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