and go, wow, this Leo Fender actually built this with his old mangarat glass where a guy laid his cigarette on the old the other thing about you, Walter, I think it's really interesting is to me as a fellow musician, but your life has been not an easy life. And I don't mean this. I love your history, and I say God bless you, that you're still with us. I mean, seriously. Well, I'm not sure how I'm still here. You're not done yet. Every moment. And you talk about tenacious. I am a driven artist. It's what I love to do, what I long to do. It's my calling. I've really known since I was ten that I was put here to play music. I wasn't sure what kind of music until I found my way, but I had a liver transplant and pretty much was close to death eight years ago. And in the succeeding eight years since I came back, I've done six albums. So, yeah, I'm just driven and I love it. And I just did a tour in Europe where I did 43 cities in about 52 days. I see your schedule. Like I said earlier, I see your schedule. And it's amazing to me because the fact is that you get to a point in your life and I think this is what's interesting about musicians. Everybody I talk to, every single person has that bug that we get when we're young. And some people are very young, four or five years old. Some of the people are 17, but they're all young. We get that thing, and if you don't have it, nobody understands it. But when you got it, it gnaws at you all the time. I got to keep playing, I got to do this. I just love doing it. I want to do this all the time, and that's the one thing. But you, because of your history, I look at you as somebody who's like, here's everything he's been through and he still gets up and whips that strad on and still plays Blitz because he's driven to do exactly that. And that, my friend, is why I like listening to your music, because I love what you put into it. I know that you're never doing anything pedestrian. Every time seeing you on YouTube, I just go, he's just you're just you. When you hit it, you hit it. And that that just because I know how hard it has to be doing those many dates. Probably sometimes you forget where you are. Oh, yeah. And every time you walk on stage, you have to do the best you can, no matter what your situation is. Of course. And that's what gets me. I tell people to start out in the music. I said, when you go into music business, it doesn't matter what happened to you that day. Those people paid to see you. They want to see the best thing you can give to them. I'm sure there's days that people, no matter who you are, that's on tour, you just go like, oh, man, how am I going to do this? But you got to drive. I admire you for that and I hope you keep doing it so I can keep listening to you. Well, I'm going to keep doing it till I can't do it anymore. Right now, I'm still going. My wife, who's managed my career for 30 years, we just had a zoom meeting yesterday with the head of my record label and she just signed a deal for me to do my 31st album. That's great. So I've just started sitting down and writing that thing. And, you know, this coming up next week, I have this blues cruise where I'm going to have the great experience of getting to do two songs fronting BB king's old band. Oh, I was wondering about yeah. And then I come home for a week and then I go back and do this thing called the Rock Legends Cruise with Deep Purple and Roger Altry. I love it. I think being a musician, you will understand this. Sometimes when you're playing, especially in front of a crowd, you can hit a point where you lose all knowledge that you have a physical body and you just become this sound and you are flying through the universe. I'm going to lose it here, talking about it, but you don't achieve it all the time, but you strive for it. And I get up there every night and I strive for that experience. And you're not always going to get there, but the striving, pushing yourself to achieve that, that keeps me going, because that is I hate to call it a religious experience, but it's a spiritual experience. It is. And it's the one thing there's two things about one, you can't explain it to people if they don't do it. I've told friends of mine, I said, I wish you could experience what I do. I mean, experience that moment. And then number two is you never know when it's going to come. You play with the same guys all the time and then there's this one thing one night that something magical happens that you just kind of float out in the ether a little bit and you're like, above everybody, kind of doing your thing. And you're like, wow, that was so freaking and that inspiration, when that hits, it is indescribable to people. And it's just something that's the most beautiful experience I have in my life. And I'm thankful when I have the ability to play. I tell people it's a gift that you get, and you get the gift. And my opinion is you're given it, but then you have to work at it to make it better. Oh, yeah. So when did you kind of decide, every time I see you, you're a Strat