Walter Trout

Ordinary Madness

Provogue Records/Mascot Music

Walter Trout was born in Ocean City, New Jersey. The guitarist relocated to Los Angeles where he found work with Percy Mayfield, Lowell Fulsom, Big Mama Thornton, John Lee Hooker and Joe Tex. In 1981 Trout became the lead guitarist in “Canned Heat” and spent three years with them before leaving in 1984. A year later he joined “John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers” and spent another four years with them. He left in 1989 to form his own band and began to develop a formidable reputation. In 1998 “Walter Trout and The Free Radicals” released their first U.S. album.

Trout received his first Blues Music Award nomination for his 2009 album “The Outsider”. During a recording session in 2014 Trout was diagnosed with sever liver disease. His wife Marie raised money through donations by fans, enabling Trout to complete a successful liver transplant. He resumed touring in 2015 and a year later won BMA’s for both “Song of The Year” and “Rock Blues Album of The Year”. Overall Trout has twelve BMA nominations winning, for the third time, for his 2018 album “We’re All in This Together”.

Trout, guitar, harmonica and vocals; is joined by band mates Teddy Andreadis, keyboards; Johnny Griparic, bass; and Michael Leasure, drums. Additional musicians include keyboardists Skip Edwards and Drake Shining; and guitarist Anthony Grisham. The album is produced, engineered and mixed by Eric Corne at the Horse Latitude Studios in Burbank California.

While Trout’s 2018 album featured him covering older obscure songs that helped inspire him, “Ordinary Madness” features Trout as a songwriter, as the eleven songs are all written or co-written by him. Trout opens with the title track, a slow blues that simmers from the beginning. Trout’s frightening vocal conveys despair as he sings “it’s the sadness and the fear and the anger, that you feel everyday…and it’s right here inside of me” as his haunting guitar solo reinforces the lyrics.

“Wanna Dance” is in the mold of those classic rock songs; “I wanna see the other side, but I don’t wanna go, I revel in emotions that overwhelm me so…so tonight baby, tonight I just wanna dance…I wanna dance with you baby”. “My Foolish Pride” is a delicate ballad with an intimate vocal featuring Edwards on piano. “The Sun is Going Down” is another bit of introspection as Trout sings about his own mortality “I feel myself getting’ weaker, with every passing day, and the shadows and the memories, they just slowly fade away”. The rockin “Final Curtain Call”, is along the lines of the same theme, and another fabulous song featuring Trout on both guitar and harmonica. On “Make It Right” Trout sings “I only want to make it right” while Andreadis plays the B-3.

Four of the songs are co-written with Trout’s wife, Executive Producer Marie Trout. “Heaven In Your Eyes”, “Up Above My Sky” and the rockin’ “OK Boomer”. The fourth, “All Out Of Tears”, is a stunning song co-written by the Trout’s with Teeny Tucker and is about the loss of Tucker’s son “I wake up thinkin’ that you might be comin’ home, then I realized I’d been dreamin’, and I just laid there all alone…you know it feels just like a hundred years, my heart is cryin’ but my eyes are dry, and I’ve run out of tears to cry”.

“Ordinary Madness” is something very different from Trout; and it might take a few plays to get into the albums melancholy. Trout’s guitar takes a back seat to the songwriting. This may be Trout’s twenty-seventh solo album but it’s his most artistic. An absolute masterpiece.

Richard Ludmerer

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