Full Circle

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Full Circle by Walter Trout .com ---- Guest-star projects can be such tiresome affairs. Too often, the high-profile "friend" is nothing more than the record label's idea of someone they can feature on the front cover to generate additional sales. Additionally, these performances are frequently overdubbed, so the artist and the guest never actually come in contact with each other. Thankfully, neither is the case on Walter Trout's first studio album of new material since 2001's Go the Distance. Not only has the hot guitarist worked and maintained friendships with these players, but they convened in the same studio at the same time to nail these tunes. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of Trout's friends are guitarists who--like him--prefer to charge through songs with the intensity of a salmon swimming upstream. Joe Bonamassa, Bernard Allison, Guitar Shorty, Jeff Healey, Junior Watson, and Coco Montoya all share guitar-duel duties, and while the results aren't exactly subtle, there's enough explosive firepower here to level a small building. Even an acoustic session with Eric Sardinas--a neighbor of Trout's--attacks like an unplugged Rory Gallagher on a hot Belfast night. John Mayall (keyboards/vocals), James Harman (harp), Finis Tasby (vocals), Deacon Jones (Hammond B3 organ), and Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward also bring their game faces, and sometimes songs, contributing to various tracks with energy and intensity. Trout plays with his usual all-stops-out bluster, but there is an obvious affection for his guests on every track, which both energizes and spurs him on to new heights on what is arguably his best and most diverse effort yet. --Hal Horowitz About the Artist ---------------- Born in 1951 and raised in Ocean City, New Jersey, Walter Trout felt the calling to music at a young age. Hearing the album "THE PAUL BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND" cemented Walter’s musical ambitions towards the blues genre and the electric guitar. As a shy teenager growing up in a turbulent household, his singular solace became his rapidly developing ability to express his feelings playing the guitar and his vision of becoming a professional musician. In his late teens and early twenties, Trout played in numerous New Jersey bands, and in 1973, he packed up his belongings in a VW Beetle and drove cross-country to California, arriving in Los Angeles with only a few changes of clothes and his guitars. He developed into an ace sideman, befriending and backing California blues artists, often being the only "white boy" in the black neighborhood clubs. His technique accelerated rapidly as he played with Finis Tasby, Pee Wee Crayton, Lowell Fulsom, and Percy Mayfield, among others. Walter often teamed with Hammond B3 wizard Deacon Jones and the apprenticeship continued in the bands of John Lee Hooker, Big Mama Thorton and Joe Tex. By 1981, Trout’s reputation led to the invitation to join venerable blues rock band Canned Heat, where he remained through 1984. When the call came to join the legendary John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Trout jumped and found himself sharing the spotlight with fellow guitarist Coco Montoya. Trout and Montoya lifted the band to a new level, as Mayall’s Bluesbreakers enjoyed unprecedented album sales and high profile tours in the US and abroad. In 1989, he felt he had more to give than a few blazing solos as a side man - he gathered musicians he knew from Los Angeles and started The Walter Trout Band, which quickly segued into immediate extensive touring of Europe, where he had several radio hits and charted with his unique style of blues rock. His commercial and critical success in Europe kept him so busy outside of the US that his arrival back home found him only resting to go back to the frantic pace his popularity demanded overseas. Like many American blues and roots-music artists, Walter Trout had developed an incredible following in Europe, but came home to little fanfare. Amazingly, the self-titled WALTER TROUT, released by Ruf Records in 1998 was his first "official" domestic CD. Shortly after, the band renamed as Walter Trout and The Free Radicals and began an extensive touring pace stateside, steadily building a fan base and bringing their high energy, impassioned live performances back home. To date Ruf Records has released 7 titles in the US and Walter has continued his frequent touring, splitting time more evenly between continents. Whether he’s on stage in front of 50,000 people, or performing in a small club for a couple hundred – what matters to Walter Trout is reaching people’s hearts through his artistry and relaying the passion he has for all the musical styles which shape his sound.