guy, you obviously started on different things. When did you kind of just say, that's the thing that I want to play all the time? Well, or what was the moment? I mean, what made you drive that to that point and play a Stratton? Les Paul or telly? Well, back in 68, I had purchased that Les Paul. I wanted a really good guitar. I had had a succession of cheap guitars and yeah, I was starting to really play in bands a lot and I wanted a good guitar. And so I had gotten the Les Paul. Right? I was playing the Les Paul in my bedroom, practicing, and I dropped it in the next split into the Head Start. So I went out and I got a 335 because I had gone and seen Freddie King. And I saw Freddie once. Sounded badass, right? And I was in a jam session in Philly one night back in, like, 1971, maybe. And this guy, I remember his name was Bill Brown. I don't know why I remember that. But he came over. It was just a party at a guy's house. We were all jamming. He said, try my stratocaster. And I put on a stratocaster. And that's funny to hear that fit my body. It was like a woman. The 335 was kind of awkward and uncomfortable and the strategy fit. It was like, oh, boy, this is nice. And I started playing it and I thought, okay, I have found I have found my woman here. And I went out and got a Strat and never looked back. What's the oldest one you have? I have one that I bought one in New Jersey and and before I moved out here, it had gotten damaged. So when I moved out here, all I had was the 335. But I wanted to get a strat. So two weeks after I got here, I went out and bought a Strat in 1973. And that's the oldest one I have. I'm not into all this vintage. No, I was in a band in the guy borrowed he lent me his PreCBS Strat and in the 80s is when the Japanese started buying them and stick them on their walls and I was changing the strings on it. And I looked at him, oh, my gosh, the Guy was a country player and he rusted the bridge and all that stuff. But I wanted it because it was free CBS stretch and he wore a belt buckle. So he scratched the whole back of it up. He wouldn't sell it to me. I've always been a Les Paul guy because I like sustain. Although there's a Strat light behind me that I use when I record because I do like the single coil pickups. I'm a guy that wants to hold a note forever and get that £15 on you. That's another thing because you play so much and the stretch so much lighter. That's another thing, too. It doesn't have weight. I have to tell you, that old Strat of mine, I can't use it anymore because it's heavier than my less Paul. now. There's a company in Texas called Delaney Guitars. It's Michael Delaney and he makes a Walter Trout signature model that he is based on my old Strat. He actually came out to my house and took a lot of measurements of the neck. And he makes a Delaney walter Trout signature model. But it is the one that he has made for me. Because my old Strat destroyed my shoulder. I had to go into therapy. I had to get all sorts of therapy. My left hand stopped working. All the nerves in the side of my body were all messed up. So Michael has built me a beautiful signature model guitar that weighs something like £4. Oh, wow. I don't know how he did it, but you can lift it with your pinky and that's what I use. Now, let me ask you a question, and I'm going to talk about your latest album. But I'm always curious about and I want to not get into details with it but you said you're going to start writing. So for the next album that you're going to start working on tell me a little bit about your process. Do you sit down and go, I think I'm going to write a Blue song or you just kind of outside and all of a sudden, how does it all kind of works for you? I sit down with a guitar, acoustic or electric and I just start playing around, playing some licks, playing some stuff. Suddenly, a melody might come into my head. Maybe I'll be laying in bed and a bunch of lyrics might pop into my head and I grab my phone, and I record them into the phone. I have a song on my new album called Ghosts, and basically, I was in my house in Denmark during the Pandemic, and I would be laying there, and sometime I was thinking about that. I had been driving, and I had heard a beatle song, and it had brought back all these memories when I was a kid and heard that song, and suddenly I was back in the room, and some of the memories are not so good. I understand that. Sometimes I hear a familiar song that brings back a memory. I said that into the phone. And then about ten minutes later, I'm laying there trying to go to sleep, and then pops. I close my eyes. It don't take long. Ghosts appear to me. I went, God, it rhymes. I want to go to bed now. And then in my heart, in my mind teardrops on my cheek unforgiving and so unkind they begin to speak. I'm like, okay. And over the course of about an hour and a half, I had all the lyrics to the song, and they were all because I wanted to go to sleep, but they just kept popping into my head. And then it was a matter of the next day, I got up and