WALTER TROUT (US) - SIGN OF THE TIMES - EUROPEAN TOUR PART II

However rocky his road over the past half-century, hope and resilience have always lit the way. The key facts of Trout's remarkable story are well known: a traumatic childhood in Ocean City, New Jersey; a bold move to the West Coast in '74; promising but chaotic stints as a sideman with John Lee Hooker and Big Mama Thornton; and addictions that somehow kept their grip even after he joined Canned Heat in the early '80s.

Some still point to his guitar fireworks in the mid-'80s as part of John Mayall's legendary Bluesbreakers as the peak of his career. For the vast majority of fans, though, the real story is the blood, heart and soul of his solo career since 1989 - the craft of a bluesman who always reaches for a deeper truth, keeps pushing forward and never flinches.

That creative streak is backed up by regular wins at awards including the Blues Music Awards, SENA European Guitar Awards, British Blues Awards and Blues Blast Music Awards. Cult British DJ "Whispering" Bob Harris spoke for millions when he called Trout "the greatest rock guitarist in the world" in his 2001 autobiography The Whispering Years.

The album was recorded at Kingsize Soundlabs in LA with producer Eric Corne. "This is our 15th album together," says the bluesman. "Eric and I just have a certain way of working. A friend who came into the studio and watched us said: 'Man, you're like a machine.' We're completely in sync."

With dry humour, Trout notes that his new album opens with a track called Broken and closes with one called Falls Apart. He can't deny the link between the personal and the socio-political mood hanging in the air - and everything else lies between those two bookends.