Legendary blues man, Walter Trout, returned to London’s Islington Assembly Hall to celebrate his album ‘Broken’. Released earlier this year, there’s only a few track’s from the album in the set list, which is a shame as it’s a riveting listen; but after releasing 31 albums, it’s safe to say that Walter has plenty of songs to choose from. Tonight there's a great mix of old and new, along with blues classics.
The show starts with an upbeat cover of Bo Diddly's 'I Can Tell' before the gravelly voiced bluesman gives us an impassioned performance of ‘Courage in the Dark’. Things continue on a serious note with 'Say Goodbye to the Blues', tonight dedicated to his musical father John Mayall but also to Matt Long, a member of the five-time UK blues award winning band Catfish who lost his battle against bowel cancer at the age of 29. It's a soul-stirring performance.
At the age of 73 there’s no doubt of Walter's gratitude to be playing in front of a live audience and still sharing his music, when he’s witnessed so many other musicians, young and old go to the great gig in the sky. He's also had brushes with death himself and battled with addiction, so the fact that he's here to tell the tale speaks volumes about his continued humility and resilience. Later in the evening he recounts story of the liver transplant that saved his life, and how he took the long journey to recover his ability to play again. He tells the story partly out of inspiration, partly out of superstition.
Walter's playing is fearless, almost possessed as his solos seem to come from his soul. This is not blues by numbers, this is the real deal. He’s also clearly having a lot of fun too with fellow musos Roland Bakker (Hammond Organ), John Avila (Bass), Brett Smith-Daniels (guitar) and Michael Leisure (Drums). It wasn't all sombre reflections, there were jokes about Les Dawson, not tuning up his guitar too much for fear of sounding like Coldplay and jubilation that young people are engaging with and playing the blues rather than that “rap and scratching shit”. Young British guitarist Brett Smith-Daniels shared vocals on a stonking version of 'We're All in this Together', which featured another jam from the band. Another story about playing with John Lee Hooker leads to the boogie inspired ‘Bleed’ towards the end of the night.
You get the feeling these guys would go on until their fingers were mush, and if there wasn’t a curfew!
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