Blues-rock icon Walter Trout offers Brighton and Southampton dates

On Thursday, May 8 he will be at The 1865, Southampton and then on Sunday, May 11 at Concorde 2, Brighton – venues in a country dear to his heart. He first came to this country as part of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers back in the 80s. John Mayall remains in his memory his surrogate father.

“For me it was really exciting to be travelling around England with this legendary Englishman. He was a great, great man. I have nothing but love and respect for him and I miss him very much still. I had a great, great time with him. I had some of the best times in my musical career with that guy. He was brilliant. He was incredibly intelligent but his sense of humour was one of a kind. He was a unique man who loved to laugh. My first tour I did with him was 1982 and he had the original Bluesbreakers with him including Mick Taylor.

“I think I've been back to the UK every year since that first tour I did with John and I've been back with my own band now for 36 years. They just love the music over there in the UK. And in some ways they saved that music in the 60s when the British musicians championed rhythm ’n’ blues and threw it back in our faces, as Americans, and said ‘Look you have got something here.’ And I'm talking about The Stones and The Animals and The Beatles. They saved that music. It wasn't doing very well in this country (the US) at the time but they pushed it right back in our faces and said ‘Look after it.’ That was in 1965 and for the next few years every band that was at the top back in the US was English – and they played that music brilliantly but adding their own twist to it, adding their own culture and expanding it.”

Walter is touring the UK on the back of Broken, his 31st album, a number one in the Billboard Blues Album Chart: “And I have just finished number 32. As a matter of fact I just today sent it to the label, and I'm very excited to do that. There's a lot of work, writing and recording and having it mixed and mastered. It really is a lot to do. My wife Marie is my manager and she always says that a new album is a bit like giving birth. And she's written a lot of the songs with me. She is also a song-writer and she is a big part of my music.

“I'm quite proud of the album Broken, especially, the song Broken. 80 per cent of the lyrics of Broken were written by Marie. She is an award-winning songwriter in her own right. I was trying to write a song about my drug addiction and homelessness and alcoholism and all the rubbish that happened in my youth, but I didn't know how to express it. I was too close to it. She's never had any drug or alcohol problems. She was never involved in that rubbish so she was able to help me write it.

“I was a heroin addict but John Mayall helped me and I'm now coming up 38 or 39 years clean and sober. Oh man, it's a long story but John mentored me and supported me and we had long talks together about life, and when I got really wasted and messed up a gig he would not fire me but he would talk to me about it. He became in some ways a surrogate father to me. He helped me so much.”