I wrote them down. They all rhymed. I'm like, Now I need some music. Yeah, I got to put the music to it. Well, I think the one that I haven't listened to, but The Ride, we were talking about that earlier based on the you had the kid in there with the playing the guitar. But was that a song that came to you that had any bearing on your real life? Because I really like the tune, because it's an upbeat, up tempo song, and it starts out with that train sound, that harmonica. Whoever was playing that with the Little Harm, was that you? I love that. And then you start playing. You know what? I was the harmonica player in Canned Heat for three years. Well, I knew you played with him. I didn't know you played harmonica. That's interesting. That song. You asked if it's real. I mean, is it something about your life or you just said something about you saw a train. I'll explain it. Okay. My parents divorced when I was six. My mother married a fellow, a very nice guy. I thought he was a great guy, very literate, poetic. But he had been, it turned out, unbeknownst to us. He had been a prisoner of war, of the Japanese in World War II, and he had been tortured and beaten, and he came home from the war in 1945, and they didn't know about PTSD. And he was told, Suck it up and be a man. Get a job. He became an insurance salesman. He married my mother. But he carried these demons, and he would start drinking, and he would get incredibly violent things like chopping. My brother and I are in bed in our bedroom. We shared a room. And he comes up and chops the door down with an axe because he's going to kill us. And my brother holds him off with a shotgun, and I jump out the window and run into the woods, this kind of stuff. And we lived in this big house, and the music became okay. The story of that is right next to this big house, laurel Springs, New Jersey, was railroad tracks, and it was the great trains that went between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. And they went all day and all night. Sure, they did. Right there. Like it says, it shook the house and it shook the bed. The whole house would shake. The bed would shake. And when we first moved in that house, it really got to me. It made me nuts. But then I started dreaming about I could escape the situation I was in, because that's where, like, the thing with the chopping down the bedroom door, really a lot of violence and a lot of terror for a little kid. Sure. And it just went and went, and I would think, all I got to do is cross the street, pop on one of those freight trains, and I can escape. And the train represented escape to me. Now, I never did it at this point. I was, like, ten years old, but I would dream about it, and again, it would be my brother. I'd say, hey, I'm ten. He's 15. I'd say, hey, let's get on the train. He'd say, Walt, we're going to end up in a train yard in Philly going, what? Now, he was the smart one. He was the smart one. Yeah. He was the practical one. I was the dreamer, right? That's another one that I had written the lyrics on a piece of paper years ago as a poem. I was thinking about that house, and I had just sat down and written a poem about that house, and all I did was I found those lyrics and I put it to music. But that video was my wife's idea, and she was basically in charge of the whole thing. And that kid represents me as a kid. And if you watch it, you see his parents off in the distance fighting and arguing, and he just picks up a guitar and sits in his room and plays. Yeah, I do remember that now. Yeah, I remember that. And so that video is actually me trying to come to terms with that kid, because that whole album, if you start listening to it, 90% of that album is me still trying to come to terms with what I went through as a kid. Hey, Mama is a conversation I had with my mom, because a lot of people, my wife, some of my friends from back then go, well, maybe your mom should have done more to. Protect you. Different time back then. It's different. But also the thing was and I understood her because he was a great guy and it will only happen when he would get drunk. And even with all that was happening, I still understood the guy. And I still cared for the guy because I understood that he needed help. He couldn't deal with what he had been through. And my heart went out to him. But I was scared the death of the man, but I understood. And there's another song of mine. I've written a few about it. There's a song called Collingswood and the last verse of Collingswood, I'm going to try to tell you the verse and not break down. It was so long ago, but it still affects me sometime. I wake up in a sweat and I lay there remembering that small boy as scared and lost as I could get. Out of the darkness comes a vision. I wonder what it is I see. I realize it's the spirit of my mama and she wraps her arms around me and she says it's all right. So that whole album ride if you start listening to the lyrics of the songs with this in mind, most of them are about my childhood. I didn't set