Blues guitar master Walter Trout still churning out new music at 72

He jokes that in the last year he's probably played only 120 cities. He's got 32 shows listed on his tour schedule before he reaches Australia in late January, where he will play gigs in Cairns, Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Perth and Newcastle.

When we talked on Wednesday, he was at home in Huntington Beach south of LA. He had just finished recording a new album the previous day, and it was being mastered. He expected to be listening to the final product while chilling out at home later in the day.

The new album will be his 31^st as the headliner, he says. But it won't be released before the Australian tour, so fans here will probably get a show featuring songs from Ride, an album with 12 originals that was released in 2022.

Trout's last tour in Australia was in 2018, when he played Bluesfest. He was scheduled to play Bluesfest in 2020, but the pandemic crashed that festival and Trout's trip.

He's already looking forward to coming here - he had a blast the first time he ever played Australia, as a lead guitarist for rock 'n' roll blues legends Canned Heat in the early 1980s, and he's never forgotten the place.

"I had the time of my life and made lots of new friends," he says of that Canned Heat tour. "I think on that tour we were there for almost two months. I still have some of those friends I made back then. It's some place I've always loved coming to play and found some of the best audiences in the world are there."

As a youngster he moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles to cut his teeth in the music scene in 1974. He played his way into a job with the Coast to Coast Blues Band - John Lee Hooker - which led to an incredible career playing alongside and with many blues giants.

"Because of my pedigree, because of my history, my resume of being with [John] Mayall and Canned Heat and John Lee Hooker and Big Mama Thornton and Percy Mayfield and Lowell Folsom and all these people that I came up through the ranks with, I am rooted in the blues and there is no doubt about that," he says.

"But I like blues rock. I like to rock."

After stints with Canned Heat and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Trout went solo in 1989 and he's never looked back, having generated hundreds of original songs.

He kicked drugs and alcohol in the 1980s - giving credit to Carlos Santana.

"The catalyst for my getting sober back in '87 was Carlos Santana, who kindly did sort of a three-day intervention on me," he says.

"One of the things he told me - it's very important for everybody to find out what their passion is, what brings them joy, and then to take that seriously and nurture it and develop it to the fullest extent, and then to share that with the world."

And then he overcame a bigger obstacle - liver failure, and getting a liver transplant in May 2014 - that saved his life.

So it's no wonder Trout subscribes to the mantra, "Making every day count".

"After the illness I went through I'm uniquely aware of mortality and the fact we're all on borrowed time here," he says. "And I want to make the best out of the time I have. And I want to keep playing music, keep writing music, and keep recording and performing. It's what I love doing. It's my passion, and has been my passion since I was a little kid."

Trout rode out the pandemic by staying at his second home, originally a holiday house, in Denmark, in a small village on the North Sea that's home to his Danish wife Marie's mother and aunt. No gigs, but still writing music. His three boys are still living in Denmark.

As a working musician he's travelled the world, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

"It is great to go out into other places and see how people do things," he says. "And realise there are many different approaches to life and many different ways that people live in societies. Travel to me is a great educator and I love it. My family loves it."

Trout quotes Mark Twain on the subject: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts."

Many a musician will tell you the music comes to them. Trout is no different.

But the source of his inspiration is noteworthy.

"I have written a lot of albums, believe it or not, while doing dishes," Trout says. "My wife is a wonderful cook and she loves to cook. We have a deal: one cooks, one washes the dishes. Now I don't cook so you know what I'm doing. And I get into it. I'll be washing dishes and suddenly, melodies and lyrics start popping into my head.

"So I immediately go and write it down or record it. Sometimes doing the dishes of three people eating dinner can take me a couple of hours 'cause I keep going to my recorder in my bedroom."

He also has songs pop into his head through dreams, as he tells me about a song he wrote, Playing With Gloves On, from his third album, when he woke up from a dream and recorded it all.

At the time his record company was contemplating marketing him as the new Stevie Ray Vaughan shortly after the Texas bluesman's death. But Trout was uneasy with the idea, and in his dream he took off the charade that made him look like Stevie Ray Vaughan so he could play guitar.