Live show energizes Trout

It's an idea that has a solid track record, so it's a wonder that more people don't try it. Neil Young did it with Time Fades Away, Jackson Browne with Running On Empty, Joe Jackson with Big World, Jimi Hendrix with Band of Gypsys.

All were albums of unreleased new songs, recorded live in front of an audience to get the energy of the crowd. Blues guitarist Walter Trout thought it sounded like a good idea. His wife manages his band, "and she's always had this feeling that when the band is rehearsing the songs and playing them in bars . . . they have a certain amount of energy," he says. "When we go into the studio, something gets lost, something in the realm of rawness."

Thus the new Relentless (in CD, DVD and SACD releases) was recorded onstage in Amsterdam, where Trout is properly hailed as a guitar god. 

The new disc was originally to be recorded in a large Hollywood recording studio with about 50 invited guests on hand. "That fell through when Elton John rented the place out for a month," Trout says. So the band merely tacked the Amsterdam date onto the end of a short European tour and told the crowd "we're recording our CD and you're here to watch us do it."

Fans here can see and hear it, all as it happened. "There are no overdubs, no fixes. It's just as we played the stuff," Trout says. "There was a lot of pressure. We basically had two nights in this place. If we didn't get it right, we had a problem," he says. "I knew down inside that my band could pull it off." 

Indeed, Trout went solo years ago after paying his dues with blues legends including John Lee Hooker and a long stint in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. While not a household name here, overseas Trout's name is mentioned in the same breath as his heroes - Clapton, Hendrix, Vaughan. On the new disc he captured the rawness not only in the performances - Trout's searing guitar solos have perhaps never been better - but in the edginess of the new material as well. The Life I Chose is a straight-up look at the sacrifices a musician makes, including leaving his family to make money. It was written a week before it was recorded, as Trout was enduring the misery of being away from his loved ones.

"That song was written in the van on the tour. I was really missing my wife and kids and just wrote it as a poem," he says. "Literally it took about five minutes. I was sitting there thinking about what I was doing and out it came. The next day we went to the club during the day and showed them the song and we started playing it." 

Then again, much of his music comes fairly quickly. "It's completely spontaneous. I can't play the same thing twice. Even back in my sideman career, there were times that it worked against me. There'd be certain songs where guys wanted a certain part. I had to vary that part a little bit every night or my fingers would start falling over each other," Trout says. "When I was a kid, I didn't go into this to take it easy. I went into it to play with everything I had. That's one thing my band gives me the opportunity to do - to really go for it," he says. In every guitar solo, live or on disc, "I try to play something I've never played before. To me it's not a matter of pushing yourself technically. It's a matter of pushing your imagination - what can I think up here that I haven't thought of before? Whatever my brain can think up, I can pull it off. I can play it."