One year after a lifesaving liver transplant last Memorial Day, blues-rock guitarist Walter Trout has much to be thankful for as he prepares to return to the stage next week. Here’s what Trout had to say when we talked with him by phone a few weeks back about being 10 days away from death, his “third chance at life” and returning health, the upcoming “I’m Back!” tour, and some of the other artists he’s worked with, admired, and mentored through the years, from such legends as John Mayall and Luther Allison to Mike Zito, UK blues-rocker Danny Bryant, and up-and-comers like Laurence Jones and Trout’s own son Jon.
Thanks to Walter for taking the time to chat with us, and we look forward to catching him on tour this summer!
BluesPowR Blog (BPB): Hi, Walter, wonderful to be talking to you – how’re you feeling?
Walter Trout (WT): Right now, man, I feel great. You know, I’m incredibly joyous and overwhelmingly happy to be alive. Being alive has a whole different meaning to me than it ever did before, because I came so face-to-face with my mortality for months and months. The doctors that I dealt with – none of them thought I would make it, and they fought for me – my wife fought for me harder than anybody, but I was pretty much gone. I’m kind of a miracle to still be here, and life is beautiful beyond all expression right now.
BPB: How long before the transplant did you know you were sick?
WT: It was a year before the transplant. I knew that I was carrying Hepatitis C but I showed no symptoms and I felt great. I had a lot of doctors tell me “You can carry that for 40 or 50 years and never show any symptoms, and you’ll be fine”…and so they told me “Just live a clean, healthy life”. I had known that for a while, for a couple of years, I think.
A year before the transplant, I was on tour in Europe, in Germany, and I woke up one night at about 4 a.m. and I was swelled up like a balloon with liquid. I had had cramps in my hand and I thought it was due to a magnesium deficiency so I was taking all this magnesium, and when I woke up all swelled up, I thought “Okay, I’ve got an allergic reaction to the magnesium”.
Luckily, I only had a week left on the tour. I did the rest of the tour sitting down, and then I came home and immediately went to a doctor. He said “No, it’s not magnesium; your liver is dying and you have this condition called ascites which is where you swell up”. They actually put me in the hospital and they put a drain in my stomach and they drained 25 pounds of fluid out of my abdomen, that’s how swelled up I was. That’s when they said “Your liver is fried”; I switched to a vegan diet and I stopped drinking coffee and I tried to take care of the liver as best I could. But I still was swelled up and I had to go in every couple of weeks and get drained out of my abdomen.
That’s when I did my last album (The Blues Came Callin’); I did that while I was really sick. I wrote the thing and recorded it while incredibly ill, and at one point, I was like in a wheelchair. Then, right around the time I finished the album was when I was just permanently hospitalized and I was in ICU in UCLA out here in Los Angeles for six weeks. They told me in L.A. that I had 90 days to live. After another month, where I had like 60 days to live, my wife came and transferred me to the Nebraska Medical Center because you have a much greater chance there of receiving a liver; there’s too much of a waiting list in Los Angeles. By the time I got the liver in Nebraska, I had about 10 days left to live; I was in incredibly bad shape.
BPB: And that was around Memorial Day?
WT: Yes, I got the transplant on Memorial Day, May 26th.
BPB: So on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you say you’re feeling right now?
WT: I’m feeling about an 8; I still have some days that I’m kind of low energy or I still have some days where I have some sort of minor equilibrium episodes where I feel like I need to sit down or I need to hold on to something. But that’s few and far between; I’ve got plenty of energy – I’m working out every day with weights and riding a recumbent bike. I’m playing the guitar a couple of hours every day. I’m rehearsing with the band. I’m starting to write songs; I’m going to make a new record in May. So I’m actually feeling great.
(We did our interview with Walter a little while back and we suspect his health has only continued to improve since we’ve talked with him. Here’s a video he and his wife Marie shared with fans recently on the occasion of the one-year anniversary of his transplant, where you can see Walter is looking and sounding pretty great as well.)
