Walter Trout Queen's Hall Edinburgh 17th October 2024 Review
Walter Trout was at the Queen’s Hall Edinburgh tonight, a date on his current UK tour, “Broken”. Walter Trout also has a new album out - “Broken” - so as you would expect, tonight’s set-list was a mixture of new songs, old songs, and covers of some blues classics.
From the moment that Walter Trout stepped onto the stage (along with his band) it was obvious that he was in a very good mood tonight, pleased to be here in Edinburgh performing his music and often the evening had a lot of humour to it, particularly when his guitar amp chose to have more than a few gremlins in it.
Opening this show with the Bo Diddley classic “I Can Tell” was an obvious crowd pleaser and that mood continued with “Courage In The Dark” from the new album. Other songs in this set-list including, amongst others, “We’re All In This Together”, “Red Sun” and “Wanna Dance” received the just applause that they deserved too.
Playing the blues is to many people not just an exercise of technical musicianship on any given instrument, but a reflection of who you are in your heart and soul. Some people would also say that to play the blues properly you have to have lived a life that has given you good and bad moments, a life that has known both triumph and adversity.
Walter Trout certainly has the technical skills in abundance to merit his status as a contemporary blues guitar legend, but he has also, as we all found out tonight, had many life experiences to channel into his music. His story of the railroads close to where he grew up and his father’s struggles of surviving as a prisoner of the Japanese in WWII are all reflected in “Ride”. Curiously though, this song is a very upbeat one, not at all what you would expect from its source subject matter. Here Walter Trout is also following those blues legends of old in writing songs about real life and real events.
Walter Trout was not just happy to be with his audience tonight, he was happy to just be alive and is certainly taking care to enjoy every moment that his near death experience in 2014 and subsequent liver transplant has given him. Literally this is Walter Trout living a second chance at life that he never expected to have. This second chance did not, however, come without a difficult road to travel to recovery including learning to walk, talk and even play guitar over again.
One of the highlights of this show was Walter’s personal tribute to a man he credits with taking him out of the very dark place of alcohol and drug addiction that he was in when he met him, being a guiding light both in his personal and musical life, blues legend John Mayall. What more perfect a tribute could have been given here other than in song with “Say Goodbye To The Blues”? This honest, from the heart, and purely emotional tribute from Walter Trout was to me what the blues is really about. Walter Trout was also proud to inform us all that he has been clean of his addictions for 37 years now. Here is proof that people can be “Broken” (as in the new album title), but that no one is beyond repair.
As you would expect, Walter Trout had a very impressive band with him tonight which included Roland Bakker (Hammond Organ), John Avila (Bass), Brett Smit-Daniels (guitar) and Michael Leisure (Drums), with some outstanding work both individually and collectively throughout this show from everyone on stage. Taking to the stage too were the very impressive skills of Will Wilde (Harmonica).
Opening this show this evening was Laura Evans, who has been attracting a lot of music industry attention in the past few years along with building up her own fan base from her live shows. With Laura on stage tonight and adding much to her powerful blues/R&B vocals was guitarist Will Edmunds.
Many of the songs in this opening set came from Laura’s debut album “State of Mind” and her performances of “Heartbreaker”, “Arkansas”, “Fool” and others are hopefully enough to give Laura Evans the break that she deserves in this highly competitive music industry.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
From the moment that Walter Trout stepped onto the stage (along with his band) it was obvious that he was in a very good mood tonight, pleased to be here in Edinburgh performing his music and often the evening had a lot of humour to it, particularly when his guitar amp chose to have more than a few gremlins in it.
Opening this show with the Bo Diddley classic “I Can Tell” was an obvious crowd pleaser and that mood continued with “Courage In The Dark” from the new album. Other songs in this set-list including, amongst others, “We’re All In This Together”, “Red Sun” and “Wanna Dance” received the just applause that they deserved too.
Playing the blues is to many people not just an exercise of technical musicianship on any given instrument, but a reflection of who you are in your heart and soul. Some people would also say that to play the blues properly you have to have lived a life that has given you good and bad moments, a life that has known both triumph and adversity.
Walter Trout certainly has the technical skills in abundance to merit his status as a contemporary blues guitar legend, but he has also, as we all found out tonight, had many life experiences to channel into his music. His story of the railroads close to where he grew up and his father’s struggles of surviving as a prisoner of the Japanese in WWII are all reflected in “Ride”. Curiously though, this song is a very upbeat one, not at all what you would expect from its source subject matter. Here Walter Trout is also following those blues legends of old in writing songs about real life and real events.
Walter Trout was not just happy to be with his audience tonight, he was happy to just be alive and is certainly taking care to enjoy every moment that his near death experience in 2014 and subsequent liver transplant has given him. Literally this is Walter Trout living a second chance at life that he never expected to have. This second chance did not, however, come without a difficult road to travel to recovery including learning to walk, talk and even play guitar over again.
One of the highlights of this show was Walter’s personal tribute to a man he credits with taking him out of the very dark place of alcohol and drug addiction that he was in when he met him, being a guiding light both in his personal and musical life, blues legend John Mayall. What more perfect a tribute could have been given here other than in song with “Say Goodbye To The Blues”? This honest, from the heart, and purely emotional tribute from Walter Trout was to me what the blues is really about. Walter Trout was also proud to inform us all that he has been clean of his addictions for 37 years now. Here is proof that people can be “Broken” (as in the new album title), but that no one is beyond repair.
As you would expect, Walter Trout had a very impressive band with him tonight which included Roland Bakker (Hammond Organ), John Avila (Bass), Brett Smit-Daniels (guitar) and Michael Leisure (Drums), with some outstanding work both individually and collectively throughout this show from everyone on stage. Taking to the stage too were the very impressive skills of Will Wilde (Harmonica).
Opening this show this evening was Laura Evans, who has been attracting a lot of music industry attention in the past few years along with building up her own fan base from her live shows. With Laura on stage tonight and adding much to her powerful blues/R&B vocals was guitarist Will Edmunds.
Many of the songs in this opening set came from Laura’s debut album “State of Mind” and her performances of “Heartbreaker”, “Arkansas”, “Fool” and others are hopefully enough to give Laura Evans the break that she deserves in this highly competitive music industry.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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