Eighth Helping of Trout Is Tempered by Age, Experience

After 10 years and now eight albums, Walter Trout isn’t going to surprise any of his longtime fans. Still, at 48, he is hoping to become that rarity in the pop and rock world: somebody who makes a nationwide first mark in middle age.

That goes only for the United States. Trout has been making his mark in Europe all along, headlining clubs and theaters, playing on huge festival bills and claiming average international sales of more than 55,000 for his seven previous albums. But only with “Walter Trout,” released here in 1997 by the German label Ruf did he manage to get touring exposure in his home country.

The qualities that figure to capture listeners along Trout’s U.S. tour route this summer are givens for fans in Europe and in Orange County, where the Huntington Beach-based, blues-rocking New Jersey native has been a fixture in clubs for more than 20 years.

Trout’s track record virtually guarantees performances full of heart and fire, stoked by prolific, beautifully articulated guitar playing and emotionally all-out singing.

The big variable is the songwriting. When it clicks, and all that passion can burn through good material, you get the deluxe Trout heard on his first two albums, “Life in the Jungle” (1989) and “Prisoner of a Dream”(1991).

He also excelled on parts of album No. 3, “Transition,” and on his last Europe-only release, “Breaking the Rules,” from 1995. “Walter Trout,” his second U.S. release (a 1994 album, “Tellin’ Stories,” was issued by Silvertone but received scant promotion), showcased the player and the singer in Trout, but the songwriting was mostly routine.

“Livin’ Every Day” presents the full package. At 14 songs and 69 minutes, it suffers from the all-too-common more-is-better thinking of the compact-disc era. With two 25-minute sides of vinyl to fill, this could have been a strike of high-grade ore, like his first two albums from the LP age. Sure, CD players make it easy to skip unwanted tracks, but there is something especially satisfying about a cohesive record with no gaps and filler.

Among the lapses here are the instrumental “Through the Eyes of Love,” a too-conventional soaring guitar ballad that lacks structural development, and “Say What You Mean,” a middling-quality funky-blues song that lampoons truth-shading politicians--with an obvious, if unstated, genesis in Bill Clinton’s semantic contortions to avoid simple facts.

For the most part, Trout finds ways to avoid standard blues ploys of the you-did-me-wrong and please-forgive-me ilk. He freshens up the old Robert Johnson chat-with-Satan scenario in “I Thought I Heard the Devil,” singing as a redeemed man determined not to succumb to his old temptations.

His versatility comes through in “Sweet Butterfly (Sophie’s Song),” a smooth and tender soul-blues ballad full of spiritual longing.

After a bit of a late-innings letdown, the album ends strongly with new versions of two songs previously released on “Prisoner of a Dream.” The closing number, “Prisoner of a Dream” lets him blaze on guitar and sing a vividly imagined, taut portrait of a homeless woman on a Southern California beach.

It’s the perfect bookend to the opening track, “Livin’ Every Day,” in which a loner shudders in a scene of wintry chill while Hendrixian “Machine Gun”-like riffs hammer home the desperation of his friendless lot.

Best Work Stems From Own Experiences

Trout clearly is a blues-rocker who can age gracefully. Instead of singing songs about carousing and spite, he paints mature, emotionally balanced romantic scenarios (such as the call for open communication in “Let Me Know,” which the album notes describe as a stylistic hommage to the late Luther Allison).

He holds out hope in the end even for the drug addict he lacerates through most of “Junkyards in Your Eyes.” Trout went down the road of addiction to drugs and alcohol during the ‘70s and most of the ‘80s, and he is often at his best singing cautionary tales from his own experience.

Despite a name change to the Free Radicals, what used to be known as the Walter Trout Band has a solid familiarity: Jim Trapp, a band member ever since Trout left John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers to go solo, is a steady anchor on bass; Bernard Pershey, an accomplished drummer, returns after sitting out one album due to health problems, and Paul Kallestad has a nice, dramatic touch on Hammond B3 organ.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four stars (excellent).

Mike Boehm can be reached by e-mail address at Mike.Boehm@latimes.com.