Ride

At 71, bluesman Walter Trout has lived an extraordinary life. From his teens with Big Mama Thornton and John Lee Hooker to Canned Heat and John Mayall, he found fame and learned some bad habits. A life-saving liver transplant in 2013 resulted in a long recovery. The experience added depth and dimension to his songwriting. He gave us hints of that growth on 2019s Survivor Blues and 2020s Ordinary Madness, but his maturity as a songwriter is showcased fully on Ride, his 30th album. Given his health history, Trout took extra precautions during the pandemic; he spent it alone in a Huntington Beach, California bungalow. He read, listened, practiced, and composed these 12 songs, then demoed them. After the U.S. reopened, he gathered his road band in the studio. Set opener "Ghosts" is an electric blues-rock stomp that jives with Trouts established reputation. The guitarist looks deeply into the rearview and realizes that no matter how fast or far he travels, there is no escaping the past. The first real surprise arrives with the title track. Its an open-road, Southern rock-cum-country groover that draws inspiration from the Allman Brothers Bands classic Brothers and Sisters album. It offers ringing pianos, choogling drums, wailing organ, and soaring guitar solos under an infectious melody. In the ballad "Follow You Back Home," Trout takes responsibility for his mental and emotional health in a devastatingly soulful love song. Amid keyboard strings, lush piano, processional tom-toms, and cymbals, he delivers a solo created of equal parts pain and desire. Despite these outliers -- and a couple of others -- Trout remains a bluesman. There are raucous roadhouse boogies in "High Is Low" and "Leave It All Behind" (the latter with horns); the slow, piercing, late-night Chicago-club variety in "Waiting for the Dawn"; the funky West Coast dancefloor shuffle in "I Worry Too Much"; and the squalling organ and Hendrixian blues guitar wail in the prophetic "Better Days Ahead." All are stellar examples of Trouts wrangling, boundaryless blues sound. That said, its in the outliers that we encounter his uncommon emotional vulnerability and hard-won personal wisdom. In "So Many Sad Goodbyes," with a steely voice and struggling to keep his composure, Trout reflects on societal dissolution, disinformation, hate, and greed atop a swaying bluesy groover complete with a meaty, spiraling guitar break. "Fertile Soil" returns to Southern rock flirtation, but this time the influence is vintage Marshall Tucker Band as Trout balances acoustic and electric guitars, piano, and organ (in his solo, he quotes from MTs guitarist Toy Caldwell). Closer "Destiny" is a sweet, sultry romantic ballad drenched in jazzy soul. In addition to his canny, sensitive playing, Trout reveals himself a more than capable singer. Ride is more musically ambitious and ranging than his recent outings. Emotionally its brutally honest, even harrowing in spots. Trouts major accomplishment here is casting off the shackles of personal history and industry expectation to reveal just who he is, right now, as a man. ~ Thom Jurek