out to do that. No, it's interesting to me because the fact that that had such an impact on you here years later, you're still talking about it. It still affects you. It's those deep seated memories that people don't understand. And I think a lot of times that people when you write a song, sometimes it doesn't have any meetings. It's just a song about whatever. But when it has a meeting, sometimes they don't understand. But I mean, when you go into and you tell me like that about that song, I listen to it completely different now. I'll listen to it completely now. I watch it again and go, okay. It's a completely different meaning. That's the part about songwriting that is so cool because you can express things that you wouldn't sit down and really tell anybody because like you said, the lyrics came to you laying the bed. I've had lyrics come to me in the weirdest places and I'll just go, I got to write those down now. When you're watching that video now and you realize that that kid is playing the part of me as a kid when we start jamming together and then there's a moment in the video where we look right at each other and we smile, and that is me accepting certain things. Wow. And this is all my wife's idea. And that kid is a local kid and it's his parents portraying his parents in there. That's cool. He plays guitar and he's actually his dad's brought him over here and he and I have sat and played together a couple of times, but he lives like two blocks away. That's sweet. That's nice you to do that to get that situation where you can help young artists. Coming up, just played a local gig here at the local concert hall down the road here, and I got the kid up on the stage and introduced him to the crowd. Okay. All of you have seen the video. Here he is. They probably wanted to talk to him. Hey, come over here and tell me about it. What's it like to be on a video with Walt Droout, that kind of thing. When I look at your schedule on your website, do you tour more in Europe than you do in America? Well, it varies from year to year. Okay. I just did that long tour in Europe where I did the 43 cities in eight or nine countries. Right. I'm about to do these two cruises that will leave out of Florida. Then I get home from that at the end of February, and I'm going to start a three week run in the States up to Portland and Seattle that side. Okay. And then Vancouver and then British Columbia and Idaho and Salt Lake City and Arizona. And I'll get home from that. And then in April, I'm going to start work on my 31st album. That's correct. And then in May, I'm going to do a month in Europe again. I'll start in the UK and go back to Germany and Switzerland. And where am I going? To Poland. I'm not sure where, but here you go, honey. Just keep getting on the bus. We're going here tomorrow. And then in August, they're already starting to book me gigs in the States. So I'll be touring the States again in the summer. And it's what I do. I'm driven. Well, that's obvious. You love what you do, and it shows. Not just because you're doing a lot of dates. It shows when you play. Now, I don't know if you're aware that when I had the liver transplant, I was in the hospital for eight months. I saw that I lost £120. I lost the ability to speak. I didn't recognize my wife or my kids, and I had brain damage, and they saved my life, and they gave me the transplant. I was in bed for eight months, and after I got out, I hadn't used my legs in eight months. I was in a wheelchair, and I had to get physical therapy and learn how to walk and how to stand up. I had to get speech therapy and learn how to speak again. And then when I came home, I sat on the couch, and one of my kids had to be a stratocaster, and I realized I had no idea how to do it. It had been wiped clean from my memory. I didn't know how to play a G chord, so I didn't know what to do. I was telling my wife, Well, I'm good with an espresso machine. Maybe I can get a gig at Starbucks. What am I going to do. And she said, well, you have to start over again. Yeah. And so I sat on the couch and I taught myself from scratch the same way I did when I was ten. I worked on it six or 7 hours a day, every day. And it came back then. I wanted to see what it would be like trying to play a gig, because I'm a guy who's been on a stage your whole life for the last 45, 50 years. Right. I had been on a stage in over two years, and instead of going down to the local pub to see what would happen, I went to Royal Albert Hall at once. Done. Here in your email, I'll send you a clip of my return. It was very emotional. Yeah, I have to see that. I mean, I did see where you played the Royal Harold, but I thought I didn't know it was right after all that. That was the first time I'd been on stage in two years, and my wife introduced me. I did see that. I read about I didn't see it, I just read about. Yeah. Okay. It took me after getting out. I had the transplant May the 26th of 2014. I played in June of 2015. Just over a year later, I played at Royal Albert Hall. And