On his latest single “Waiting For The Dawn,” released today via Provogue/Mascot Label Group, the iconic blues-rock guitarist Walter Trout urges fans – and himself – to stay strong, in light of all of the challenges we’ve faced over the past few years. “There were times in this pandemic where I have sunk into some pretty deep depressions, sitting around, wondering whether life has a point,” Trout recalls. It’s the latest single from Trout’s new studio album ‘Ride,’ out August 19th. Written in his now-deserted home in Huntington, Beach, California, the album is filled with pointed reflections from Trout, informed by his decades of stardom in the blues world. As long-standing Trout fans know, the Golden State has been the bluesman’s home for 47 years. Trout joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers lineup in ’85, before embarking on an acclaimed solo career from ’89 onwards. But before that came his chaotic, self-destructive years as a jobbing lead guitarist, whether for revered-but-tricky blues pioneers like John Lee Hooker and Big Mama Thornton, or an unhinged tenure in Canned Heat. Trout’s well-documented excess in this era was darker than a young rock star cutting loose. It could all be traced back to his troubled childhood in New Jersey, he explains, where an unstable stepfather – himself the victim of shocking cruelty as a prisoner of war – was a terrifying presence. As 'Ride' took form, such memories couldn’t help but flavor the music. “This album is obviously what I was going through mentally and emotionally,” he considers. “All I did was express it. I spent a lot of time crying, because I would dig down into my emotional core. I want my songs to have some sort of truth to them.” Some memories that Trout examines on 'Ride' are long-distant but eternally poignant. Try the deceptively upbeat title track, another song that began as a poem, recounting the locomotive that rattled past his childhood home each night and enticed him to freight-hop to freedom. “That song is about what it felt like to lay there in bed and dream about escaping on that train.”
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