Blues Came Callin' [CD/DVD]

Personnel: Walter Trout (vocals, guitar); Sam Avila (keyboards); Michael Leasure (drums).
Audio Mixer: Eric Corne.
Recording information: Clearlake Recording Studios, North Hollywood, CA (04/2013-01/2014); Entourage Studios (04/2013-01/2014); Forty Below Studios, Los Angeles, CA (04/2013-01/2014).
Photographer: Jeff Katz.
There's a grim but ultimately wonderful story behind Walter Trout's The Blues Came Callin'. A fine songwriter with an explosive, searing guitar style, Trout, a New Jersey native, is a lifetime blues musician, having been a member of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Canned Heat, toured in John Lee Hooker and Big Mama Thornton's road bands, and released a number of strong solo albums under his own name. When it was discovered that he had a disease that ruined his liver, a transplant was his only option, and he had neither the money nor the insurance to have the procedure done. He wrote the songs for this album knowing that it might well be his last. Thanks to social media and a fervent fan base, enough money was raised to allow the transplant, and The Blues Came Callin', another excellent outing from Trout, would appear to not be his last album after all. The blues may not be about happy endings, but it is a music about surviving hardships and reaching toward personal change and redemption, and Trout gives all of that credence with this fine release. ~ Steve Leggett