then I started making albums again. And in the eight years I've done six, I'm a driven guy, but I love it. I want to contribute. This is the only thing I have that I can contribute to the world to try to make it a little bit better. This is all I have to give is music. You have more than that. You have more than that. You have a life story that tells people, don't give up. Seriously, I can't imagine as good a player you are, not being able to play and forgetting it completely. I can't imagine that. And then sitting there and like a kid doing it over and over again to try to bring back that muscle memory that you had before. So you really are kind of people can look up to you all the time about your playing. There's no doubt about that. You're a great player. I love listening to you. But then your life is a story that tells people that, as I said, the beginning, you have tenacity. You don't give up. And people just give up too easily. Oh, it's really hard. Look at this guy. This guy's been through everything. I mean, he's been drugs, alcohol, he had his liver place. He couldn't play guitar. And guess what? He didn't just go, I'm going to give up. You kept going. Well, you get one shot, right? Might as well make the best of it. It's one shot. I tell people I said it's, right. What did my friends say one time? This is not dress rehearsal. This is the real thing. You don't get one like that. What are you using now as your main amps? What do you take on? What do we do? I have been a mesa boogie guy since I was with John Mayo. Okay. And I think Mesa Boogie makes the most versatile, beautiful sounding apps. And every record I've made in my solo career has been done on a Mesa Bogey amplifier. I always go through, I get in the studio and we start going, well, hey, let's try some different guitar sounds here. Try that, Marshall. Try that high watt, try this, try that. We play and I go, no, that ain't it. Set up the boogie, would you? And as soon as we plug in the boogie, I go, that's what I sound like. Do you use any pedals at all? No. I didn't think so. No. You just plug into the boogie, turn the gain up and off you go. A lot of the people that you have in your band have been with you for quite some time. I know your keyboard player has been with you for a long time because I've seen them in a lot of videos and going back to where's? Paradisio. That's in the Netherlands. Where is that? Denmark. That's my favorite place to play on the planet. It's that place. And it's not a real big place, but it looks like a cool place to perform at. Yeah, it holds something like 1600. Yeah, but it's not bad. That's pretty precious. And it's an old church from the 1800. I wondered what that was on the pulpit. Is that what it is? I always wondered what that was. Do people they stand up, too? They don't sit down, do they? Is there any seat standing? It's all wood and you're up there on the pulpit. If you watch my videos from there, the stained glass windows are back behind. Yeah, I always wondered about that. It's just got a vibe in there, man, and a sound, because it's all wood, so it's not bouncing, it's sucking it up to a certain degree. The other thing, too is I always wondered when somebody like you that on tour, you have to have really good your sound. People have to be good because you're trying to maintain the same sound all the time. And we all know that every time you play in a different place, it sounds different. Well, I can tell you that I've had the same sound man for 31 years. There you go. That's why. That's exactly why. And he knows my band. Basically, our first song every night is the sound check. This is what people don't understand. We do us this jam for the first song and I watch him his name is Phil and I watch him out there in the first 30 seconds of the first song, he's going like this, and then he goes and he's done it's in. So you don't go on early and do sound check. They set it up and, you know, the crew, the band will go down there and do line checks. And sometimes the band likes to go there in the afternoon and they'll jam and they'll do stuff. But it's not a requirement in my band because that first song with that's your sound check. This guy's got his dialed in, but he's done pretty much every gig I've done for 31 years. That's why you sounded that's your sound. Well, Mr. Trout, thank you so much. Well, great, Rick. Thank you. And I'll be happy to do this again. I enjoyed this. Every time I see a train go by I want to jump before and ride. Every time I see a train, I just want to jump a boring ride away from here. Well, that's it for this episode of The Trout Show. I'd like to thank Walter Trout for spending some time with me and talking about his career. Hope you all enjoyed it. For more information about Walter Or, please visit his website@waltertrout.com. All his information is on there, all his social media. More importantly, where he's going to be touring and where he can get his music. So next time, people remember, it's only rock and roller. I like it. See you.