When renowned Blues guitarist Walter Trout toured Europe last year, he was playing with a palpably renewed vigor. Trout’s rejuvenation almost seemed like a physical presence within the band, and for good reason — in 2013, after a long period of fatigue and balance problems, he was diagnosed with hepatitis C, leading to a liver transplant, a horrifying parade of complications and a long, painful rehabilitation.
By 2015’s European tour, Trout was fully recovered and bursting with energy, clearly evident from his incendiary performance on Alive in Amsterdam, recorded on the tour’s Amsterdam date at the venerable Royal Theatre Carré.
Despite Trout’s fiery playing and his excellent band’s thunderous backing, the guitarist is typically self-deprecating about it.
“I remember thinking, ‘That wasn’t my best night but I don’t think anybody knows but me,’ ” Trout says. “It was a very stressful evening. It was, ‘OK, we’re going to record, you’ve got one shot at it.’ It’s very formal, it’s like the Royal Albert Hall of the Netherlands. It’s not like a Blues fest. When I listen to it sometimes, I think, ‘God, I wish I hadn’t played that at that moment.’ Then I don’t listen to it for a week or two, and put it on and go, ‘Well, it’s pretty good.’ A lot of bands would take those tapes into the studio and fix them, but I’m not into that. If there’s a few warts, it’s a true representation of what we did.”
Warts and all, Alive in Amsterdam is Trout in his most electrified glory, enraptured by simply being alive. The album — recorded at the direction of Provogue Records president Ed van Zijl, perhaps the world’s biggest Walter Trout fan, to whom Trout gives full credit and infinite respect — hums with the energy of a dynamo running at full capacity and glows with the passion of a man reborn against long odds. Famously opposed to set lists, Trout maintained that position for the Amsterdam date, perhaps his most important gig ever.
“We walked out there and I thought, ‘What the fuck are we going to play?’ ” Trout says with a laugh. “The light’s on, they’re recording and… I’m thinking, ‘What would be a good starter?’ We just went.”
Trout’s epic post-diagnosis survival tale reveals his personal strength, the crucial bond between Trout and his wife Marie and their three sons (Marie, also his manager, introduces him at the theater on Alive in Amsterdam, and oldest son Jon accompanies him on guitar) and the life-and-death importance of organ donation.
“I pretty much died three times in the hospital and they brought me back; I had brain damage, I couldn’t speak, I didn’t recognize my wife and kids,” Trout says. “I was on life support with a hose in my nose for nourishment. I was in and out of ICU for months. And I think the reason I was brought through this is I now have a public forum that I can be an advocate to become an organ donor and to get checked for hep C before it gets to the point where I got. I talk about organ donation every night from the stage. I direct people to the Donate Life website (donatelife.net), where you can sign up and be in the national data base.”
Even after Trout’s life-saving transplant, there were terrible surgical complications. Doctors had to reopen Trout three times to successfully reattach his bile duct, which had leaked to the extent that his internal organs were being dissolved, creating an almost inconceivable amount of pain.
To counteract the brain damage, Trout spent four months in live-in therapy in Omaha, learning to walk and speak again. Once back home in California, he did daily physical therapy, graduating from wheelchair to walker to cane. On top of everything else, Trout lost the ability to play guitar.
“I continued with a little weight training and then spent maybe four hours a day teaching myself how to play guitar again,” Trout says. “The first time I was able to do a gig was the following June when I played the Royal Albert Hall. I only did two songs — it took me about a year to get to where I could do two songs — but it was a hell of a place to start. No pressure. Most guys, it’s, ‘I think I’ll go down to the corner bar and see what happens.’ Not me. ‘You want to play the Royal Albert Hall with Van Morrison?’ Yeah, put me up there.”
Alive in Amsterdam is not Trout’s first album back from the brink. That honor goes to last year’s Battle Scars, a raw, powerful musical journal of Trout’s long and ultimately successful campaign to survive his myriad health issues. Battle Scars won the 2016 Blues Music Award for top Rock Blues Album, while the track “Gonna Live Again” won best song honors.
But to Trout, the most important recognition for the album came from a young music fan and guitarist who was injured in the terrorist attack last year in Paris at concert venue the Bataclan.
“He was shot and almost died, and he didn’t want to live. His father gave him (Battle Scars) and it gave him hope and inspired him,” Trout says. “He actually sent me a message and my wife wrote a piece on The Daily Beast that you can look up and read. It’s him talking about how that album helped him emotionally and spiritually recover from his experience. Something like that means more to me than any review or chart position. The fact that you create this little piece of art and actually help somebody in their life, that’s a beautiful and meaningful thing.”
Trout has reached a point, and gone through a near-death situation, that would have most men stopping to smell the roses. Instead, he’s mowing them under for mulch and heading on to the next adventure with the zeal of someone half his age.
He just finished a successful European tour and he’s kicking off his U.S. tour in Cincinnati this weekend. After that, Trout and his wife will take a second honeymoon for their 25th anniversary, then it’s another European tour, a holiday break and a return to the studio to record what Trout describes as Full Circle Vol. 2, a sequel to his acclaimed, star-studded 2006 album. Trout’s health scare has made him deeply appreciative of where he is now in life.
“I just want to keep playing,” he says, emotion welling in his voice. “I want to be a musician and a husband and a dad and keep doing what I’m doing. I’m in the best part of my life. I feel like I’m starting over at 65. This truly is the best time of my life.”
WALTER TROUT headlines the Cincy Blues Fest’s main stage on Saturday at Sawyer Point. More info (including ticket links and the full schedule): cincybluesfest.org.
This article appears in Aug 10-17, 2016.