Meet a true 'guitar hero' (From Western Telegraph)

Meet a true 'guitar hero'

Live review: Walter Trout, Queen's Hall, Wednesday, August 10th: 'Guitar hero' - these are words thrown at many a talented musician but they actually stick to Walter Trout, for he is one of the true greats and a real bluesman.

This world-famous Californian has played with many legends - John Lee Hooker, Big Mama Thornton, Canned Heat and John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers.

Although renowned for his brand of hardcore blues, Walter Trout is a consummate showman and he and his band, The Radicals, are adept at entertaining.

The muscular musicianship of The Radicals underscored the evening for their quite staggering interplay, as each member of the band had artistic input, whether it was Sammy Avila's keyboards or Joey Pafumi's awe-inspiring drum solo.

With Walter Trout, the magic is in the live performance. Sparkling with references to John Lee Hooker, Trout's guitar playing was one minute deeply intimate, the next 'low down nasty alley blues' and the next a full blues-rock racket. His 70s Fender Strat cajoled, disclaimed and seduced exquisitely, from pain to passion and back, conjuring up mournful cello and full blown orchestral rejoicing and, quite literally, the dialogue of conversation; as John Lee Hooker once said "It's in him and it's got to come out."

As Walter Trout touched us in that deep and direct way great blues guitarists do, there was, amid much mesmerised hip-swaying from the crowd, the sort of adulation reserved for acts of undiluted quality.